Sunday, September 25, 2011

Congratulations to Catalonia

September 25th, 2011 - a day to remember. Today the hopefully last ever bullfight was fought in Barcelona. Catalonia has made a great stride for animal rights in Spain, when they decided a little over a year ago to ban this repulsive tradition as the first region in the mainland kingdom (the Canary Islands had the foresight to do so twenty years ago). Good for them, but first and foremost good for these poor animals that will no longer have to suffer a confusing and agonizing death as entertainment for a bunch of bloodthirsty degenerates.

This latter group will actually benefit from this also, since while emotionally stunted people may find it amusing to watch animals being tortured, doing so contributes to their moral corruption and general mental decline. In the long run it'll be better for them, even if they don't have the brains to comprehend this themselves.

It is possible that this good news is premature, since the pro-animal torture camp are looking to prevent the law taking effect (as it is intended to do on January 1st, 2012) by gathering a certain number of signatures in favor of continued torture. So let's all hope that Catalonian lawmakers have cool heads and some sense of empathy.

If they don't, and this grotesque tradition continues, let us hope that all future fights will end like this.

On a personal note, I was in Barcelona earlier this year, as you may remember. We drove by the bullfighting arena a couple of times, and I was ... impressed, if that's the word I want, by the size of it. It's a very large place, I remember thinking it must seat a hell of a lot of people. Now it says in the papers here that the arena was sold out for this last fight, and that this means an audience of 18.000. Well, the story was also on the Daily Review, and they of course had pictures ... moving pictures even ... that I got the impression were from tonight's fight. Did anyone else see that? Because seriously, that place was not sold out. Far from it. It was more than half empty. If that was tonight, then one may have reason to hope that even the Spanish aren't an entirely lost cause.

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