Bullfights return to Spanish public TV_美文_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Bullfights return to Spanish public TV

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Bullfights returned to Spanish public television on Wednesday after a six-year suspension, sparking warnings of legal action from animal rights activists.

State-financed broadcaster RTVE screened live a bullfight in north-central Valladolid featuring star matadors "El Juli" Julian Lopez Escobar, Jose Maria Manzanares and Alejandro Talavante.

Its main channel TVE had stopped showing the fights in 2006, blaming the high price of broadcasting rights, a dwindling audience and the fact that they usually take place during children's viewing hours.

RTVE's manual had previously said that bullfights were violent acts that should not be shown when children are watching television.

But a new RTVE board, appointed after a conservative Popular Party government took power last December, changed the rules, removing bullfights from the category of "violence against animals".

Bullfighting fans held up signs in the stands that read "Yes to bulls on TVE and to youth at bullfights" and "Thank you TVE. Yes to bullfighting".

"It was a very special bullfight," Talavante told reporters after the bullfight.

"When I started to like bullfighting it was thanks to my grandfather who recently passed away and also for the broadcasts on Spanish public television."

Animal rights political group PACMA vowed to challenge the renewed broadcasts.

"For PACMA, bullfights are a spectacle in which spectators see the agony and death of a bleeding animal, real animal abuse. This content can in no way be proper to be shown in children's time."