San Sebastian has rejected, with the votes of PNV, PSE and PP, a motion to end the Illumbe bullfighting

The City Council of San Sebastián has rejected, with the votes of PNV, PSE and PP, the motion of Podemos to declare San Sebastián "a city without animal abuse shows" and to put an end to the bullfighting in Illumbe.

The spokesman for Podemos San Sebastián, Victor Lasa, has stated that San Sebastián "has a very good cultural offer, considering that we are a relatively small town", but that "three or four days a year we put all this aside and become a little sadistic, and we say that our culture is to torture animals in public, in public facilities and, most of the time, with public funding."

After criticizing the bullfighting as "part of the summer 'cultural' program," he stressed that "animal torture is not culture and animal abuse is not culture."

"It cannot be that in 2025 we continue to have these practices in a public facility such as Illumbe and, worse still, it cannot be that this municipal government says that when New Illumbe is built it will have the capacity to temporarily adapt as a taurine compound so that we can continue to use animal torture and continue to violate animal rights in this city as part of a supposed culture," he said.

Lasa has denounced that the PNV and PSE government "says it wants to be a sustainable, avant-garde, knowledge-based city, but we will continue to torture animals in public, we will continue to kill them in public, and we will allow this ill-named show to be part of our culture."

The spokesman for Podemos recalled that "although the tauromaquia, unfortunately, and because of the PSOE, remains protected by state law and seems untouchable, it is not because several cities in the state have managed to get rid of bullfighting, such as Gijón, A Coruña, Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona."

"There are different ways of doing this. Other cultural activities can be prioritized, bullfighting can be technically hindered by imposing conditions, as they have done in Palma de Mallorca, where it has established numerous technical sanitary conditions so that companies engaged in this activity are not interested in programming," he said.

In his view, "the question of legality is a very weak argument." Thus, Lasa has assured us that "no legal framework obliges us to organize bullfighting." "Other cities within the same legal framework do not organize bullfighting, nor are they in the Constitutional Court litigating for their programming," he has reiterated.

Finally, Victor Lasa has pointed out that the Animal Welfare Act does not include tauromaquia. "If that were the case, it would be different, but the PSOE refused to do so in the Council of Ministers." "What is the reason behind the continuation of tauromaquia on the planet when it is rejected by more than 70% of the population?" he asked.