Nîmes is preparing to celebrate the harvest festival this weekend. And there is no doubt that on everyone’s lips will echo the bill by Aymeric Caron, a deputy from Paris, who just presented a bill in September to abolish bullfighting in France. In Nîmes, this Monday, Vincent Bouget has just signed a platform, which he shares on social networks. The municipal councilor (French Communist Party) of Nîmes and departmental councilor of Gard rises clearly “against this bill which, if adopted, would destroy a cultureminority, certainly but alive, without advancing, indeed, neither humanity nor the animal cause, nor the environmental cause. ”
“Elected in a department where the bullfighting culture has been deeply rooted for decades, “he specifies, his first wish” is that the debate that will therefore undoubtedly open in the National Assembly, can take place with knowledge of the facts and listening to the actors of the bullfighting culture in its various expressions (Corrida, Camargue race, liberation of bulls, etc.), but also of the local populations who have built part of their personality in the relationship with the bulls. Finally, artists and people of culture who in their own expression, literature, painting, music, etc. they gave and give to the bullfight all its aesthetic dimension, bringing human and artistic values“.
The continuation of the Vincent Bouget tribune
“I invite all parliamentarians who want to get to know all these actors, to better understand what is really at stake, through the existence or disappearance of the bullfight. in the arguments used to ban bullfighting, a great ignorance of what it really is. This is not abnormal: bullfighting is established in France in a limited number of regions: in Occitania, in the new Aquitaine, in PACA, without all the departments of these 3 regions being all interested.
The topic is certainly difficult, controversial and I understand it perfectly: the bullfight ends with the public death of the bull, which is the necessary outcome. And all bullfighting enthusiasts, enthusiasts, understand or must understand that for thousands of people the very idea of seeing (or even just imagining) an animal fight, be injured, then die, is unbearable. It is a question of sensitivity and compassion. But it must be understood on the contrary that the bullfighting enthusiast shares these same values of sensitivity and compassion: no enthusiast (and there are thousands of them at every fair in Nîmes, Béziers, Dax, Bayonne, Arles etc.) will participate in a bullfight to satisfy an unhealthy desire to see an animal suffer. This is why no study has ever been able to show that the spectacle of a bullfight is accompanied by a resurgence of violence, aggressive behavior towards people or animals. On the contrary.
And he is false to say that this show would cause problems for the children who attend it. Even here, indeed. What we are looking for in this show is the emotion and the admiration that gives rise to a fight where every actor, the bull as the man, in a unique meeting and by definition without a future, gives the best of himself, also and expresses the courage him.
I say this with solemnity and conviction: bullfighting does not consist in torturing a defenseless animal, but on the contrary in making an animal naturally ready to fight, which reacts to each wound not by fleeing but by doubling its attacks. Whether it is a spade, banderilla or sword, all wounds inflicted on the bull are frontal, facing the horns. The bullfighter has no right to kill if he doesn’t really commit his life.
We are miles away from mechanized and industrial death, on the assembly line and in slaughterhouses ; cold, silent, hidden and, so to speak, shameful death. Here, instead, we look for the possibility given to the bull to fully express, in full light, its nature as a fighter, born from its genetics and its breeding conditions, for 4 or 5 years, which are an example of animal life. ideal and respectful.
The farms of Spain, Portugal or South America, the ganaderias are free and immense spaces, where the number of bulls per hectare is even coded, no more than 3, so that each individual “bull” has the necessary space to develop his own deep nature, in minimal contact with man before his unique and ephemeral encounter with the bullfighter in the arena, without previous training.
I say this without being provocative or paradoxical: the breeding of fighting bulls for bullfighting is undoubtedly the most respectful in the relationship between humans and animals. Let me be clear: the ban on bullfighting will lead to the closure of farms, deprived of the resources necessary for their maintenance and the breeding and livelihood of the bulls. Playback will be stopped. As for the animals that live there, for them there will be no other way out than the slaughterhouse.
Will we witness the cheers of the anti-bullfighting, who claim to have put an end to what they ignore they call “butchery”, as thousands of bulls wait their turn to enter the slaughterhouse? Will you come to this height of hypocrisy? Is death more acceptable when it is hidden? The fighting bull is a peculiar animal, which is neither totally domesticated nor totally wild. It is spontaneously aggressive if you have the misfortune to enter what it has defined its territory.
Some, in an ignorance that I do not blame them if they want to hear, oppose the bullfighting of the Camargue race, where the bull is not put to death. But it is not the same breed of bull: the Camargue bull is smaller, less aggressive, its horns, facing upwards, do not have the same position. You do not use a 500 or 600-pound Spanish-bred fighting bull for a Camargue run. As for the abolition of killing at the end of a bullfight, it is impossible, the animal in question cannot be bullied twice. : he learned too much during his encounter with the bullfighter and would therefore have become too dangerous for the man. Not killing him publicly would only result in his death in the slaughterhouse.
Last but not least, the defense of bullfighting and bull breeding is also an ecological struggle. Defending bullfighting is defending one of the last forms of extensive breeding in Europe, where, I repeat, each animal has a territory of 1 to 3 hectares. This extensive breeding, preserved from excessive mechanization thanks to the personal self-denial and love for the bull of some breeders, takes place in unparalleled ecological reserves of flora and fauna, such as large protected natural parks. It is the presence in these places of the bulls that allows this. Repressing bullfighting means putting an end to these spaces, promising them to intensive or industrial agriculture.
I finish where I started. Bullfighting is a culture: culture of combat, aesthetic expression through colors, elegance, music, grace. It confronts us, in the light of the sun, with the encounter between humanity and animality, united in a confrontation full of life, strength and respect where the final tragedy is assumed, sublimating it. He expresses himself in front of everyone, nothing happens behind the scenes. It confronts us with an essential part of the truth of who we are. It deserves to be looked at. As great artists have done, from Goya to Picasso, from Ernest Hemingway to Orson Welles. I like bullfighting. I understand and respect those who don’t like it. I hope that the next debate, if it takes place, will allow us to dialogue and understand each other better “.
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