It was the year 2011 when the Popular Party of Mariano Rajoy promised, in its electoral program, to protect bullfighting as one of its great cultural measures. Two years later, Parliament gave the green light to a law that declared bullfighting as a “cultural heritage worthy of protection.” A few days ago, this rule made it easier for the Supreme Court, at the request of a bullfighting foundation, to force the current Government to include the bulls among the shows that should be subsidized by the youth cultural voucher of the Ministry directed by Miquel Iceta. The argument is that Culture did not sufficiently justify the exclusion of bulls from this subsidy for young people who turn 18 when there is a law that declares their cultural protection.
The bulls will be included in the youth cultural bonus “very immediately”
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“We will promote the protection of all traditional artistic manifestations that are part of our culture, such as bullfighting.” It was what the fifth point of the cultural program with which Mariano Rajoy stood for the elections in 2011 said. It was at the end of 2013 when his party promoted a reform in Parliament to shield that legal protection to the world of bullfighting. A norm that went ahead with the favorable votes of the Popular Party and the Union of the Navarro People and the abstention of UPyD and the PSOE.
A plenary debate in which few deputies deprived themselves of making bullfighting similes, and in which the PP defended that bullfighting should enjoy maximum public protection. “We will be able to discuss the figures, but not the economic and tourist importance of bullfighting, which I believe is the duty of the State to guarantee and protect,” said Minister José Ignacio Wert. Toni Cantó, at that time with UPyD, criticized that bullfighting was subsidized. José Andrés Torres, of the PSOE, established the position of the socialists: “Do not promote, do not prohibit.” Bullfighting, settled José Manuel Albendea (PP), “is neither right nor left.”
The right voted in favor, the left of the PSOE abstained and the norm went ahead. That law, almost a decade later, has come back like a boomerang to hit one of the star projects in the cultural field of the current socialist government: the youth cultural voucher. A measure to give 400 euros to young people, to be distributed in different areas of the cultural industry with some exceptions: no textbooks, no stationery, no artistic material, no musical instruments, no fashion, no gastronomy, no pornography, and finally , tickets for the bulls.
It was the Toro de Lidia Foundation that took the case to the Supreme Court, denouncing the discrimination of bullfighting in this cultural bonus. A foundation created in 2015 and that in recent years has been the beneficiary of public subsidies from both the central government and regional administrations to promote bullfighting. More than 600,000 euros from the Junta de Castilla y León to organize the bullfight circuit in 2021 and 2022, agreements with the Community of Madrid endowed with more than one million euros to organize these festivities in small municipalities and, finally, state subsidies. An annual grant of 35,000 euros from the Ministry of Culture, among other things to disseminate bullfighting knowledge on Wikipedia, funding to make a podcast on bullfighting and in 2020 the National Bullfighting Prize endowed with 30,000 euros.
???? LAST MINUTE – The former mayor of Villena has been charged with the crime of prevarication by preventing the bulls
➖After the complaint filed by the FTL, he must make a statement on September 10 after the court found evidence of the crime of prevarication. https://t.co/JEkp07ktn0
— Lydia Bull Foundation (@ftorodelidia) July 1, 2019
A Toro de Lidia Foundation that has also defended bullfighting with civil and criminal legal actions. A lawsuit has been filed, for example, against the mayor of Alicante and against the director of SEPE in Seville for understanding that they discriminated against bulls. He also did it against the former mayor of Villena, a case currently open. They promoted various judicial actions against people who charged against the bullfighter Víctor Barrio after his death: one case, that of a teacher from Segovia, ended up on file and another, that of a councilor from Catarroja, ended up in a sentence. In this lawsuit, they brought before the Supreme Court the regulation of the youth cultural bonus represented by several lawyers from the Cremades and Calvo Sotelo law firm.
The Supreme Court starts its reasoning by making it clear that it is not up to them that bulls have State protection in Spain. “It has been the same legislator who has done it in the affirmative”, say the judges brandishing a law 18/2013 that regulates bullfighting as cultural heritage, something endorsed by the Constitutional Court when in 2016 it annulled the ban on bullfighting in Catalonia . And he acknowledges that this is the reason why Culture had to specify its exclusion from the cultural bonus: “If it were not of a cultural nature, it would not have been necessary to do so because they would not be included in the scope of application of the cultural bonus,” say the judges. Although that does not imply its mandatory protection through this bonus.
From there, the contentious court argues that the Government’s explanations for excluding bulls “do not seem valid to us.” Alleging that the bulls are promoted through other instruments, says the Supreme Court, are “generic” and “insufficient” explanations compared to the order of the 2013 standard that forced to expose “a singular justification of quite an entity.” Fashion or gastronomy, among others, are also left out but bullfighting, argues the Supreme Court, has its own law.
Alba Nogueira: “It’s nonsense”
Various jurists have expressed their criticism of some of the reasoning used by the Supreme Court to demand greater justification from the administration in implementing something that, in practice, constitutes a subsidy for cultural consumption. Alba Nogueira is a professor of administrative law at the University of Santiago de Compostela and understands that the law that protects bullfighting does not oblige the administration to include it in the cultural bonus, also understanding that it is not usual to demand arguments from a Ministry for not subsidizing something .
“That a law has a mandate to protect a legal right does not mean that it is necessarily through subsidies, there may be other forms of protection. There is a sports law and in the cultural bonus sporting events are also prohibited. The fact that there is a law to protect something does not imply that its protection is like that, ”he explains to questions from elDiario.es.
A second issue, for this professor, is the direct link established by the Supreme Court between the 2013 bullfighting law and the 2022 cultural bonus. “The law does not bind the administration. As long as those grant orders are for public purposes, what purpose do they have to have? That is a political decision, what do you prioritize in culture, agriculture, sport… If you want to get a subsidy for youth sports, could there be someone who would appeal because sport for the elderly is not contemplated? It is an area of prioritization, of positive discrimination, ”she explains. A subsidy, he continues, must be equal in terms of access for the groups to which it is addressed, but “it does not mean that there has to be something for everyone and everything”.
Nogueira understands that the administration could modify the regulation of the youth cultural bonus, a “plus motivation effort… but let’s see what is the plus that the Supreme Court likes, with a denser regulation,” he explains. For this USC professor, “it is not necessary to change” the norm since “it is quite abnormal that a statement of reasons for a call for subsidies has to say why you do not subsidize something, it is to argue in the negative. It seems exaggerated to me, it is very rare. In the subsidy orders you explain why you give money to a sector, it is very abnormal and it is an intervention of the judicial power in the executive, it is nonsense ”.