BARCELONA, Spain – Lawmakers in Catalonia outlawed bullfighting Wednesday, making it Spain’s first major region to ban the deadly, centuries-old ballet between matador and beast after heated debate that pitted animal rights against a pillar of traditional culture.

Cheers broke out in the local 135-seat legislature after the speaker announced the ban had passed 68-to-55 with nine abstentions. The ban will take effect in 2012 in the northeastern coastal region whose capital is Barcelona.

Catalonia is a powerful, wealthy area with its own language and culture and a large degree of self-rule. Many in Spain have seen the pressure here for a bullfighting ban as a further bid by Catalonia to stand out from the rest of the country.

The practical effect of the ban will be limited: Catalonia has only one functioning bullring, in Barcelona, while another disused one is being turned into a shopping mall. It stages 15 fights a year which are rarely sold out, out of a nationwide total of roughly 1,000 bouts per season.

Still, bullfighting buffs and Spanish conservatives have taken the drama very seriously, seeing a stinging anti-Spanish rebuke in the grass roots, anti-bullfighting drive which started in the region last year.

But Joan Puigcercos, a lawmaker from a Catalan pro-independence party, insisted this was not about politics or national identity but rather “the suffering of the animal. That is the question, nothing more.”

He said that even though attendance at bullfights is on the decline in Spain it would be morally wrong to sit back and just let the Spanish national pastime die a natural death.

However, the Catalan regional president, Jose Montilla, said Catalonia should have done just that — let social customs evolve to the point where bullfighting would vanish on its own, rather than legislate an end to it and deny people’s right to choose whether to go the ring.

“I voted against the ban because I believe in freedom,” Montilla said.

The result will energize animal rights groups bent on seeking bans in other regions of Spain.

“The suffering of animals in the Catalan bullrings has been abolished once and for all. It has created a precedent we hope will be replicated by other democratic Parliaments internationally, in those regions and countries where such cruel bullfights are still allowed,” said Leonardo Anselmi of PROU, the animal rights groups whose signature-collecting campaign late last year forced Catalonia’s Parliament to vote.

Bullfighting is also popular in Mexico, South America, France and Portugal.

 

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