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Date Published: 12/07/2022

ARCHIVED - Cruel bull running fiesta returns to Moratalla

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

After two years off due to the pandemic, the “Santísimo Cristo del Rayo” bull running festival in Moratalla is back

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Cruel bull running fiesta returns to Moratalla

Unfortunately, many local fiestas and events have had to be cancelled in Spain and around the world over the last two years due to coronavirus. Now that Covid restrictions have been almost completely lifted in many places, people are welcoming back the return of their beloved annual traditions and fiestas.

Not everyone is so pleased, though, least of all the bulls who are routinely tortured and slaughtered for sport in Spain’s age-old traditional fiestas.

In the same week as the iconic Sanfermines bull festival is taking place in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona, the town of Moratalla in the northwest of Murcia is also the scene of a bull running fiesta, the Santísimo Cristo del Rayo.

From early on Monday morning, July 11, hundreds of people crowded the streets of the municipality where the running of the bulls would take place for the first of several days of bull events.

As in the Sanfermines, the bulls in Moratalla’s Santísimo Cristo del Rayo are released onto the streets just behind a surging mass of half-drunken youngsters, who have to dodge the horns and hooves of the animals to avoid being skewered.

Aside from being dangerous for the human participants involved in the bull running – at the crossroads with the Caravaca road, a young man was trampled by a bull – it is also incredibly distressing for the animals.

The bulls are goaded and corralled, frightened by the screaming, running crowds, and whipped up into a violent frenzy for the sake of entertainment. The animal protection laws which are designed to safeguard rights for dogs, cats and other animals don’t apply to bulls, even though they are no different in terms of emotional intelligence and sentience.

2022 marks the 400th anniversary of this fiesta in Moratalla, and surely that’s a nice round number to end it on. After all, these fiestas also involve other, less barbaric, elements typical of Spanish culture such as offerings to the image of Christ, religious processions and popular music concerts, which should be enough without having to add bull running into the mix.

We’re in the 21st century now, and there is no place for animal cruelty in our forms of entertainment.

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