ARCHIVED - The Osborne Bull will finally return to Murcia

The bull will be on the main road linking Murcia to Cartagena

For a long time the Region of Murcia was the only Autonomous Community in Spain without any examples of the Osborne Bull apart from Cantabria, on the North coast, and Catalunya, but this week the location of the region’s first bull has been confirmed as on the Autovía, the A-30, the main road which links the City of Murcia to Cartagena.

The bull is within the pedanía of Baños y Mendigo, and will be at the point known as Puerto de la Cadena which is part of the regional park, the Parque Regional El Valle y Carrascoy, giving the bull high visibility.
Although a number of other municipalities, including Cartagena, La Unión, Blanca, Ulea and Las Torres de Cotillas pitched for the project, this was considered to be the most strategic point.

The Osborne Bulls have become synonymous with Spain and the Spanish identity, but were born as an advertising campaign in 1956 for brandy de Jeréz, which sparked a nationwide bull building frenzy, with a herd of 500 bulls spread across Spain, two of them in Murcia.

The first animals, made of wood and measuring only 4 metres, were placed next to Spanish highways in 1958, but deterioration due to the weather meant their replacement by metal structures 7 metres high starting in 1961.

In 1962, though, a law was passed which made it illegal to place the bulls within 125 metres of the road, to which Osborne responded by doubling the height of the bulls to 14 metres and searching for prominent places to put them.

In 1988 it became illegal to advertise alcoholic drinks on Spanish roads, so many of the bulls were removed and the word "Veterano" was also taken off, leaving the bulls purely as symbolic sculptures, overlooking the landscape from their privileged viewpoints. Visitors to this area may remember the example which overlooked Alicante airport until a few years ago. There are 90 bulls throughout Spain, Andalucia having the most examples with 23.

In 1994, Parliament declared the sculptures an element of national cultural and artistic heritage and in 1997 the Supreme Court recognised the social, cultural and artistic symbolism of the Osborne Bull, raising it to the category of “national symbol.”

Building an Osborne Bull is quite a challenge, each 14 metre high figure weighing 4000 kilos and requiring a ground floor area of 150 square metres, as well as a substantial  metal structure to hold it in place. 6 cubic metres of concrete is required to hold the bull down, and 50 kilos of paint to paint it, so selecting the current location is essential.

Vandalism of bulls is a fairly frequent occurrence, and the last bull in Catalunya was destroyed by a Catalan Nationalist group in 2009, in an attempt to "cleanse" the mountain on which it stood of the "Spanish-ness" implicit in the structure.

Pro-bullfight campaigners have fought hard for this bull, and the regional government are delighted that they will finally get one of these bulls for the Murcia Region.

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