The Toro de la Vega can be held without injuring the animal
The Bull of the Vega in 2019 /
The Pacma achieves in the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León what the Ministry of Social Rights has not achieved before the Environment Prosecutor's Office
The Toro de la Vega may be held, but without injuring the animal. This has been determined by the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León, which has decided the precautionary suspension of the new regulatory bases prepared this year by the City Council of Tordesillas for the celebration of this bullfight. The judicial resolution also suspends the Order with which the Government of Castilla y León gave its consent to this adaptation of the municipal regulations to the provisions of the Decree-Law of 2016 that prohibited the death of animals in the presence of the public during the development of popular bullfighting shows.
The City Council of Tordesillas had approved new regulatory bases for this year that determined how the Toro de la Vega would be celebrated, the characteristics of the sharp elements that could be used to attack it, the number of horsemen and how many incisions the animal could suffer. This, after since 2016 (except for the years in which the pandemic prevented its convocation) the bullfighting event took place without injuring it and without leading it to death, that is, with respect to the Decree-Law approved that same year.
For this reason, the letter of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León establishes the return to the application of that rule and that way of celebrating the event: without making incisions in the bull, without taking it to death, like a confinement.
What Pacma has achieved has not been achieved by the Government. The Environmental Prosecutor's Office also ruled this Friday stating that there are no "indications of the commission of any crime" in the celebration of the Toro de la Vega Tournament. This was indicated in an Official Letter sent to the General Director of Animal Rights, Sergio García Torres, the Prosecutor of the Environment Chamber, Antonio Vercher.
In this way, the Prosecutor's Office archived the open proceedings after receiving this Thursday a letter from the Ministry of Social Rights that urged it to adopt precautionary measures that would prevent the celebration of the Toro de la Vega in Tordesillas (Valladolid) next Tuesday.
The complaint sent by the Government on Thursday morning asked the Prosecutor's Office to act preventively in the face of a "possible crime" of animal abuse. Likewise, he argued that this celebration violates the Regulation of Popular Bullfighting Shows of the Community of Castilla y León, which states that in all popular bullfighting shows it is prohibited to injure cattle.
The Prosecutor's Office, in its reply, is contrary to Social Rights: it ensures that there is "an autonomous legal basis that allows the present situation" and that it is "to which the way of celebrating this type of celebration has been adapted." It also recalls that it had already ruled to the same effect in similar petitions made in 2007 and 2015.
Since 2016, the bull has not been killed in public during the tournament. And this year the City Council, which had regulated the characteristics of the sharp elements that can be used against the bull and how many times, Social Rights alleged in its petition that these instruments continued to be devices designed to be nailed to the animal "directly contravening the regulations autonomic”.
The Prosecutor's Office also established in its letter that the decision is made "without prejudice to the analysis of the specific adjustment to the administrative legality" of the Order approved on July 5 that declares the conformity of the adaptation of the bases of the Toro de la Vega to regional regulations, an issue that "would correspond to the contentious-administrative jurisdiction and not to the Public Prosecutor's Office."
