Bullfighting about to enter its last throes

As the Catalonia Parliament moved to ban bullfighting, I was reminded of a scene which made me dubious about such a seemingly humane decision.

In the summer of 2008 as I filmed a documentary in a ghost town in northern Mexico a group of elder tribesmen prepared to kill a bull in the crew's honour.

The animal was lassoed and, with a single yank, felled to the ground amid a cloud of dust.

Its horns were then tied to a young citrus tree, and the six men in wide, black hats clapped and hummed as they handed each other freshly sharpened knives and walked around the animal. It was an eerie lullaby for the arrival of death, but one filled with beauty and a symbolism as difficult to grasp as the language of their tribe.

If one had to interpret the animal's passiveness, it could have equated with resignation or shell-shock.

What I did know for sure though, as a knife was rammed into the bull's jugular and blood speckled my T-shirt and camera, is how the cruelty of those acts were somehow lessened by the context in which they were taking place.

For this group of people, the bull was a massive financial investment, its ritualistic death and the celebration that followed was a great act of kindness to visitors and one that we, as outsiders, hadn't the tools to completely understand hence little right to criticise.

To judge their ritual by the animal rights standards that are becoming commonplace would be a small act of cultural colonialism and nearsighted.

So when the Catalans, by a narrow margin, banned bullfighting, I couldn't help but hope the right decision had been made and that Spain or the rest of Latin America would not be rushing into a similar prohibition.

There is no denying that the bullfight is an intensely cruel practice. Ernest Hemingwaywrote in Death in the Afternoon that "from a modern moral point of view ... the whole bullfight is indefensible; there is certainly much cruelty, there is always danger, either sought or unlooked for, and there is always death ..."

So where is the beauty or sportsmanship in this version of feeding Christians to the lions and why shouldn't everyone want the thing banned?

Bullfighting apologists cite the hypocrisy involved in demonising the sport while the food industry treats millions more animals far worse, and for much longer.

"Except for the last 15 minutes of their lives, bulls reared for a corrida lead lives that any abattoir bovine could only envy. They grow up on the best food, run free through the most pristine fields and only get to see a cramped environment when they are being examined and treated by the best vets," the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.

Spain considers the bullfight an art-form rather than a sport. Matadors are awarded medals by the Ministry of Culture. Reviews of corridas appear on the nation's arts and culture newspaper pages rather than in the sports sections. Artists such as Picasso, Goya, Orson Wells are among many who have written and painted extensively on the subject.

As New York Times writer Michael Kimmelman observed: "There is the art of the ritual, ancient and colo[u]rful, with its sequence of movements, firmly established but, because the bulls always vary, different each time and entailing a kind of balletic grace on the part of the matadors, who are judged not least by whether they can make the bulls look graceful, too."

Aside from that, the corridas in their many apparitions - such as running with the bulls, which was exempted from the ban by the Catalan Parliament - are part of many country's rural festivities.

Still bullfighting is dying a natural death.

Catalonia has gone from three rings to one, the Plaza Monumental, which was struggling to attract new fans.

In Mexico and Colombia the bullfight remains popular but is declining in the main urban centres. But in rural regions corridas, like rodeos and spectacles designed to show the skill of those who depend on animals for work or sustenance, remain a crucial part of community life. The bullfighting debate goes beyond the straitjacket of animal rights versus traditions - it is an argument about the pressures that globalised moral codes place on the habits of small countries and their communities, of international opinion on local customs.

If the world was to ban everything that seemed brutal or uncouth to the dominant culture, what would remain for small communities, like the one in northern Mexico?

There may be a clue in Plaza de las Arenas, Catalonia's second largest bullfighting ring. Built in 1834, Arenas hosted legendary bullfights and has been a protagonist in historical events in the country's history.

Its facade remains: the red brick architecture echoes Muslim and Christian influences and still hints at a place wherestrong emotions mixed themselves with history. Inside however, the Plaza Arenas has been refitted to house a luxury shopping mall.