Pro-bullfighting lobby throws economic data into the ring

Opponents and supporters of bullfighting are increasingly resorting to economic data to defend their respective positions. Devotees of the activity, who complain about what they call the “bullying tactics” of the animal rights lobby, have now produced a report claiming the sector contributed some €1.6 billion to the Spanish economy in 2013, the year the study was carried out.

Commissioned by the National Association of Bullfighting Events Organizers (ANOET), the report rebuffs claims by opponents that regional and local governments throughout Spain have subsidized bullfights to the tune of €600 million, putting the nationwide figure for 2013 instead at €25.5 million.

The ANOET report accuses bullfighting’s detractors of taking advantage of the economic crisis to base their opposition on financial arguments

The report also accuses bullfighting’s detractors of taking advantage of the economic crisis to base their opposition on financial arguments. “They are insinuating that bullfighting is entirely dependent on multi-million euro subsidies to survive,” says Mar Gutiérrez, ANOET’s secretary, who contributed to the report.

Using statistics gathered from regional and local administrations, the ANOET report describes bullfighting as a “cultural activity”, insisting it receives fewer subsidies than other such events, despite generating “so much money for the public purse.”

Their claims are supported by a mass of data, noting that in 2013 bullfighting attracted 24.8 million spectators, generating €43.86 million euros in sales tax for the government.

“It created three times as much sales tax as Spanish cinema (€14.5 million) and more than the theater (€35.42 million euros),” the report argues. It also claims that bullfighting has generated as many as 57,000 directly related jobs, along with 142,000 indirect positions.

It is, they say, an activity that injects €1.6 billion into the Spanish economy in total: €422 million directly; €361 million in transport, hotels and catering; and €820 million in knock-on effects.

Nevertheless, regional and local governments are continuing to reduce subsidies for bullfighting, the report says, noting that bullfights receive €30,000 from the national government via the National Bullfighting Awards, along with €25.47 million from local governments.

Needless to say, these figures have little in common with those wheeled out by the animal rights lobby.

In 2013, a number of Spanish European Parliament deputies, along with Alfred Bosch of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) party, released a report claiming that bullfighting received as much as €571 million from Spain’s public coffers, along with another €129.6 million from the EU – figures that coincide with those compiled by the animal rights lobby.

The vastly different figures each side has produced have triggered mutual cries of foul play. Bullfighting aficionados claim that its detractors are using “dodgy data” to estimate the size of the subsidies: “The Bosch report claims, without any supporting evidence, that the subsidies make up 33% of the total cost,” says a spokesman for the bullfighting lobby.

Meanwhile, animal rights groups accuse their adversaries of coming up with figures that have nothing to do with the impact of bullfighting on local economies, “throwing into the equation, for example, stays at hotels, as though everyone staying in them had come to see the bulls.”

English version by Heather Galloway.