Some days ago Ivan and me went to a village from Avila to watch that the law was being abided. We specifically went to a calf fight, where, in the years before, they had used a mule in the bullring to use it as the picador’s horse. Ivan had warned the authorities that we were going to be there, and that if we saw anything illegal, we were going to denounce it. Truth is it was pretty disagreeable. Watching a group of people fighting a poor little cow for the girls, and a calf for the boys was absolutely pathetic. Watching how they drove banderillas (spears) in them everywhere, with the panic of the poor animals, which the only thing they wanted was to flee from there.

In the bullring they used a horse, while the calf was there, trying to simulate something like the “rejoneo” (bullfighting on horseback), and the poor horse suffered too, for the calf charged him more than once. We also saw various youngsters in the bullring during the fight, something that goes completely against bullfighting rules, so now our lawyer is working on it to press charges against everything. The good news is that this time there was no donkey, but the bad one is that these traditions should end, and above all, what makes me very angry is that we should go there to watch that the law is enforced. Can you imagine in any situation, with the authorities there, the citizens have to be there to see that the law is enforced? This is not our task, but of the law, to make sure that laws are being abided, but we have obviously still a long way to go in these subjects.

The following week Maria and another person from El Refugio del Burrito went somewhere else to watch for the same thing. For them it was worst, because they suffered from the people’s insults and had to witness how poor calves were killed in the bullring, but she will tell you about it in another update.