As tens of thousands flock to Pamplona for the annual running of the bulls, Miguel Ángel Rolland explains why he made his documentary Santa Fiesta

“It hurts me to say it but the Spanish are a savage, insensitive and ignorant people,” says Miguel Ángel Rolland. In his new documentary, the Spanish film-maker has chronicled some of the 16,000 religious festivals across Spain that he says involve the torture of animals.

Every year about 60,000 animals are killed during these festivals, often held in honour of a local saint or the Virgin Mary. Spanish identity is a local, rather than a national, affair and people are fiercely loyal to their town or village and the customs associated with it.

The best known festival is this week’s running of the bulls during the fiesta of San Fermín in Pamplona. Tens of thousands of people from all over the world flock to the small Navarra town each year for a week of partying that begins each day with six fighting bulls and six oxen being driven through the narrow streets to the bullring, where the bulls are killed in a series of bullfights.

The festival has attracted increasing criticism from animal rights groups – on Saturday activists from Peta staged a protest to draw attention to what they say is a week of fear and death for bulls.

The cruelties documented in Rolland’s film (warning: graphic scenes) include pulling the head off a goose and throwing a live turkey from a church tower, but the most abused animal by far is the bull.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In Tordesillas, Castile and León, hundreds of lancers and riders chase a bull around a closed field until the animal is stabbed to death. Photograph: Kike Carbajal/Santa Fiesta

He calculates that during the 1,868 festivals involving bulls last year, more than 11,000 were tortured and killed. Aside from bullfighting, which still attracts large numbers of spectators, there are village festivals such as the toro enmaromado (roped bull), held to celebrate Corpus Christi in Benavente, Zamora, central Spain. Here, a bull has a rope tied to its horns while dozens of men chase and drag it to the abattoir. It has been declared an “event of regional tourist interest” by the regional government of Castile and León.Many other such fiestas enjoy legal protection.

In Dénia, Alicante, bulls are chased off a pier and then dragged out of the sea, and according to Rolland they often drown. In Villalpando, Zamora, a bull is pursued by cars. In Ohanes, Almería, the animal is tied up and forced to bow down eight times before the statue of a saint.



I never once saw anyone object. Everyone goes, they take their children. These cruel events have the church’s blessing Miguel Ángel Rolland

Three years ago, Catalonia banned bullfighting but the correbous, in which bulls are chased down the street, often with flaming brands fixed to their horns, remain popular and legal in the southern part of the region.



“The really sad thing is I never once saw anyone object,” says Rolland, who filmed his documentary, Santa Fiesta, almost entirely in secret and was occasionally run out of town when he was caught. “Everyone goes, they take their children. These cruel events have the church’s blessing. In the Canaries at election time candidates will campaign by offering to supply more bulls for the fiesta.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest During the festival to honour Saint James in El Carpio de Tajo, riders perform a variety of the races called ‘running the goose’ where they must behead dead geese hanging and tied up in the main square. Kike Carbajal/Santa Fiesta Photograph: Kike Carbajal/Santa Fiesta

The majority of these festivals are held in Andalusiaand Castile and León, but there is no region in Spain where they don’t exist.



“We are a violent nation,” he says, adding that “my father is a big bullfight aficionado. He used to take us to the fiestas until I was old enough to say no.”

The police often make themselves scarce during the festivals as some are now illegal. In 2002 the Andalusian government banned the fiesta in Cazalilla, in which a live turkey is thrown from the church tower. But the practice continues and each year the villagers club together to pay the €2,000 (£1,450) fine. “If they tried to stop the turkey throwing, people would riot,” says Juan Balbín Garrido, the mayor.

Rolland reflects: “In Spain about 200 animals are killed every day for entertainment. That’s eight terrible deaths every hour.”