It hosts basketball games and the occasional concert. But this week the spaceship-like bullring in the Spanish city of San Sebastián is gearing up for its most controversial event in years: the return of bullfighting to the city after a three-year hiatus stemming from a ban.



“It’s going to be a very emotional and special day,” said bullfighting promoter Pablo Chopera of Thursday’s bullfight. The reversal of the ban was one of the first actions taken by the newly elected coalition of the Basque Nationalist party and the Socialists.

San Sebastián is an exception to a trend sweeping Spain: after May’s municipal elections sent an injection of socialists and leftists into city councils, dozens of municipalities across the country have been considering bans on bullfighting or setting limits on public funding for the tradition.

Bullfighters entering the San Sebastián arena in August 2012, before the ban was imposed.

Photograph: Javier Etxezzarreta/EPA

The hostility has turned the event in San Sebastián into a victory of sorts for aficionados. “We want to show the world that, despite these arbitrary measures, a place as important as the plaza of San Sebastián has once again been opened for bullfighting,” Chopera told Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

State broadcaster TVE, often accused of being a mouthpiece for the conservative People’s party, will broadcast the return of bullfighting to the city while Juan Carlos, the former king, is reportedly one of the many expected to attend the event.

Capitalising on the momentum, bullfighter Sebastián Castella this week urged fans to go one step further. “Let’s come out of the closet and fill bullrings,” he wrote in a letter published in El Mundo. “Let’s take to the streets – they’re as much ours as the protesters’.”

And he pointed to the stigma nowadays attached to being a bullfighter. “We’re tired of being treated like political tools and having our image vilified day after day in the media.”

Those working in the industry, he said, had become second-class citizens, their rights to freedom of expression and artistic creation curtailed by protestors. “Our right to honour is violated every day as we’re accused of being murderers. We’re deprived of our right to work when they close bullrings on the whims of those who, in the name of progress, take away people’s freedom and that of millions of aficionados,” he said, alluding to the newly elected city councils who have spoken out against bullfighting in recent months.

Matador Sebastián Castella, bottom left, holds up two bull ears in the Algeciras bullring in southern Spain. Photograph: Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images

In Madrid, mayor Manuela Carmena has vowed that “not one euro of public money” will be spent on bullfights, as has Valencia mayor Joan Ribó. The new mayor of A Coruña, Xulio Ferreiro, said that the city would revoke permits for a planned bullfighting festival in August, while Zaragoza’s city council, led by Pedro Santisteve, promised to end public funding for any local fiesta that mistreated animals. All four are newly elected mayors who lead citizens’ platforms with roots in the indignado movement.

Referendums on bullfighting and fiestas involving bulls are being considered by a handful of municipalities, including Dénia and Alicante, while Palma de Mallorca’s council voted last month to stop providing permits to bullfights on municipal land.

Pointing to the growing hostility against bullfighting, Castella urged supporters of bullfighting to speak out, however unpopular it might be. “Either we do away with the shame of speaking out or we’ll be done away with,” he said.

The bullfighter Francisco Rivera was seriously injured at the arena in Huesca this week.

Photograph: Splash News/Corbis

His call to action was directed at aficionados but also those who cherish freedom of expression, Castella said. “Let’s raise our voices and proudly declare that we want to exercise our right to attend a bullfight without being corralled by protestors at the door of the bullring. We want to be able to say that we like bullfights without being called murderers,” he said. “Because today it will be bullfights, tomorrow it will be any other artistic performance that doesn’t sit well with them.”

Castella and others working to promote bullfighting in Spain have a powerful ally: the governing conservative People’s party. In 2013, Spanish lawmakers voted to classify bullfighting as a special cultural interest. The bill has yet to become legislation, but if it does, it could pave the way for the industry to ignore municipal bans and appeal limits on public money for bullfighting.