Animal rights group Peta wants villages to follow example set by Mataelpino by using 100kg ball instead of bulls

It’s a tradition that plays out each year in towns and cities across Spain: The gates open, cowbells clang and thrillseekers ready themselves to run. But these days in Mataelpino, a small village 40 miles from Madrid, what’s likely to come out of the gates isn’t a half-tonne bull, but rather a 100kg polystyrene ball.

Four years ago the village began swapping bulls for balls in its annual fiesta, pitting daredevils against a giant ball – three metres in diameter – as it gains steam heading downhill towards the village bullring.

The campaign group the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) now wants to help other municipalities across Spain and Portugal make the same kind of change by offering to provide similar balls to any interested mayor.

Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. Photograph: Vincent West/Reuters

The running of the balls has earned Mataelpino media coverage across Spain, said Mimi Bekhechi of Peta, and even boosted the number of tourists visiting the village. “It’s obviously financially profitable for towns to do this.”

But while Peta promotes the ball run as an animal-friendly alternative, the switch was motivated by the economic crisis, said Mataelpino resident Russel Sanguino. Worried about how to fund the village’s annual fiesta during a time of cost-cutting, a group of residents started batting around alternatives one night in the bar. “We started thinking, why not have a giant ball?”

It’s been a huge success, he said, and has even been expanded to include a children’s run with smaller balls. “Next year we’re thinking of adding ramps,” he said.

The village’s financial woes have also been eased by the switch, as authorities are in talks with various companies interested in sponsoring the run in exchange for putting their logo on the ball.

Sanguino cautioned any daredevil who would write off the challenge posed by the ball. “It’s a strong wallop,” he said, noting that a few runners ended up in the hospital last year. “The ball is meant to mimic a bull.”

But for all the success of the ball run, the village has yet to completely do away with bull runs, said deputy mayor José Ángel Guerrero. “Sadly we continue to do runs with bulls,” he said, adding, “but there are far fewer than before.”

Echoing a divide that plays out across the country, the Mataelpino has an “ongoing dispute between those who want to have bull runs and bullfights and those who want the traditions to disappear for good.”

The town has so far sought to address the tension by holding both bull runs and ball runs, he said, noting “there are still residents who demand that we do things the traditional way”.