Tordesillas fiesta takes place for yet another year

Tordesillas fiesta takes place for yet another year
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By h.b. - Sep 14, 2010 - 6:40 PM
The event in a village of Valladolid attracts the protests of an ever-larger number of animal activists each year

The moment of death for 'Platanito' - Photo EFE

The town of Tordesillas, Valladolid, has, as it does each year, held its fiesta Toro Alanceado.

Each year there are demonstrations by animal activists against the fiesta and this year was no exception, with some top Spanish actors adding their names to the protests.

The tradition dates back to the 14th Century and consists of a bull being chased on horseback by some several hundred riders, and then it is lanced to death in an area of land next to the Duero river some 2kms from the town. Some years the death can take some considerable time.

This year the person who had the chance to kill the bull, local man Marcos Rodríguez San José, was soon, in some five minutes, proudly displaying the tail as a trophy of his kill, a 580 kilo bull named ‘Platanito’. The tail is presented to the village patrona, the Virgen de la Peña.

The Mayor of the village, María del Milagro Zarzuelo (P.P.), said that some 35,000 people had attended the fiesta this year which she said was ‘clean and normal’, and had taken place ‘without incident’.

Animal defence group, El Refugio, had 300 activists in the town to protest last Sunday. Their president, Nacho Paunero, has written to the Prime Minister calling on him to make sure that the law Zapatero had promised to draw up this legislature will ban ‘such cruel spectacles’, as that of the Toro de Tordesillas.

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