The simple fact is that in Spain, the whole concept of animal rights has yet to make much of an impact on a society that still popularly recognises bull-fighting as its national fiesta or sport. A generation of younger Spaniards, more naturally exposed to wider, “European” values, may incline to a changing notion of animal rights, but for the moment the views of their parents’ generation holds sway.

The goriness of some of the details of that national sport is already well-known. But let’s just re-cap the fate of the 30,000 or so bulls that die each year in the name of Spanish sport: before even entering the arena, the bull has been locked up in the “toril” – a terrifying dungeon, where the animal has already been subject to a number of brutalities: it has been beaten and battered, crushed for the night under the weight of numerous sand-bags, its horns have been painfully lopped and shortened. At the end of this particular form of torture, its feet are washed with paint thinners to make the beast restless and its eyes are smeared with Vaseline in order to further impair what is already a very deficient eyesight. The bull is finally hit and jabbed with pinching instruments to make him enter the ring.

The animal can see only a wild swirl of bright colours and can hear only the roar of the crowd. Quite naturally, he tries to escape. But the “faenas” begin. These start with three “picas”. Each pica is a spear or lance ending in a piercing steel blade of 10 cm, followed by one or two disks. Usually the disk or disks of the picas enter the skin of the bull, opening a large gap of 40 cms in its hide. This can be enough to break the bull’s inner organs, causing internal haemorrhage. The bleeding is such that quite often blood pours out not only through the wounds but also through the animal’s mouth.

Then come the darts, also made of piercing, cutting steel. Some darts end in an 80 mm blade (these are called `punishment darts’, to thrown into the animal if it has been able to avoid one of the three picas); the other darts are a little shorter. The blades of the darts (“bandelillas”) are steel harpoons which cause a harrowing pain to the bull with his every movement. The bull is subjected to being stabbed with darts many times until he is sufficiently weakened. He is already dying when at last he is pierced with the sword. The sword may fail to dispatch him, and the “puntilleros” butcher him with a stab (“puntilla”), in a prolonged series of attempts. Sometimes, when the bull has learnt to escape from the picas, he is pushed to a hidden backyard (the “chiqueros”) where it is ruthlessly stabbed, pricked, bled and tortured. When exceptionally some bulls have been reprieved on account of their astonishing courage, their lungs have been found to be destroyed by the picador’s lance and they have been slaughtered a few hours later.

According to the opponents of this macabre sport, the “taurino” industry is a powerful business, with close links to the Spanish throne, commerce and banking, members of parliament, the highest echelons of the army, the police and the judiciary. “Los taurinos” comprise the most powerful lobby in Spain and even includes remnants of fascist bands that once supported General Franco.

Opponents argue that Spain has consistently vetoed EU legislation banning cruelty against animals specifically to protect the bull-fighting business. Furthermore, they maintain that the industry is subsidized not just by the Spanish government, but also by the EU in the form of subventions purportedly for cattle-raising.

Opponents admit that very little protest against the sport is raised in Spain itself. Their answer for this lies in the consequences likely to befall those who do speak out. Those who do speak out have claimed that they have received death threats, lost their jobs, been harassed, brow-beaten and bullied, being branded “cowards”, “bad Spaniards”, “effeminate weaklings” and so on.

There is certainly something in the present culture that, far from recognising any concept of animal rights, appears to revel in what other parts of Europe would regard as callous and cruel. Only a few years ago, for example, howls of protest went up from foreign animal rights campaigners when publicity was given to what they said was a widespread practice of killing hunting dogs.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) reported that tens of thousands of Spanish hunting dogs – known as “galgos” – are hanged every year at the end of the hunting season. The WSPA claimed to have discovered dogs with nooses around their necks dumped in shallow graves or their corpses left hanging from trees.

The practice was known as the “piano player” because dogs that did badly in the hunting season were hanged by a noose just short of the ground and the dogs would frantically scrabble their legs in an effort to reach the ground. Dogs which had hunted well were given a faster death by being hanged further up in the trees, higher from the ground.