Just Don’t Book It – Travel Companies Refuse to Promote Bullfighting

Progress! Thomas Cook and Brittany Ferries have agreed to implement a formal policy against promoting bullfighting and the Running of the Bulls after receiving letters from PETA.

As we pointed out to the companies, following the bull run – during which many bulls and spectators have been injured – the animals are tormented and killed in cruel and archaic bullfights. This year, several people were seriously hurt in Pamplona and a 16-year-old boy was gored to death during a bull run in northern Spain.

Despite the blood and barbarism during the festival of San Fermín, some travel companies promote a visit to Pamplona as if it were just another holiday choice – failing to warn customers that they’ll be participating in a potentially life-threatening event and supporting one of the cruellest pastimes in the world. Many of the British tourists who go to Pamplona each year don’t know that every animal who tears through the streets in terror during the run will have his life ended in agony, stabbed with spears, spikes and daggers in front of a screaming crowd in the bullring, just hours later, as part of the same “festival”. But these tourists are still paying to prop up this sadistic industry.

Thomas Cook and Brittany Ferries are setting a great example by refusing to support cruel bullfighting in their brochures and advertising. After all, bullfighting is completely out of tune with the values of modern Spain. Seventy-six per cent of Spanish people want nothing to do with this barbaric inheritance.

If you spot any travel companies promoting bullfighting or Pamplona as a holiday destination, please send us an e-mail and let us know so that we can write to the company asking that it do the right thing, too.

We’re also campaigning to ask the Spanish government to oppose a measure that would protect bullfighting as a cultural pastime. There’s still time to add your name to the movement. Take action here: http://petauk.org/lovespainhatebullfights

Image: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals