King Felipe’s Birthday Is a Faecal Fête: PETA Gives Monarch Poop Over ‘Bullsh*t’ Support for Bullfights
King Felipe’s Birthday Is a Faecal Fête: PETA Gives Monarch Poop Over ‘Bullsh*t’ Support for Bullfights
Madrid – Today, as King Felipe VI – whose continued attendance at bullfights has sparked intense backlash – celebrates his 56th birthday, PETA marked the occasion by raising a stink over the monarch’s support of the vicious blood sport. The group sent him a beautiful gift-wrapped box filled with a steaming pile of bull poop, complete with a card reading, “Your support of the bullfighting industry is bullsh*t.
Every year, thousands of bulls are tormented and slaughtered at fights and festivals in Spain’s bullrings. They are repeatedly speared and stabbed until – incapacitated by their painful injuries and exhausted from blood loss – they are killed by a sword to the heart or a knife to the spine. Matadors may even cut off bulls’ ears or tails as trophies, sometimes while the animal is still conscious.
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“As King Felipe celebrates his birthday, he’ll be reminded that he also celebrates the death of tormented bulls who were driven to exhaustion, speared, stabbed, and slaughtered in front of bloodthirsty crowds,” says PETA Vice President of UK and Europe Mimi Bekhechi. “PETA and millions of compassionate people in Spain are urging the king to end his support for these cruel displays.”
International condemnation of bullfighting has continued to grow, and Spaniards are overwhelmingly opposed to the events – 93% of young people say they don’t support the cruel spectacles. Spanish animal protection groups recently launched a major political initiative to remove bullfighting’s “cultural heritage” designation to allow Spanish towns and regions to ban these cruel spectacles. Nearly 90,000 PETA supporters have urged Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sánchez to act.
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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