There were long queues on Monday when the ticket office at Palma's Coliseo Balear bullring opened for the sale of tickets for next month's bullfight.
The bullfight, scheduled for the ninth of August, would seem to have attracted a heightened level of interest than in the past, when there weren't queues for tickets. The event will mean a return for the August bullfight in Palma. It wasn't held last year because of Balearics legislation, the so-called "ley de toros". Much of this legislation was annulled by the Constitutional Court late last year.
Online bookings were available a week ago; the organisers said that these were "going well" and were predicting a record attendance.
Vicenç Vidal, until recently the Balearics environment minister and now a senator in Madrid, has registered a series of questions for the Senate to be directed at the Spanish government. Vidal is interested in knowing if the government intends eliminating the declaration regarding bullfighting. This was made when the Partido Popular were in government, and it gave bullfighting protected status as an item of cultural heritage. "If animal mistreatment is a crime, why should bulls be an exception?"
Vidal also wants to know why the government, which is now, albeit shakily, under PSOE, appears to oppose a regional parliament which decided to legislate democratically in line with "social reality", i.e. public opinion against bullfighting.
Palma town hall, which is opposed to the August bullfight, has now received the organisers' declaration of responsibility, the document needed in order to allow the event to go ahead.
