For the first time, bullfighting, as well as other subjects related to the spectacle, will be available for students aged 16 and older who move into vocational training after finishing their compulsory education.
The move appears to represent a final attempt to defend the activity by Spain’s conservative government before elections in December.
Students who complete the course will receive a professional training certificate in “Tauromachy – bullfighting – and Auxiliary Livestock Activities” after they have learned the skills of bullfighting, the regulations applied to the event and the rules on breeding Spain’s fighting bulls.
The full-time, two-year courses will be offered at a number of high schools around the country.
Two regions run by Left-wing coalitions, Valencia and the Balearic Islands, are considering possible bans on bullfighting. They would join Catalonia and the Canary Islands, where the practice is already outlawed.
But the education ministry’s draft proposals defend the decision to include bullfighting in the state educational system as a logical extension of the activity’s importance within Spanish society, denying any political dimension to the move.
“Tauromachy is an artistic practice which forms part of popular tradition and culture with no ideological links,” the text reads, continuing: “Bullfighting and bull-related festivals are subject to a constant evolution, making it impossible to guess in which way they will adapt to the changing sensitivities of our times and those to come”.
Pacma, Spain’s leading animal rights organisation, criticised the move, saying it “makes a joke of Spain’s educational system”.
Silvia Barquero, Pacma’s leader who will be running as a candidate in Spain’s December 20 general elections, said the government had seen the pressure build against bullfighting and decided “to rush through a change that means young people can study how to torture an animal to death”.
Aside from their demand for a complete ban on bullfighting, Pacma has campaigned for minors to be banned from bullrings to prevent them from witnessing what animal rights supporters say is a violent spectacle.
The inclusion of the course in the national curriculum could also throw a lifeline to Spain’s bullfighting schools, some of which are facing financial difficulties as Left-wing authorities remove subsidies from the sector.
Academic elements of the course would be studied in high school classrooms, but bullfighting skills would be imparted at existing specialised academies.
Madrid’s Marcial Lalanda bullfighting school, which last month saw its €61,200 (£45,000) annual subsidy withdrawn by Madrid’s Left-wing mayor, Manuela Carmena, could be among those to benefit.
1:27PM BST 18 Oct 2015
