Warning: Distressing Content
Distressing footage has emerged showing a bull collapsing in the street during a Spanish bull-running event, which has renewed calls for an end to bull-running.
The horrific clip was recorded in the town of Vila-Real at the ‘Bou Al Carrer event’ event, and shows the bull staggering along the street before it collapses and repeatedly hits it’s head on the ground.
The bull is surrounded by onlookers who stop to watch the bull, as it struggles and fails to stand, for some time before two people drag the bull to its feet.
Enrique Zalvidar, president of the Association of Vets for the Abolition of Bullfighting and Animal Mistreatment, said:
They are unpleasant images that possibly indicate an injury to the animal’s central nervous system.
The bull is suffering from motor-discoordination that makes it fall repeatedly. It could have suffered skull trauma by hitting its head against an obstacle.
Another less plausible hypothesis is that the symptoms of neurological alteration could be due to a doping overdose, a normal practice in bull runs, to weaken the bull.
After the video surfaced online, commenters were quick to condemn the practice, with one calling those who enjoy the festival a ‘brainless bunch’.
Another said those taking part in the festival are ‘worse than animals’, as ‘even animals have feeling and sensitivity’.
A Spanish animal rights group, Bullfighting Is Violence (ETV) is planning a demonstration in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square on May 27 to protest violence against animals in Spain.
According to the group, it’s estimated around 20,000 bulls are killed every year as a result of bullfighting and bull runs.
It’s currently not clear whether the bull in the video was killed during the festival.
Just last month, a man was gored to death at another Spanish bull running festival.
The bull cornered a man who was involved in the running, and despite the efforts of people to distract the bull, the animal plunged its horns into his sides repeatedly.
The man was immediately transported to the Hospital Jerez de la Frontera with serious puncture wounds, but doctors were unable to save him and he was pronounced dead.
Another man was seriously injured during the bull run after being punctured numerous times in his upper body. He was rushed to a hospital in Cadiz where he spent time in a ‘safe but stable condition’.
In a similar event, this time last year in Peru, a man was seriously injured during a bull run after being gored so severely he almost lost his genitals.
According to Spanish legend, bull runs began in north-eastern Spain during the 14th century, when men who were transporting cattle to sell, would try and speed the bulls up by getting them rilled up so they would run to the market.
As the years went by, the running of the bulls became a competition where men would run in front of the bulls in an attempt to outpace them and successfully make it to their pens without being overtaken.
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