Spanish Festival Celebrates Slow, Painful Killing of Bull

Pursued across open countryside, jabbed at with spears and finally stabbed to death by a man wielding a lance, the bull called Enrejado died a long, frightening and sadistic death in front of an eager crowd at Tordesillas, northern Spain.

Pictures of the wounded, blood-drenched animal being stabbed were published on the front page of El País, Spain's biggest selling daily newspaper, as it denounced the primitive, medieval spectacle.

Enrejado, a wide-horned, shiny black animal weighing 520kg, took more than an hour to die during the annual Toro de la Vega festival. The regional government of Castilla y León, run by the conservative People's Party, have formally declared the festival to be "of interest to tourists".

Local people, however, shooed photographers and journalists away so they could not witness or capture the final moment of death - which the town hall later claimed had been completed with two deep thrusts of a lance.

The right to finish the animal off after an hour of it being pursued by men on horseback and on foot was won by a horse-riding farmer from Salamanca, José Angel Gonzaléz, for being the first to land a lance on the animal as it fled across country.

He was awarded the bull's tail as a trophy and ushered onto a balcony in the main square to be cheered by the crowd.

Mr Gonzaléz later declared he was honored to have been allowed to perform the killing and promised he would be back again next year.

The chase and killing of the bull at Tordesillas, a town of 8,400 people, is said to date back to the beginning of the 16th century.

"It has always been this way," one local woman told El País. "If it seems so brutal to people, then why don't they ban bullfighting completely?"

"Those who criticize it should come and watch," said the People's Party mayoress of Tordesillas, María del Milagro Zarzuelo.

That invitation, however, does not seem to be extended to journalists. "They allow the bull to be traversed by spears but do not want critics to cast their eyes on it," wrote El País journalist Carmen Mor´n.

"This event gives off a powerful odor of poorly-interpreted manliness," she added.