Since 2010 the Constitutional Court has said that bullfights or shows with animals they could not be sanctioned because they are considered a tradition in certain regions of the country.
In that ruling, the Court set the precedent, saying that “activities of entertainment and cultural expression with animals” should continue without penalty as long as the animals received “special protection against suffering and pain during the course of those activities.” .
However, he said that there was a legal vacuum because there was no law regulating these activities for animal protection.
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“Exists (…) a normative deficit of the duty of animal protection, because the legislator disproportionately privileges cultural manifestationss such as bullfights, corralejas, calves, heifers, bullfighting, tentas and cockfights, which involve a clear and forceful animal abuse, ”says that sentence.
In 2017, the Court prohibited bullfighting as it was considered animal abuse, but that sentence was overturned in 2018 for having ignored the precedent of 2010 and another of 2012.
“In this case, the formal res judicata is violated (…) it is about the exceptions to the sanctions – misdemeanor and criminal – that derive from animal abuse and that have some cultural content such as bullfighting, coleus, bullfighting, heifers , corralejas, calves and tentas, as well as cockfights and the procedures used in these shows, ”said the Court in 2018.
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We must take into account another sentence from 2012 in which the Court maintains these shows by cultural traditionbut warns thatthe legislator (Congress) is the only one who has the power to set the conditions for the exercise of public spectacles, among them the bullfighting activity”.
Thus, the Court has said that Congress is responsible for “modifying the proper relationship between the safeguarding and conservation of culture and the protection of the environment” and that it is only Congress that would have the power to prohibit the “carrying out of shows typical of cultural tradition, which involve mistreatment with animals.”
That debate returned to the public agenda after the tragedy in El Espinal in which four people died, including a baby and more than 300 were injured after the infrastructure built with guadua for the corralejas collapsed for the San Pedro festivities.
