“There are four people dead at this time. Two women, an adult man and a minor,” José Ricardo Orozco, governor of the department of Tolima, where El Espinal is located, told Blu Radio.
“More or less there are about 30 seriously injured people (…) it is a preliminary report, they are still transferring injured people,” added the governor.
Images released on social networks show the moment when the grandstand filled with the public collapses during a “corraleja”, a kind of popular party in which the public goes down to the arena to face steers or small bulls.
| LAST MINUTE: A part of the El Espinal bullring collapses in Tolima, Colombia. At least two dead and hundreds injured. pic.twitter.com/Q5qMa5Mncq
— World Alert (@AIertaMundiaI) June 26, 2022
Another amateur video shows the public trying to escape from the debris of wood and tin while a bull continues to roam the arena.
“We are aware of how many people are under the rubble, we don’t know how many. As can be seen in the videos, almost the entire wing was full of people and it collapsed,” Major Luis Fernando Vélez, director of Tolima’s civil defense, told the same station.
The accident occurred in the Gilberto Charry Bullring during the holiday weekend in which the San Pedro festivities are celebrated, the most popular in the region.
“We will request an investigation of the facts (…) solidarity with the families of the victims,” the president, Iván Duque, said on Twitter.
#NOW | This was the moment when several makeshift boxes in a bullring collapsed in Tolima, Colombia. pic.twitter.com/lbfo4dYRZa
— World in Conflict
(@WorldEConflict) June 26, 2022
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Governor Orozco anticipated that he will request “the suspension of all these kinds of parties that are the corralejas”, alleging that the events “attempt against life” and encourage “animal abuse”.
The day before, several people suffered injuries due to cattle accidents in the “corralejas” of El Espinal, a town of some 78,000 inhabitants located 150 kilometers from Bogotá.
Another person died in mid-June from a goring during a “corraleja” in the municipality of Repelón (north).
The elected president, Gustavo Petro, joined the call of the local governor.
“I ask the mayors not to authorize more shows with the death of people or animals,” the leftist senator who will take office on August 7 wrote on Twitter.
“I hope that all the people affected by the collapse of the El Espinal bullring can come out of their wounds,” added Petro, who evoked the death of hundreds of people in the collapse of another bullring in the municipality of Sincelejo (north ) in 1980.
As mayor of Bogotá (2012-2015), the elected president stopped the bullfights in La Santamaría, the capital’s emblematic bullring.
Although Colombian justice punishes animal abuse, practices such as bullfights and cockfights are protected due to their cultural roots.
The entrance Four dead and dozens injured in the collapse of a bullring in Colombia was first published in diary TODAY.
