Correbous of yesterday, today and always
The other day I read that Arturo Vidal had a stable and that Antoine Griezmann had just opened another. I was struck by the fact that they both breed horses. But what caught my attention most was that it appeared in Sport, given all the pressure that animal rights activists exert on the media. It's probably gotten out of hand for them to be a sports newspaper, or perhaps footballers are still the gods of our times, and football is still above good and evil.
I grew up on a traditional bull ranch, that of the Margalef Brothers of Amposta. Suddenly, my grandfather would take me to feed a bull we had herded into the area, Estrellito. My father and I would go every summer afternoon to count the calves crossing the Encañizada bike path at sunset.
The fighting bull is a good manager of biodiversity in the Delta and Puertos Natural Parks. It enriches and regulates the ecosystem it inhabits while humans impoverish and ruin it. I can't fathom how they want to put an end to this breed's way of life in Terres de l'Ebre. How they're trying to make us feel bad for defending the customs and habits of the Delta people.
I don't understand how people talk about animal abuse when talking about bullfighting in Catalonia. I don't understand it because our neighbors in France, Aragon, and Valencia have a total of 36,000 fighting bulls and hold 20,000 shows.
In the Terres de l'Ebre Biosphere Reserve, the fighting bull has a stable population of 1,200 head thanks to non-bloody events. I don't think there should be too much debate in a country, Catalonia, where a poorly counted 300 head of L'Hostoles breed cows and 40 Pallaresa breed cows survive, a country where in 50 years we have gone from 200 herds of white Solivella goats to five today.
For me, talking about bulls means talking about freedom, about ecology, about the economy in rural areas, about identity. We bullfighting people are courageous, with a jewel in our hearts and a love for the land. We want to educate our children in the humanistic values that the world of bullfighting represents. We want the fighting cows to remain the heritage of the Delta.
Paco Palmer Margalef
Bravo rancher
