Some animal lovers are really people haters

“E ‘ad it comin’, if you ask me,” said my neighbour on the Tube, peering over my shoulder at the Evening Standard’s photograph of a matador being shaken like a rag-doll.

The matador was Sébastien Castella of Béziers, the best bullfighter ever to have come out of France. The bull was of the handsome and aristocratic breed of Fuente Ymbro. And the plaza was Pamplona where, exactly a year ago, I was scarpering before bulls of the same lineage. Not that any of this interested the Standard, of course, which described Castella as a “Spanish bullfighter”. Nor did it interest my neighbour, who held forth at length about how pleasing it was when the man, rather than the bull, got skewered.

Not for the first time, I was struck by misanthropic nature of some of the people who purport to love animals. When I joined Spanish MEPs in sponsoring an exhibition about tauromachy last month, I was deluged by angry emails. A few of these of these came from sweet-sounding old ladies, and a few from high-minded vegans. But for every email about the suffering the of the bull, there were five along the lines of “I hope these so-called ‘brave’ toreadors will one day know what it’s like to have steel barbs stuck in their backs…”

Animals can be a handy cause for people seeking to justify their dislike of humans.

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Tagged as: Animal Cruelty, Animal Lovers, Animals, Bull Fighting, Bulls, Matadors, Pamplona, Sébastien Castella