The Spanish state broadcaster has said it doesn’t see any problems with broadcasting live bullfights on national TV during daylight hours, and that its fine with small children watching them.
“The showing of Bullfighting does not affect children” said RTVE.
“It is a cultural spectacle which should be treated normally within our programming guidelines” continued the broadcaster when a Parliamentary select committee asked it if was appropriate to show the violent injury and death of animals (and sometimes humans) on live TV after the cartoons.
The state broadcaster was officially asked to respond to a university study that said bullfighting should be moved after the watershed.
Izquierda Plural MP Chesús Yuste tabled a series of questions based on the latest research, after consultations with animal protection agencies and children TV experts.
RTVE banned bullfighting from the schedules during most of the socialist reign of the late 2000’s, but it returned to TV when Rajoy gained power in 2012.
RTVE justified this by pointing out that last Sunday’s bullfight on TVE2 had an audience of 1.064.000 people, proving it had a viable audience.
Yuste, when asked to comment, said to reporters that RTVE had an old mentality that is completely out of touch with the reality of modern day life, and the animal right abuse had no place in a civilised society.
A recent combined study by the Complutense University in Madrid and Swansea University showed that 52% of under 10’s who watched a bullfight were scared afterwards and disliked the experience, against 36.8% who said it didn’t bother them, and 10.4% who said they liked it.