Tourists' patronage is 'vital' to keep bullfighting alive in Barcelona - where animal rights campaigners aim to outlaw the spectacle by 2004. And anti-Spanish sentiment in the Catalan capital is fuelling the opposition to bullfighting, reports John Coogan from Barcelona.

Every Sunday during the summer, until the end of September, thousands of tourists pour off buses outside the Monumental bullring on Gran Vía in Barcelona. They will make up more than half of the attendance in the 18,000-capacity arena for this art, sport, cultural event or torture, depending on your perspective.

The tourists' patronage of this Spanish festivity is "vital" according to journalist Alvarez Taboada who reports on bullfighting for the Spanish daily newspaper El Mundo in Catalonia.

The tourist boom on the Costa Brava during the late 1960s brought visitors in large numbers, many eager to sample Spanish traditions. All along the coast, bullrings sprang up to cater for the foreigners who were arriving en masse, as well as for Catalan and other Spanish holidaymakers who were taking time out from the major cities.

But most of the coastal bullrings are now either demolished or closed for business. It's become more lucrative to use the space for other tourist facilities, such as apartments and hotels. At the same time, anti-Spanish sentiment in Catalonia has bolstered opposition to bull-fighting.

A popular Catalan tourist town near Lloret on the Costa Brava, Tossa de Mar, declared itself the first anti-bullfighting town in Spain in 1988. Meanwhile, just down the coast, the bullring in Lloret has come under attack from all sides, some declaring it unsafe while hoteliers and residents appeal to the authorities to build a sports centre - others talk of a car park. And so the tourists board the coaches and head for the Monumental in Barcelona.

"Some of our clients inquire about bullfights out of curiosity more than anything else," says Virtudes Medel, of Salou Tours in Tarragona. "Most of them just go to experience a bullfight but there are a few who come prepared - they seem to know something about it."

Angelo Danofrio of Tropical Tours in Calella explains that the bullfighting in Barcelona is simply part of a planned day trip: "They go to the Sagrada Familia, the Rambla, the bullfight and they finish up at the Magic Fountain in Montjuïc".

Medel and Danofrio agree, however, that many tourists come out of the bullfight feeling repulsed at the blood and the constant wearing down of the bull.

"Curiosity killed the bull" is the slogan that Manuel Cases at the Association for the Defence of Animal Rights (ADDA as it is known in Spanish) drives home when he talks about ADDA´s campaign against bullfighting in Barcelona. Cases, a well-informed, anti-bullfighting lobbyist, asks: "How can a country in the EU in the year 2002 allow such an activity to go on?"

A recent survey commissioned by ADDA concludes that 58.6 per cent of Catalans would support a law outlawing bullfights and corre-bous (local festivals in southern Catalonia involving the running of bulls down streets, some with their horns alight). A survey carried out by the regional government in 1989 threw up similar results - the figure was slightly less, at 53.5 per cent.

How is it then that bullfights continue in Catalonia? Antoni González, one of Catalonia's foremost bullfighting experts, writes in La Vanguardia and has published a book which explores this subject.

"The bullfight existed in Catalonia before the popular national dance, the sardana, came about," he points out. "There is an anti-bullfighting sentiment in all parts of Spain but in Catalonia the bulls have been linked to the idea of Spain which is different from the idea of Catalonia." He says the nationalistic sentiment in Catalonia has been pushing this idea for the past 25 years, "and people have begun to believe it". It wasn't always this way in Barcelona, which has a rich tradition of bullfighting. At the start of the 20th century, it was the only city in the world to have three bullrings open for business.

"In the 1950s and 1960s there were sometimes three bullfights in one day - morning, afternoon and evening," Taboada from El Mundo recalls. "In the late 1960s, the bullfighter José Fuentes was carried by the crowd out of the Monumental, down to Columbus statue, and then up the Ramblas to the Hotel Presidente on the Diagonal [a distance of at least three kilometres]- that will give you an idea of the following bullfighting had at that time."

Taboada laments the decline of bullfighting: "The enemy is within; there's a small group making lots of money and killing the fight. The anti-bullfight campaigners shouldn't get worked up - it'll all end up as a kind of folklore show for the tourists. The fight is in a state of decay."

Juan Segura Palomares, president of the Federación Taurina, the organisation that oversees the clubs dedicated to following the bulls, will soon publish a book which challenges what he sees as concerted political pressure against bullfighting in Catalonia.

"There are some 30 clubs all around Catalonia. The oldest club in Barcelona, which has its home in the Bar de Los Toreros in Carrer Xuclà, originally followed the bullfighters of the early 20th century - El Gallito and Belmonte." Nowadays, there are Taurine clubs that meet regularly to debate and watch the bullfights on TV when they are not in Barcelona.

While the love of bullfighting is still strong in some circles it is a mere shadow of what it was. José Luis Gomez in the bullfighting museum has no doubt about what happened. He points to a car parked beside the abattoir in the bullring: "That's what killed the bullfight," he says. "Everyone likes to get out of the city with the family - the Seat 600 - that was the start of it."

This small, affordable, Spanish-made car changed far more than attendance at the bullfights. It had a profound effect on Spanish society in the late 1950s and early 1960s, giving people a mobility they had not previously had.

The debate is interminable, occasionally rising the ire of both sides. The animal rights activists daub the word "murderers" on the bullring walls and the lovers of bullfighting doubt the make-up of the anti-bullfighting groups, questioning whether they are full of foreigners who make no effort to understand the tradition behind the event. These are, however, the extremes in either camp - the majority fight their corner with reasoned debate.

In 2004, Barcelona will host the International Forum of Cultures, in partnership with UNESCO. ADDA believes that it is contradictory to celebrate such an event in a city that still hosts bullfighting. For this reason, it has chosen 2004 as the year when it aims to have Barcelona declared the first anti-bullfighting city in Spain.

And on the debate goes.

The real question is not whether the bullfight inflicts pain on the bull; of that there is little doubt. It is rather whether the people who are against bullfighting have the right to prevent those who enjoy it from watching it.

Let the debate roar on - but on your next holiday in Spain, keep in mind that slogan: "Curiosity killed the bull".

Association for the Defence of Animal Rights website: www.addaong.org