With the news last week that the Spanish city of Pamplona in Navarra has been forced to cancel its bull running fiesta for the second year running due to the Covid crisis, animal rights activists have seized on the opportunity to call for it to be banned permanently.
Cape and sword in hand, bullfighter Javier Conde has started training again despite the ongoing closure of Spain's bullrings over the coronavirus epidemic and with no opening date in sight.
Spain's majestic 'toros' draw thousands to the bullrings every year, but the country's Covid-19 lockdown has wrecked the 2020 bullfighting season and condemned many of the animals to the abattoir.
It may seem like a less dangerous pursuit than being chased through narrow cobbled streets by a pack of half-tonne angry bulls, but Spain's 'boloencierro' run has once again claimed a victim and the irony of the situation has not been lost on anyone.
Thousands of revellers raised candles and red scarves in the air and swayed back and forth as they sang a mournful song to mark the end on Sunday of Spain's most famous bull running festival in Pamplona which saw eight daredevils gored this year.
It may have seemed like a less dangerous pursuit than being chased through narrow cobbled streets by a pack of half-tonne angry bulls, but the humane alternative to running with the bulls staged by one Madrid town this weekend, claimed its fair share of casualties.
Animal rights activists secretly filmed celebrations in the town of Medinaceli on Saturday, when a bull was caked in mud and had balls of fire attached to its horns.
When two headless bison were discovered at a nature reserve in eastern Spain wildlife police launched a search for trophy hunters who they believed had poisoned the animals to death before removing their heads.
Guard dogs were not proving enough of a deterrent to thieves at a car breakers yard in eastern Spain so the owner has brought in a pair of fighting bulls.
Spectators were stunned when the two animals, each weighing around half a tonne dropped to the ground dead after charging headfirst into each other ahead of a bullfight.
A seven-year-old girl was fighting for her life in a hospital in Zaragoza after being seriously gored when a bull broke through a protective barrier at a festival in Spain.
Half-tonne fighting bulls gored two Spanish men on Sunday as thousands of red-scarved daredevils sprinted down narrow dew-slicked streets in Pamplona's annual running of the bulls.
Juan Carlos Otero died in hospital on Saturday after being gored twice by a bull during a fiesta in La Parrilla, a town near Valladollid in northern Spain.
A DNA test has proved that bullfighter Manuel Benitez "El Cordobes" did father another matador who long claimed to be his son, the younger man's lawyer said Thursday.
