BARCELONA, Spain — The Constitutional Court of Spain overturned a ban against bullfighting on Thursday that had been approved by lawmakers in Catalonia six years ago, a decision that simultaneously outraged separatists in the region and animal activists.
The court voted 8-3 against the Catalan ban, finding that lawmakers from the region could not prohibit a practice that the justices said was enshrined in the cultural patrimony of the Spanish state.
In its ruling, the court said that regional politicians in Catalonia and elsewhere could regulate bullfighting and introduce specific measures, but that they could not ban it outright. The decision is not necessarily the final word, but any appeal against the constitutional court’s decision would also most likely have to be made before European courts.
Catalan politicians vowed on Thursday to never allow bullfights to return to Catalonia, without even mentioning a possible appeal.
The Catalan regional parliament voted in 2010 to ban bullfighting, on the grounds that it represented unjustified cruelty to animals.
The ban was welcomed by animal rights activists as their most significant victory in Spain, and they were outraged by the reversal on Thursday.
“Taunting and killing bulls for entertainment is a brutal anachronism that the Catalan parliament quite rightly voted to ban six years ago,” Joanna Swabe, the Humane Society International executive director for Europe, said in a statement, adding that overturning the ban was “morally retrograde.”
At the time the ban was approved, however, the issue had become wrapped up in the broader debate over Catalan independence, and bullfighting aficionados condemned it as politically motivated.
The vote in the Catalan parliament came only one month after the Constitutional Court struck down part of a Catalan autonomy statute that had been approved by the region’s 5.5 million voters, as well as the Spanish parliament.