page_title: Spanish-style bullfighting
section_title: Catholic excommunication
hierarchical_section_title: Spanish-style bullfighting / History / Catholic excommunication
context_page_description: Spanish-style bullfighting is a type of bullfighting that is practiced in Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru, as well as in parts of southern France and Portugal. This style of bullfighting involves a physical contest with humans attempting to publicly subdue, immobilize, or kill a bull. The most common bull used is the Spanish Fighting Bull, a type of cattle native to the Iberian Peninsula. This style of bullfighting is seen to be both a sport and performance art. The red colour of the cape is a matter of tradition – bulls are color blind. They attack moving objects; the brightly-colored cape is used to mask blood stains.
  In a traditional corrida, three toreros each fight against two out of a total of six fighting bulls to death, each bull being at least four years old and weighs up to about 600 kg. Bullfighting season in Spain runs from March to October. The practice is also known as a corrida de toros, tauromaquia, or fiesta. Since the late-1980s, bullfighting in Spain has declined in popularity due to animal welfare concerns, its association with blood sport, and its links to nationalism.
context_section_description: In the 16th century Pope Pius V banned bullfighting for its ties to paganism and for the danger it posed to the participants. Anyone who would sponsor, watch or participate in a bullfight was to be excommunicated by the Church. Spanish and Portuguese bullfighters kept the tradition alive covertly, and his successor, Pope Gregory XIII, took efforts to relax this penalty. Pope Gregory advised bullfighters to not use the sport as way to honor Jesus Christ or the Saints, as was typical in Spain and Portugal.
caption: Enrique Simonet's La suerte de varas (1899) depicts Spanish-style bullfighting in a bullring in Madrid, Spain. The painting illustrates the first-stage of this type of bullfighting.
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