Residents in Seville, Spain, finished this week celebrating the Feria de Abril, a weeklong cultural festival that began as a cattle exposition in the 19th century. The contemporary event is a block party leading up to a meeting of matadors and cattle breeders at the city’s 250-some-year-old bull ring.
But Spain’s bullfighting season, which begins in earnest after the Feria, is off to a controversial start. A famous matador’s artistic flourish cast an international shadow over the activity insiders consider more ritual than sport, and has further divided Spaniards over bullfighting’s place in society.
After matador Morante de la Puebla struck the final fatal blow to a bull last Friday, he produced a handkerchief from his ornate outfit and dabbed blood from around the animal’s eyes and nose.
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The move outraged animal welfare activists who saw the act as mocking an already conquered beast. Silvia Barquero, leader of animal rights party PACMA, called Morante ‘‘twisted and perverse’’ in a tweet, said he showed an ‘‘eerie lack of empathy’’ and called for the abolition of bullfighting.
But the move delighted bullfighting aficionados who considered it an act of utmost artistic expression.
Spanish newspapers cover bullfighting in arts and culture sections and assign critics to review prominent matadors. Madrid newspaper La Informacion wrote that Morante “dazzled the public” with the handkerchief. Online bullfighting magazine Es De Toros said it was a highlight of the festival.
Antonio Lorca, the renowned critic from El Pais newspaper, wrote ‘‘an anti-bullfighting activist can think that a bullfighter is a torturer for the death of a bull, but not because he pulls a handkerchief and wipes the animal’s forehead.”
He lauded Morante’s handkerchief move as an allusion to late bullfighting legends Joselito el Gallo and Curro Cuchares, who is buried in Seville. Both employed the practice of wiping a bull’s face before its demise in their fights.
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The incident has exposed the deep divisions in Spanish society over bullfighting’s place. A poll conducted by El Pais in 2010 found 60 percent of Spaniards did not enjoy bullfighting, but nearly the same proportion, 57 percent, opposed banning the activity.