How killing bull named Nigerian got 133-yr-old bullfighting festival  banned

The northern Spanish city of Gijón on Thursday called off its 133-year-old bullfighting festival.

The cancellation followed a misunderstanding between authorities and bull breeders over naming.

Two bulls named Nigerian and Feminist were killed by matadors this week, and the city authorities considered the message unwelcome.

Mayor Ana González said the festival is over.

“They have crossed various lines … a city that believes in equality between men and women,  that believes in integration, that believes in open doors for everyone cannot allow these sorts of things to happen,” the UK Guardian quoted the mayor as saying.

Citing growing opposition among city residents, the socialist party had decided at its most recent congress to do away with the 133-year-old Begoña bullfighting festival.

According to González, bullfighting was being “used to display an ideology contrary to human rights.”

But organisers of bullfighting said the controversy stemmed from a misunderstanding of how bulls are named.

The organisation in charge of 345 breeders of fighting bulls, Unión de Criadores de Toros de Lidia, linked the names to regulations set out by Spain’s ministry of agriculture.

In a statement, the organisation said that names were given for easy tracing of bulls, adding that the protocol sees bulls given the names of their mothers.

They explained in the statement that the bulls that were slain in the past weekend were “descended from the cows ‘Feminist’ and ‘Nigerian”.

If the proscription goes through, the city will record a loss of €50,000 (£43,000) in annual income, the mayor said.