Simon Hunter
A FEMALE bullfighting protester was dragged out of the ring during a demonstration on Tuesday by a man who is standing to be a local councillor for the conservative Popular Party (PP) at the upcoming local elections on May 28.
The incident, which was caught on camera, took place in the municipality of Anchuelo, located in the east of the Madrid region, when the female protestor and her male companion jumped into the ring to stage a protest against the cruelty of bullfighting.
The man was the Dutch activist Peter Janssen, the founder of the Vegan Strike Group, and a veteran of these kinds of protests against bullfights according to Spanish online daily El Español. The woman was a Belgian woman named only as Christina.
The pair entered the bullring after the animal had been vanquished, ‘just after the bull was murdered by stabbing to the sound of applause from the crowd’, as Janssen wrote on his Instagram account.
It was then that they were set upon by others in the ring, receiving blows and being dragged along the ground. The crowd, meanwhile, shouted insults at them and told them to ‘get out’.
Among those involved was Rodrigo Peñalver Montero, who will be running as the second candidate on the PP’s list in the Madrid municipality of Los Santos de la Humosa at the May 28 local elections.
Janssen, meanwhile, told El Español that he would be filing a police complaint against the alleged assailants.
‘The ring was full of civil guards, but the gang got there first and acted very violently,’ Janssen told the newspaper.
Janssen has jumped into bullrings to protest a total of 67 times and said that the demonstration this week was ‘the first of the season’.
Read more:
- Bull breaks legs, is put down at fiesta in Spain’s Valencia region after jumping over wall
- Spain moves closer to ban on ‘dwarf bullfights’ as law approved by Senate
- Police open probe in northern Spain after dogs left to die in hot car
