CAMPAIGNERS are demanding the Junta de Andalucía halt a ‘comic bullfighting’ show featuring people with dwarfism, due to take place in a Malaga village this weekend.
The Franz Weber Foundation has filed a formal complaint against the event, scheduled for Saturday, October 10, in Arenas, Axarquía.
The show is part of the village’s 29th Feria de la Mula, a three-day fair celebrating the Axarquía’s mule-driving heritage.
It is due to take place at 5.30pm in a portable bullring at the fairground, after a release of young cows at midday.
Arenas mayor Manuel Ríos presented the fair programme, still including the show, on Monday, a week after the complaint was lodged.
The animal welfare charity says the show breaks two national laws designed to protect the dignity of people with disabilities and end public mockery of people with achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism.
It has urged the Junta, which licenses public shows in Andalucía, to use every legal tool available to stop it going ahead.
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The foundation also says it will take the case to Spain’s Ministry of Social Rights to scrutinise the town hall’s role and push for sanctions against the organisers.
Spain’s disability law has banned shows that use people with disabilities to provoke ‘ridicule, mockery or derision’ since 2023.
In February this year, the government went further, amending the bullfighting regulations so that authorities ‘cannot authorise’ comic bullfighting shows that subject people to mockery or public humiliation, particularly people with disabilities.
The change was brought in to close loopholes. In February 2025, a Malaga court had sided with the promoters of a ‘Toreo cómico’ show that the Junta had refused to authorise two years earlier because it featured people with dwarfism.
The judge found no evidence the show was intended to mock them.
The foundation described Arenas town hall’s involvement as ‘extremely serious’, claiming it had allowed tickets to be sold from council premises.
It says this amounts to openly backing an event that perpetuates discriminatory stereotypes.
Since 2022, disability groups have run a free programme, Pisadas con Dignidad (Steps with Dignity), to help people with achondroplasia find work outside the bullring.
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