Lawyer Joaquín Moeckel on the People's Initiative against bullfighting, presented last Monday in Congress: 'This proposal did not come from the people, but is driven by political interests. They have not managed to gather anywhere near the number of people who come to the Las Ventas arena every season'.
Last Monday, an anti-bullfighting committee called "It's not my culture" handed 715,606 signatures in the form of a Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) to the Madrid electoral office to ask Congress to repeal the law declaring bullfighting a cultural heritage of Spain. A new attack by the anti-bullfighting lobby , which thrives on it and is on 24-hour vigil to attack bullfighting in every possible way. After this incident, Mundotoro wanted to know from Joaquín Moeckel, a lawyer in Seville, the details of the jurisdiction of this case.
"First of all, people should know that in criminal, fiscal or constitutional matters there can be no popular legislative initiative . Yes, in other ways, such as the initiative of a sovereign people, but in this case the people promoting this are motivated by political interests, not by the people. This is the platform shown by Podemos and Sumari , it is not born of the people, so it is not direct democracy, but democracy driven by political interests , the lawyer says.
With this ILP, the participants aim to allow autonomous communities to ban bullfighting events after they are no longer protected by the Constitution, which currently includes bullfighting as a cultural heritage . This proposal must be approved in the debate in the Assembly , which essentially depends on the party currently in power, the Socialist Party, as the lawyer Joaquín Moeckel asserts : "the future of the IP is in the hands of the PSOE ".
We asked Moeckel about the possible defence that the bullfighting sector could make against this attack. "The answer must be to fill the arenas. We must make it clear that it is not about bulls but about freedom. This ILP is attacking freedom, and freedom belongs to everyone. We must fill the arenas. They (the promoters of the People's Initiative) have not managed to gather anywhere near the number of people who come to Las Ventas every season (nearly a million).
The Popular Legislative Initiative unveiled last Monday remains a threat to bullfighting. In these years when the party has been under so much attack, no scenario should be ruled out. Worst of all would be the repeal of the law recognising bullfighting as a cultural heritage. "Even if this happened, in these times when people read so little, we should remember the phrase that neither popes nor kings stopped bullfighting. "Bullfighting is life itself, the real spectacle," concludes the Sevillian lawyer.
