The bullring of the sunny coastal Portuguese city of Albufeira, will no longer stage any bullfight. This bullring, created in 1982, has not staged any bullfight since the end of 2019. In 2021, Jorge Duarte, manager of Cordova – Tourism and Real Estate Investments in the Algarve, which acquired the complex in 2020, said the idea was to recover it making it an urban centre, but preserving the memory of the bullring in the city. At that time, the project comprised an urban complex with 40 apartments, a shopping centre, a nightclub, a bingo, and the bullring. However, the final project plan made public in July 2022, no longer includes the bullring. It is not known when the project will be finished.
There have been other cases in Portugal where former bullrings were set to be repurposed for other activities other than the torture of innocent animals. In June 2021, Zaratan, an art association based in Lisbon, planned to repurpose the Bullring of Azaruja, the oldest bullring in Portugal, but the project has not started yet. In 2020, the Chamber of Setúbal reported that the Carlos Relvas Bullring, closed since 2017, would become a new cultural space in this South Portugal city. Portugal is one of the nine countries that still has a bullfighting industry, but in some of the other, this type of progress has already been successful. In Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia where bullfighting was banned in 2010, one of the bullrings was completely transformed into a circular shopping centre. A few weeks ago, it was announced that the bullring of the city of Eibar, Basque Country, will be demolished to create a large park, as well as an area for recreation and sports. The bullring of the city of Duitama, the capital of the Tundama Province in the Boyacá department of Colombia, will now become a cultural and sports centre where no bullfights will take place.
