The Criminal Court of the Circuit of Ubaté, a city in the Colombian Department of Cundinamarca, has suspended any bullfighting event in the city as requested by the civil organisation Coalition for Colombia Without Bullfighting, and Senators Esmeralda Hernández and Fabián Díaz Plata. The judges have prevented any bullfighting event from taking place in the jurisdiction of the municipality, especially those scheduled for 6th and 15th August 2022.
This judgement is based on failing to fulfill the conditions imposed by the Honorable Constitutional Court of Colombia in its 2010 judgment C-666 regarding bullfighting events. In particular, the following conditions: “2) they may only be undertaken in those municipalities or districts in which they are a manifestation of a regular, periodic and uninterrupted tradition and that therefore their realisation responds to a certain periodicity” and “3) that they can only be undertaken on those occasions in which they have usually been carried out in the respective municipalities or districts in which they are authorized.” As the events planned for this municipality were not part of an uninterrupted tradition, the judge considered them unlawful.
After the Constitutional Court established the conditions when bullfighting can still happen, there have been calls for a national ban. On 26th April 2022, the House of Representatives of Colombia passed a bill to ban any type of bullfighting in the country. However, this bill still needed to be passed by the Senate of the Republic, but time has now run out due to the national elections. The good news is that President Gustavo Petro won the elections, and he is known for his opposition to bullfighting. Therefore, we expect that another bill to ban bullfighting may be presented in the future, and in the meantime judgements like this one in Ubaté can stop bullfighting from spreading.
