In October 1940, Francisco Franco invited Heinrich Himmler to a bullfight at Las Ventas bullring in Madrid. It was reported that Himmler, an animal lover and architect of the Nazis’ “final solution”, was so appalled at the cruelty of the spectacle that he almost fainted.
Bullfighting then was in its heyday but now, as it slides into an apparently unstoppable decline, the question is what to do with Spain’s estimated 1,700 bullrings, most of which are in city centres.
