The annual Rapa das bestas, or horse-wrestling festival, was held earlier this month in Galicia, Spain.
People gather all the untamed horses in a corral, where men and women of all ages wrestle them to the ground with their bare hands to cut their manes and tales out and brand them. This fiesta goes on for about three days starting the first Saturday of July.
See more pictures at Blame It On The Voices. Link -via J-Walk Blog
"There's no point of comparison.
This is done once a year. All in all the horses are "fought" for brief minutes and it has a PRACTICAL use: they're trimmed and marked, so it's easier to identify them in the wild. This actually helps vets and forest rangers to keep track of them and avoid/deal with possible illnesses, etc.
As a matter of fact, this becomes part of the life of these otherwise WILD FREE horses, which are not killed or mistreated at all. Vets and officials are present when all this happens.
Comparing this traditional "marking" with bullfights is just lame and totally stupid."
Somehow "fighting" them has some bearing on whether they can be trimmed and marked? /How/ exactly would that be related?
Having someone official present or saying "it's a part of life" means very little. Look at the damn photos - I don't think you have to experience it to tell that it does not look enjoyable for the horses.
Additionally, there is no reason that the hair should need to be cut from the horses. All the removal of the hair does is remove the horses' natural defenses from flying insects. You need only to look at the photos on the site to see how horrific the process is.
Spain seems to love their festivals of animals in "uncomfortable" situations.
Fuck Spain
I would like to put two horses on one person and see them get a kick out of the wrestling then.
Pointless, ridiculous and morronic.
Who cares if its tradition. Its pathetic.
I would personally like to punch each man and woman who takes part in the face.
They need to talk privately about it with someone.
At least we here in Oz keep our abattoirs, chicken gitmo's, pig pen's, roo cull's etc out of the public eye.
I'm a spanish guy.
I don't like these kinds of festivals either. But some people like it, and it's a very old tradition. That's not justifying the action, I'm just saying that a long time ago all the civilizations did these kinds of things or even worse ones. Some people are fighting to eliminate these things in our country.
But at least I don't have the hypocrisy to judge a whole country for just a few topics about animals, when your country is killing human beings for everywhere in the planet.
Who is the one that have a cruelty problem? the one that is killing his own specie or the one that is mistreating animals?
And don't make me talk about the violence in your streets, schools, movies and society in general...
Please stop seeing problems or criticizing other countries, and look at your own country before do it.
There's nothing wrong in the Spanish society if we compare it with your society Louisa, and Spanish people (most of them) don't love torturing animals Nonefdgdf. Stop stupid topics about this, and look the real problems!
Hypocrisy makes me feel sick...
If you go to one of those hated traditional animal spectacles (like bullfighting, sanfermines, etc) you would get surprised the incredible amount of tourist you find there, most of them americans.
Bullfighting is an issue in our country and there are lot of people fighting to ban it, probably more people than people who enjoy watching it.
Don't judge a country from what the small country areas do as traditions.
The pictures are really funny although.
The whole world, not just Spain, needs to catch up to the new age. Let's try to leave the beasts alone as much as we can; that is really how we can make their lives better.