At present the law sets 16 as the minimum age for participation in bullfights and leaves open the possibility of children under 16 participating in other spectacles involving bulls, so long as the child protection authorities are informed.
Three parties - the Left Bloc, The Greens and PAN, the Party for People Animals and Nature – have tabled bills that would raise the threshold to 18 for all such activities, and which now are to be debated in parliament.
In the PAN bill, it is stated that in any spectacle involving bulls “artists and their assistants must be aged 18 or over, independent of whether the activity is professional or amateur”.
Bullfights, it states, “constitute a violent spectacle and as such should be subject to the same age restrictions is other spectacles ... considered violent.”
It noted that minors are currently barred from seeing violent films at the cinema, but 12-year-olds are allowed to “be involved in the death of an animal” in the form of going to a bullfight.
The Left Bloc bill also foresees a minimum age of 18 for bullfighters and their assistants but fails to mention matadors.
In Portugal it has long been illegal to kill a bull in the ring, but the law allows for the accreditation as a “bandarilheiro” of matadors from abroad.
The leftist party argues this practice opens the way for the bull to be killed in rings in Portugal where it is a tradition despite the law.
The Greens’ bill is slightly different, proposing that bullfighters and their assistants must have completed 12 years of schooling.