Dalai Lama supports ban on bullfighting in Spain

BARCELONA - The Dalai Lama has given his backing to a planned bullfighting ban in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia, the animal rights association ADDA said Friday.

There was “considerable evidence” that bullfights were “a cruel practice which publicly inflicts atrocious pain to innocent and sentient animals,” the Dalai Lama said in a letter quoted by ADDA.

Tibet’s spiritual leader urged Catalan regional legislators to support a bullfighting ban which has already won preliminary acceptance by the regional parliament.

The ban would make Catalonia, a region of about seven million residents, the first on the Spanish mainland to outlaw bullfights. The Canary Islands prohibited the practice in 1991.

Few bullfights take place in modern Catalonia, since dozens of municipalities have declared their opposition to the spectacle.