The subsidy argument

An interesting editorial appeared recently on mundotoro.com headed ‘The death of the abono and toreo’s economy’. It pointed out that, in the times when full plazas were commonplace, empresas relied on selling significant numbers of abonos to underpin the financing of their activities. The piece went on to say that, now that ‘no hay billetes’ afternoons are uncommon (and, I would add, tickets are easier to come by; now, it’s just a question of going online, rather than turning up and queuing outside the taquilla for a period of time), the public has got used to picking and choosing individual corridas to attend and recognises that acquiring an abono is no longer necessary. A new economic model for the bullfight is needed, says the article.

So far, so realistic. But then the article veers off into a completely wrong direction on the question of subsidies, arguing that more public subsidy of the bullfight is needed.

From a Spanish perspective, there is some logic to this argument. The article makes the point that other aspects of Spanish culture are heavily subsidised - a 46.6% public subsidy underpins drama festivals and film festivals benefit from a similar level of assistance - and toreo is also un patrimonio cultural.

It’s also unfair, says the piece, that bullfight empresarios, in addition to putting on corridas, are expected, through their ticket income, to cover other activities like funding bullfighting schools - matters which, under their obligations to promote patrimonios culturales, public bodies should be supporting directly themselves.

However, it seems to me that arguing for more public subsidy of bullfighting is tantamount to putting the final nail in its coffin. As the mundillo is currently structured, with political control at its head, we are only ever a handful of votes away from prohibition of the corrida. An important aspect that presently keeps the bullfight going is the income that bullfighting generates for local authorities, local economies and the Spanish state.

The definitive book on the bullfight economy is Tauronomics, economía y activismo taurino by Juan Medina, published in 2016. Using the most recent annual data available at the time of writing, that of 2013, he revealed that:

• Spectator figures at taurine events (including festejos populares) totalled some 24.7m, making it the highest attended cultural pastime in Spain apart from going to the cinema to watch foreign films.

• The corrida was the second highest cultural generator of IVA income (43.86m euros) after foreign cinema.

• 25.5m euros of public funding supported these events (just 0.9% of total cultural public expenditure), making tauromaquia the least subsidised of Spain’s cultural activities.

• Los toros directly contributed 422.8m euros to the Spanish economy.

• A further 361m euros were generated indirectly through hotel bookings, restaurant and transport takings from non-local spectators.

• 820m euros could be attributed to other associated activities, such as agriculture and farming, media and other associated business activities.

• Los toros consequently generated 2.9 euros for every euro it directly received.

• In addition to localities benefitting economically from festejos taurinos, the public purse received over twice as many euros from bullfighting as it put in.

Take Santander’s Feria de Santiago as an example of how benefits flow from bullfighting. In 2016, the opposition parties on the town council proposed that the council’s 100,000 euro subsidy of the feria should end. At that time, the council ran the feria directly and so wasn’t receiving the benefit of an annual rental from an empresa, but even so the mayor responded, “Each euro we put into the feria generates 70 more for the city, and there isn’t a single espectáculo that generates a return like this - not concerts, nor other cultural events. Even if they weren’t a taurino, it would be a bad mayor who’d let the feria come to an end.”

For bullfighting’s survival, it seems crucial that it continues to generate considerably more financial benefit than the public investment it receives. If greater public subsidy was made available, it would only make bullfighting’s future more precarious politically.

In fact, Prof. Medina argued that there is too much state involvement in the Fiesta – public authorities own 575 of Spain’s 631 permanent bullrings, setting the conditions for their management which, Medina stated, tended to restrict competition and act in favour of the status quo. However, there is little chance of this situation ending any time soon.

He thought the state could assist bullfighting further through more benevolent taxation and reduced administrative bureaucracy. Apart from these measures, though, when it comes to arriving at a new economic model for la Fiesta, local authorities and the mundillo badly need to identify a new way forward. The difficulties in putting on financially viable novilladas are already well known. Writing in the latest Aplausos, Carlos Ruiz Villasuso refers to a little-known Barcelona University study, funded by Spain’s Culture Ministry, on the economic and social standing of toreo pre-pandemic. This showed that over 25% of Spaniards were interested in los toros - some 11m people - over half of which said they’d not attended a festejo in the previous 12 months because of the prohibitive prices of tickets. The study concluded that this ‘exclusion’ was increasing over time and reflected that toreo was the only productive Spanish sector that had not made adjustments to its offer and demand since the financial crisis of 2008.

The pandemic, of course, has brought another financial crisis on top of that one. The mundillo seems to think that, in 2022, things can continue from where 2019 - the last ‘complete’ temporada - left off, but a continuation of the pre-pandemic economic model will mean a further decline in bullfighting; fewer and fewer places will put on festejos, novilladas will remain uneconomic and spectator numbers will continue to fall.

The future, it seems to me, needs to involve a reduction in the administrative costs of putting on festejos, but greater expenditure on marketing (from an aficionado’s perspective, it does not make sense that, currently, Morante de la Puebla and Andrés Roca Rey appear to be the only toreros capable of selling-out plazas); a more sensible approach to bullring tendering, both from local authorities and empresas; the development of new public/private partnership initiatives (such as the FTL and CAM have achieved with la Copa Chenel); more realistic earnings for the participants that, in part, reflect spectator numbers at events; greater exploration of private sponsorship; and more variety in ticket prices, reflecting the quality of the daily offer (ticket prices for a feria should vary from one corrida to another, rather than be set at the same level for each event).