Townspeople in central Spain have joined in a centuries-old festival in which a bull is chased and then lanced to death, prompting an outcry from animal rights activists.
Carrying spears on horseback and on foot, residents of Tordesillas on Tuesday commemorated the Toro de la Vega festival, held every second Tuesday of September since at least 1453.
The bull, named Platanito, charged through the streets of the fortified town, across a bridge over the River Duero and into a lightly forested plain (vega, in Spanish) where it was surrounded.
The townspeople then threw the lances into the animal before one of them finished it off with a knife in the neck, in a bloody spectacle that lasted about half an hour.
They returned to the town, one of them carrying the bull's tail on the end of his lance.
"Spectacles like the Toro de Tordesillas should no longer exist. A country like Spain should not maintain such cruel traditions," said Nacho Paunero, president of the animal rights group El Refugio.
A survey conducted for the group found 76 per cent of those polled agreed that such festivals should be banned, Paunero said in a statement.
Paunero said he had sent a request to Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero demanding that a draft animal protection law forbid spectacles such as the Toro de La Vega.
The Socialist Party government had promised in its electoral program to draw up a draft animal protection law, and any such legislation would have to ban events such as the "Toro de La Vega," he said.
In response to the concerns of the animal rights activists, the townspeople held up a sign during the festival reading "All regions of Spain defend and respect traditions."
Each region of Spain has responsibility for its own animal protection laws, usually with exceptions for bullfighting. The festival in Tordesillas is allowed under the laws of the Castilla y Leon region.
Protests by anti-bullfighting groups have mounted in Spain since the northeastern regional parliament of Catalonia agreed in July to ban bullfighting from 2012.
Another anti-bullfighting and animal rights group, PACMA, had rallied hundreds of protesters on Sunday to decry the festival, which predates the introduction of the classic bullfight at the end of the 17th century.
While calling for the festival to be scrapped, PACMA also demanded that it no longer be promoted as an event of National Tourism Interest.
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