Spaniards attach flaming torches to bull's horns at Spanish festival

Spaniards attach flaming torches to bull's horns
Footage has emerged of a bull wailing in terror as it is tied to a post with a rope while its captors attach flaming torches to its horns during a bull running festival in Spain.

The harrowing clip, captured on August 18 in the municipality of Museros, Valencia, shows the moment the bull is lashed to a post while event organisers forced a flammable device onto its horns.
Attendants set the torches alight, causing the animal to moan in fear and anger, before the beast is released and sent running through the streets after goading festival goers.
The images were released yesterday by Spain's PACMA (Animalist Party Against Mistreatment of Animals), which campaigns to put an end to the country's widely celebrated but brutal practice.

A bull with flaming horns is known as a 'toro embolado' - or 'bull with balls' - and is a sight that can be witnessed in many Spanish towns during bull running events.

Locals try to dodge the bull as it rips through the town's roads, but the pain caused by the flames typically work the animal into a frenzy, making them even more dangerous.
A PACMA spokesperson said: 'The PACMA Animalist Party has shared a video that may hurt the sensibilities of many, but not because of physical violence, but because of the cries of anguish of a bull.

'The images show how, as it leaves his enclosure, it is met by several dozen men who, shouting, quickly surround it and even pounce on it to anchor it to the post where the devices will be placed on its horns.'

They said that it was a 'situation that cattle experience with great sensitivity' which amounts to 'real torture', according to veterinary reports that have documented similar events.
The political party said that bulls are tortured at over 17,000 events that take place every year throughout Spain, highlighting that Valencia has the highest number.

They said that Valencia has over 300 municipalities that celebrate this type of event and that seven people had died as a result of participating in them so far this year.

They added that this was the worst year on record in terms of human deaths, tied with 2015.

PACMA's aims are 'to bring to light what bullfighting fans and businessmen prefer to hide: the crudest side of bullfighting and bullfighting'.

The party claims the practice 'warps' Spanish culture and 'brings out the worst in human beings'.

They are planning a protest in the capital Madrid in September to call for a ban on bullfighting in Spain, claiming a petition in support of a ban has already notched over 60,000 signatures.
The footage of the unsettling incident was released just days after a flaming bull gored a young man to death in a nearby municipality in Valencia.

Shocking footage showed Adrian Martinez Fernandez, 24, being smashed by a furious beast in the town of Vallada on Sunday, August 21.

The animal whose horns had been set alight for the festival turned Fernandez over and then gored him as terrified festival-goers, standing mere feet away but protected by railings, looked on in disbelief.

The 24-year-old, who had travelled from Almansa to attend the festivities, was taken by ambulance to the hospital as a precaution with no immediately visible injuries.

But the attack had ruptured his spleen and caused several other internal injuries, leaving medical staff with no hope of saving his life.

The City Council later suspended the bullfighting night due to take place later that day, as well as another even scheduled for Monday morning due to the death of the young man.