The Catalan parliament dealt the death blow to bullfighting in the region today, outlawing the centuries-old spectacle for the first time in mainland Spain.
The result of 68 in favour, 55 against the ban was expected, since Catalonia's parliament had accepted a petition of 180,000 signatures to stop bullfighting with activists concerned about animal cruelty battling devotees of the renowned Spanish tradition.
In the debate, some politicians cited the declining popularity of bullfighting in Spain, where fewer people go each year to the arena to watch toreros wield red capes and swords at close range against bulls.
"There are some traditions that can't remain frozen in time as society changes. We don't have to ban everything, but the most degrading things should be banned," said Josep Rull, member of parliament for the Catalonian nationalist party (CiU).
Opposition to the tradition has been growing in recent years, with a third of Spaniards favoring a bullfight ban, rising to a majority among those aged 18 to 29, according to a poll for El Mundo newspaper in 2007.
The number of bulls taken on in 2009 fell to 4,436 from 6,396 in 2003, according to data from the interior ministry.
Catalans are less interested in bullfighting than many of their compatriots as 106 bulls faced the matador's sword in the region last year, compared with more than 1,000 in Andalucia and almost 800 in Madrid.
Many commentators and politicians denied that the anti-bullfight movement has to do with separatist moves in Catalonia, but Carlos Nunez, president of the Bull Breeders' Union, said he believed it was entirely political.
Nine members of parliament abstained from voting in the debate in which animal activists concerned about the bull's suffering argued against those who revere bullfighting, celebrated by US Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway in the book Death in the Afternoon.
Animal rights activists have pledged to spread the ban from the autonomy-minded region throughout the rest of the country.
Anti-bullfighting groups gathered signatures from 180,000 Catalans, which forced parliament to vote on the tradition which dates back to 711, when the first bullfight took place in celebration for the crowning of King Alfonso VIII.
"They have heard the outcry of a society that is reinventing its traditions," said Anna Mula, of the group Prou! (Enough!).
Before the vote, animal rights activists, one drenched in red paint, and bullfighting aficionados gathered outside parliament to hear the result.
Highly ritualised bullfighting, in which the matador and his entourage use capes, lances and darts to subdue the bull which is killed at close quarters with a sword, was made illegal in Spain's Canary islands in 1991.
For fans, the showdown is a moving display of fear and courage. "It's not a cruel show. Completely the opposite. It's a show that creates art: where you get feelings and a fight between a bull and person, where the person or the bull can lose their life," bullfighter Serafin Marin said.
The drama of the bullring also inspired painter Pablo Picasso and poet Federico Garcia Lorca. But anti-bullfighting activists point out that it has disturbed many other artists, from Mark Twain to Hans Christian Andersen.
Under the ban, which would come into effect in 2012, the last active bullring in Catalonia's capital, Barcelona, would shut down, as would the remaining few elsewhere in the region.
Some lawmakers cited Spain's ongoing economic crisis - the country is just emerging from a deep recession - as a reason to keep bullfighting alive.
A report by an industry group that lobbied against the ban said €100 million of tickets to bullfights are sold annually in France and Spain, and projected rising unemployment benefit payouts for Catalonia's government when bullrings shut.
"Banning bullfighting at a time of economic crisis is madness," said Rafael Luna, member of parliament for the conservative Popular Party, during the debate.
The bullfighting industry includes manufacturing of the elaborate suits as well as specialised breeding of bulls, which can cost up to €10,000 apiece.
"It's an attack on liberty, on a private economic activity. People are free to go or not go to the bullring," said Fernando Masedo, president of the International Federation of Bullfighting Schools, where initiates learn to face down bulls.
Most young people get more worked up about heroes in football, in which Spain won the World Cup this year, and tennis and cycling. Bullfighters are no longer household names.
But many Spaniards still retain the same passion about bulls that Hemingway expressed in literature. After the writer's suicide in 1961, two tickets to the upcoming Pamplona bullfights were discovered in his desk drawer.