France has sometimes been dubbed the “last bastion” of bullfighting. As other areas moved to ban the practice (Catalonia banned bullfighting in 2010), France protected it as part of its Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2011 (only to remove it again in 2016).
Bullfighting is legal in areas of France where an “uninterrupted local tradition can be invoked”, according to French law. This includes many parts of the south, including the cities of Bayonne, Nîmes and Arles.
Recent national attempts to ban bullfighting have been unsuccessful. MPs voted against a proposed ban in 2022 while the Senate rejected a ban on under-16s attending bullfights in 2024.
However, some areas of France are deciding to ban bullfights locally.
The town of Vieux-Boucau (Landes), for example, hit the headlines earlier this year when its mayor, Pierre Froustey, announced it would stop holding bullfights from September 2025.
Nevertheless, bullfighting supporters argue the practice is stronger than ever.
A long history
“Since at least the Middle Ages, the people of the south have celebrated the courage of bullfighters,” said Elvire Oliu, communications officer for the National Observatory of Bullfighting Cultures, which defends bullfighting at a national level.
Elvire OliuNational Observatory of Bullfighting Cultures
“Each population chooses heroes who best embody the values which it recognises in itself. Courage, self-sacrifice, solidarity… As Escamillo sings in (the opera) Carmen, bullfighting is ‘the celebration of courage! The celebration of the brave of heart!’
She explained that, in a broad sense, bullfighting was practiced in the form of hunting from Paleolithic times to the Romans, who staged bullfights in all their amphitheatres, from Bordeaux and Lyon to Arles, Béziers, Nîmes and Fréjus. The Frankish kings also practiced it, including Pepin the Short and Charlemagne.
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“The first regulation dates back to 1289 in Bayonne,” she said, “where it was a matter of making the release of bulls in the streets or squares conditional on prior authorisation from the mayor or his lieutenant.”
'Bullfighting is art'
According to Ms Oliu, bullfighters should be regarded as “artists”, as they already are in the eyes of employment law.
“Bullfighting is a difficult art that consists of interpreting a classical repertoire, and even enriching it with new moves. The bullfighter's inspiration is worthy of that of any other performing artist, with the important difference that he creates his work by risking his life at every moment.
“Every 20 years or so, a genius emerges who pushes back the boundaries of what is possible and takes the world of bullfighting with him.”
When it comes to clamping down on the practice, Ms Oliu is adamant that any ban would be an “act of censorship against freedom and inconceivable in a democracy”.
She cited the example of former UK prime minister Tony Blair, who banned fox hunting in 2004 but later admitted it was the one of the policy decisions he most regrets.
“He had made it, he explained, to give in to the most left-wing line of his party in which the beginnings of ‘wokism’ were already circulating.”
Bullfight in Aire-sur-l'AdourNational Observatory of Bullfighting Cultures
When probed whether the same could happen in France, she said: “France being the country of freedoms, bullfighting will never be banned because it is the mayors who have the power to regulate it and this power cannot be taken away from them by an ordinary law.
“Bullfighting will never be banned because it is a constitutional right of local authorities that is superior to ordinary legislation.
“The two stinging defeats suffered by the extreme left-wing parties who wanted to ban bullfighting in the National Assembly and then in the Senate sounded the death knell for the anti-speciesist movement that inspired them.”
Ban in Vieux-Boucau
Bullfighting defenders have been – unsurprisingly – vocal about the mayor of Vieux-Boucau’s decision to end the killing of bulls from September 2025.
“The is no legal reason – Vieux-Boucau is located in a region of uninterrupted local tradition – or economic reason since bullfights did not cost the community a single euro,” said Ms Oliu.
“The mayor of Vieux-Boucau does not have the power to ban bullfighting: he only has the power not to make the arena available to those locals who want to organise them, forgetting a little too quickly that they are also the ones who financed it with their taxes. One day or another, bullfights will return to Vieux-Boucau.”
No compromise
Asked what she would say to activists who are calling for a complete ban on bullfighting in France, Ms Oliu said: “Nothing, because they are fanatics and no dialogue is possible with them. They are liberticidal and intolerant groups locked in their facade of anti-speciesism.”
She added that compromise – for example, holding bullfights but not killing the bull at the end – would not work.
“Bullfighting is a ritual that culminates in the death of the bull, sometimes at the cost of the man. This ritual will never become a sham. Let’s stop being hypocrites: everything that lives dies, and not always in a way that is as conforming to its nature as the bull fighting in the arena.”
Far from feeling threatened, the bullfighting world is firm in its defence of bullfighting.
“It is mobilised and victoriously defends its culture as the latest attacks it suffered showed in 2022 in the National Assembly and in 2024 in the Senate.”
