Campaign to achieve the first anti-bullfighting town in Portugal
There are currently 33 European towns and cities that have declared themselves anti-bullfighting. This means that the local authority is against bullfighting and will not subsidise it nor authorise the building of new bullrings (however, this does not necessarily mean that bullfighting is banned in such towns and cities because some local authorities may not have the power to do so when permanent bullrings were already active, such as in the case of Barcelona). However, none of these towns or cities are in Portugal, one of the three bullfighting countries in Europe.
ANIMAL, a Portuguese animal protection organisation, has launched a campaign to achieve the first anti-bullfighting town in Portugal, and the League is working very closely with them on this. You can see details of their campaign (both in English and Portuguese) on their website dedicated to creating anti-bullfighting towns in Portugal.
ANIMAL has targeted 11 towns in Portugal: Portimão, Lagos, Lagoa, Aljezur, Silves, Albufeira, Loulé, Faro, Olhão, Tavira and Sintra. Some of these towns have never had bullfights, until recently; others have had bullfights for quite a few years, although especially dedicated to tourists (who are usually attracted to these bloody spectacles without knowing what they are going to see); and others have never had any bullfights until the present day.
British tourists make up a huge proportion of Portugal's total tourism, particularly in the Algarve where ten of the targeted towns are, and therefore have substantial influence in helping confine Portuguese bullfighting to the history books. Therefore, ANIMAL and the League are also calling for the whole Algarve region to become anti-bullfighting.