OVER 100 pop and rock bands, solo artists and stand-up comedians have offered to stage a massive arts and music festival free of charge in the town of Tordesillas if it agrees to scrap its bloodthirsty bull massacre - but the mayor has refused.
The Valladolid-province municipality in the central-northern region of Castilla y León is infamous for its cruel Toro de la Vega festival (pictured), where bulls are let loose individually and surrounded by crowds who take it in turns to hurl spears at him.
They keep trying until their aim reaches its target, and the bulls bleed to death very slowly as lances strike him from all sides.
A petition on the international campaign site Avaaz.org with 300,000 signatures was handed to mayor José Antonio González Poncela (PSOE) along with an open letter from some of Spain's top celebrities.
They propose performing for free at a music festival of international proportions which they have already named Rock in Vega, and given a Twitter hashtag to.
Pressure groups including Torture Is Not Culture and the International Anti-Bullfight Network have joined the campaign, saying in exchange for scrapping one of Tordesillas' well-known but sickening 'attraction', huge bestselling artists will put the town on the map for a very different reason: as a world-famous festival site.
That way, they say, 'everyone wins', including the bulls.
But González Poncela calls it 'blackmail'.
He says he is happy to consider holding a world-beating music festival in the town for free, but 'refuses to be held to ransom'.
"We'll stop the Toro de la Vega when the people of Tordesillas themselves want to," the mayor insisted, "but not when others try to blackmail us into it.
He said he would not stop the violent bull rite unless the rest of Spain was forced by law to ban similar acts and Tordesillas was left with no choice.
"They'll have to cease all events in all bull-rings in Spain, and only then will we cease ours," he concluded.
Celebrities who have put their names down for the proposed arts festival include The Voice Spain coach Antonio Orozco - who recently hit the headlines for performing a 'private' concert for 380 embryos in a fertility clinic - indie-pop band M-Clan, pop reality show contestant-turned-chart-topper Fran Perea, legendary Basque pop-ballad trio La Oreja de Van Gogh, the deceptively-named all-male rock group Love of Lesbian, indie bands Siniestro Total, El Gran Wyoming and Amistades Peligrosas, and the auspiciously-named Toreros Muertos, which translates as 'dead bullfighters'.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com