It's almost impossible to imagine bullfighting abolished from Spain entirely. Values do change, though.

My own experience has taught me not to underestimate the power of those who protest against cruelty. I'd also say that there may be a tendency to view the animal-rights opposition in somewhat distorted fashion as a new development, as the product of a very recent enlightenment about the rights due to animals.

Madrid reacting with the forceful protection of bullfighting as an art form is an example of the survival of the old values.

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how the change in values makes the survival of the old values, where they do survive, all the more striking. There are pockets of the old bullfighting world that exist more or less intact, both in Spain and elsewhere.

In fighting a bull you're always aware of a paradox concerning your perceptions of the bull. On the one hand it's your perceptions of the bull that give you the upper hand. You read the bull, you learn to read the bull more and more accurately, and this reading of the bull is how you deploy your intelligence against the bull's intelligence. Your accuracy in reading the bull is a weapon, maybe your most important weapon, against all the bull's weapons. On the other hand, you're human, you have the human tendency to read into the bull things which may not actually be there.

A bull will try to outwit you. It will stop and hook when the last thing you expect from it is that it will stop and hook.

Animals are complicated and so is the animal-rights opposition. It's hard to read motives in animals, and hard to read motives in politics.