Tijuana, Mexico ends bullfighting
CULTURE/ANIMALS
On August 27, in an extraordinary session, the city council of Tijuana in Mexico voted unanimously to end bullfighting.
“Repealing the Regulation of Bullfighting Shows of the Municipality was a constitutional duty,” says councillor Magaly Ronquillo Palacios, who introduced the repeal. “After 35 years of delay we could not continue to protect a 1991 rule designed to legalise mutilation, bleeding and even the death of the bull. This is a government with a human face and the law will never again be at the service of torture.”
The council is now urging the Congress of Baja California to end all bullfighting in the state, in particular amending Article 8 of the Law on the Protection of Domestic Animals of the State, which excludes bullfights and bullfighting festivals.
Palacios stresses “we are not against any hobby or show, we are against abuse and animal cruelty”, noting that future proposals for shows with different formats can be considered, as long as they don’t involve pain, violence or the death of the animal. “Because traditions are not static, today the culture in our city cannot represent pain and death of our sentient beings. Eradicating violence does not destroy culture, it transforms it to build a more just and more conscious society,” she adds.
Tijuana was one of the main centres of Mexican bullfighting from the 1960s to the 1990s, drawing in tens of thousands of tourists from California. The Plaza Monumental at Playas de Tijuana, the “Bullring by the Sea”, opened in 1960, with seating for more than 21,000 people, and its fights were broadcast on US television in Spanish. At the time, US citizens could walk across the border and watch a bullfight on a Sunday afternoon.
Today, the bullring is a shadow of its former self. The Monumental hasn’t staged a bullfight since 2022 and now mostly runs on concerts and boxing. The action has since moved to the Nuevo Toreo, a 7,000-seat ring in eastern Tijuana, and even that has been mostly dark, a federal court having suspended fights in April 2023 after animal rights groups argued they violated the constitutional right to a healthy environment. The ring’s owner managed to get the suspension lifted in April 2025 and was preparing to restart when Tijuana’s city council voted.
Mexico is one of the last countries where bullfighting is allowed, but six of its states have already banned the practice outright and Mexico City, home of the world’s largest bullring, voted in March 2025 to allow only fights with no blades or killing. Tijuana is the latest test case as to whether bullfighting can be shut down without a politically challenging national ban. Legal appeals and a state-level loophole could still slow things down, but it’s a big step towards ending bullfighting in one of its most famous strongholds.
ABOVE Mexico protest, June 2025
PHOTO PETA
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