• Tordesillas company bows to pressure, removes reference to bloody festival
• Town’s bull-baiting spectacle met with increasingly greater protest each year
A 165-year-old family-owned confectioner in the town of Tordesillas in Castile & Leon’s province of Valladolid has decided to change the brand name of its “El Toro Vega” polvorones, a popular shortbread-like Spanish biscuit, following protests by animal rights activists over the town’s bloody “Toro de la Vega” bull-baiting festival each year.
In September each year, bulls are killed by a crowd wielding knives and spears after having been chased through the town by horsemen. This year, protests reached a climax during the festival, with shouting and shoving matches between animal-rights activists and supporters of the event making national headlines and the nightly television news.
The local company, Dulces Galicia, named its “El Toro Vega” polvorones in honor of the festival in 1954, but the owner of the company says opposition to the local bull-baiting spectacle has grown so much he is changing the name for fear it could hurt export sales to the UK, Sweden, France and Dubai.
Having renamed its product simply “Polvorones El Toro,” the confectioner is hoping sales will increase a sweet 10% to top 120,000 kilos this holiday season.
Read the Full Story in English at Spanish News Today >>
