France Removes Bullfighting from Cultural Heritage List

As of this month, France no longer lists bullfighting on their Intangible Cultural Heritage list. Though the country is not typically associated with bullfighting, southern France has a centuries-old tradition of the blood sport and included it amongst its list of premier cultural inheritances in 2011. Thanks to activism by the French anti-bullfighting activist group Radically Anti-Bullfighting Committee (CRAC), Paris’ administrative appeals court recently ruled that bullfighting is no longer considered part of the UNESCO-protected list. CRAC Vice President Roger Lahaha called the decision “an immense victory” that “is one more step toward the abolition of a barbarism that belongs to another age.”