Petro signs law banning bullfighting in Colombia

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, sanctioned the law that prohibits bullfighting in the country, marking the end of a practice that was constitutionally recognized as culturally rooted.

Before a crowd gathered in the traditional bullring in downtown Bogota, renamed Plaza Cultural La Santamaria, Petro celebrated the passage of the law known as No Más Olé, which for the president put an end to the "right to kill" animals as a spectacle.

"They believed that they had the right to kill a bull for fun," the president said.

"Cannot culture, less Justice, say that it is culture to kill for fun sentient beings, living beings," Petro added, referring to a 2018 Constitutional Court ruling that allowed bullfights in cities and towns where bullfighting is considered culturally rooted.

"If we have fun killing the animal, then we would have fun killing human beings," Petro stressed before animal rights advocates and citizens chanting No Más Olé, a slogan that has accompanied the course of the bill approved in Congress at the end of May.