Max Roustan
Place de l’Hôtel de ville
30115 Alès Cedex BP345
France
Email : communication@ville-ales.net
Fax : +33 466 561 031

Dear Mayor,

I was recently notified by some French friends that your town is organizing bullfights. It is shocking that in a modern country, you would allow spectacles in which bulls and calves are tortured. We have seen videos demonstrating that these animals are suffering, both physically and psychologically. Certain animals, especially the youngest, are so frightened that they stand immobile in the arena, not knowing what to do to escape the oncoming violence.

Foreign tourists love the south of France but if the bullfighting continues, I will make it known far and wide and call for a general boycott of Ales. I find it incomprehensible that after 19 years of governing Ales, you have publicly bragged of loving animals yet you authorize bullfights. There are, thankfully, other communities in the south of France, in which mayors acted to end this travesty despite the fact that they maintain the legal right to hold bullfights.

You could, for example, like it was done in Barcelona, transform your arenas into a cultural venue, enhancing the status and reputation of your town by declaring it bullfight-free. You must be aware that a large number of your fellow citizens are against bullfighting and that throughout the civilized world, bullfighting is illegal — perceived for what it is — an unjustifiable animal torture show. Furthermore, the fact that it’s a Spanish tradition of another age, makes its existence in France incomprehensible.

Without bullfighting, Ales could become a top-knotch tourist destination. From near or far, travelers would come to enjoy cultural events like concerts or simply come to enjoy some of the local pageantry instead of to a bullfight no one wants to go to.

In the interest of Ales’ international reputation and out of a minimum of respect for the very young — those calves and those children who are brought to witness these spectacles, I ask you to stop this brutality, to annul all bullfights. If you do, you will see a growing flow of tourists coming to the region and your town.

Sincerely yours