Bullfighting kills far more bulls than people, but human fatalities, while uncommon, are not as rare as casual observers might assume. An eight-year study covering Spain, Portugal, and southern France found a mortality rate of about 0.5% among injured participants, with vascular wounds and back injuries driving nearly all lethal outcomes.1PubMed Central. Eight-year analysis of bullfighting injuries in Spain, Portugal and southern France On the animal side, the bull almost always dies, and research into its final minutes reveals a drawn-out physiological collapse that has become a focal point in the debate over whether the practice should continue.
How Often Humans Die in Professional Bullfights
The most comprehensive modern dataset on professional bullfighting injuries tracked over 1,200 incidents across Spain, Portugal, and southern France between 2010 and 2017. During that span, the mean accident rate per participant appearance was roughly 9%, and the mortality rate was 0.48%. Six deaths were recorded in total: three matadors, two forcados (Portuguese-style bull wrestlers who face the animal barehanded in a group), and one recortador (a performer who dodges the bull using acrobatics).1PubMed Central. Eight-year analysis of bullfighting injuries in Spain, Portugal and southern France Those numbers translate to roughly one professional death per year across the three countries combined, though in some years none occur and in others several cluster together.
The roughly one-in-two-hundred mortality figure among those who are injured sounds low until you consider how many times a matador steps into the ring over a career. A busy matador may fight 50 or more times per season, and a roughly 9% chance of getting hurt in each appearance accumulates quickly. Over a multi-decade career, the odds of sustaining at least one serious goring are essentially certain. The question becomes less “will it happen” and more “will the wound be in a survivable location.”
What Makes a Bull Wound Lethal
The vast majority of bullfighting gorings are survivable with prompt surgical care. What separates the fatal cases from the rest is not the size of the wound but where the horn lands. The eight-year study found that a vascular lesion, meaning the horn tears into a major artery or vein, makes a victim roughly 128 times more likely to die than someone whose goring misses the great vessels. A back injury carries about 11 times the risk of death compared to injuries in other locations.1PubMed Central. Eight-year analysis of bullfighting injuries in Spain, Portugal and southern France Among the three matador deaths in that dataset, two involved chest gorings that ruptured large blood vessels, and the third was a severe spinal cord injury.
The groin and inner thigh are particularly dangerous target zones because the femoral artery runs close to the surface there. A separate study focused specifically on groin vascular injuries from bull horns noted cases where emergency vein ligation had to be performed before the patient even reached the hospital.2PubMed. Bullhorn and bullfighting injuries The femoral artery can bleed out within minutes if uncontrolled, and many bullrings, especially smaller provincial ones, are not located near major trauma centers. This gap between the speed of hemorrhage and the availability of vascular surgery is where most preventable deaths occur.
A 40-year retrospective analysis of bull horn vascular injuries reinforces the same pattern. Across 296 patients with vascular injuries from bull encounters, the in-hospital mortality rate was 5.1%, a figure considerably higher than the overall bullfighting mortality rate because the study specifically selected for the most dangerous wound type. Arterial injury carried about five times the odds of dying, injury to the abdomen about 3.5 times, and being older than 65 roughly tripled the risk.3PubMed. Bull horn vascular injuries in popular celebrations: A 40-year retrospective analysis Nearly one in five of these vascular injury patients required reoperation, and more than four in ten experienced complications. Even survivors often face a long and painful recovery.
Public Festivals Are More Dangerous Than Professional Events
The professional bullfight, with its regulated arena, on-site medical teams, and experienced performers, is actually not where most bull-related human deaths happen. Public celebrations involving bulls, the encierros (running of the bulls), bous al carrer (bulls released in town streets), and similar amateur events throughout Spain, Portugal, southern France, and parts of Latin America, produce a steady stream of fatalities each year among untrained participants and bystanders.
The 40-year vascular injury study drew most of its 296 cases from these popular celebrations rather than from professional corridas.3PubMed. Bull horn vascular injuries in popular celebrations: A 40-year retrospective analysis The patient population tells its own story: the mean age was about 33, the range stretched from 17 to 91, and nearly 94% were men. These are not professional bullfighters; they are members of the public who chose to participate, often with alcohol in their systems and no training in how to read a bull’s movement or protect their body from a horn strike.
Several factors make public events more hazardous. There is no formal medical infrastructure in most street-level bull runs. Participants wear regular clothing rather than the matador’s traje de luces, which, while not armor, at least signals to the bull a predictable visual target that trained fighters know how to manage. Crowds create trampling risks independent of the bull. And because many participants are intoxicated, their reaction times and decision-making are compromised. Spain alone records an average of roughly 10 to 15 deaths per year from bull-related public festivals, a figure that dwarfs the professional ring toll, though exact counts vary by year and by how authorities classify incidents.
Non-Fatal Injuries and Long-Term Disability
Death is the extreme outcome, but the broader picture of human harm extends well beyond fatalities. In the eight-year professional study, risk factors for injuries with a severe, serious, or guarded prognosis included vascular lesions, head injuries, fractures, gorings specifically (as opposed to being knocked or trampled), and the age of the bull, with older, heavier animals inflicting worse damage.1PubMed Central. Eight-year analysis of bullfighting injuries in Spain, Portugal and southern France Horn wounds to the perineum can cause lasting urological or reproductive damage. Facial gorings, while less often fatal, may destroy an eye or leave disfiguring scars.
Many matadors carry extensive internal scarring from repeated surgeries. The cumulative physical toll of a career that involves getting gored multiple times is not unlike the accumulated concussion damage in contact sports, except with abdominal and limb trauma instead of brain injury. Some former matadors have spoken publicly about chronic pain, limited mobility, and psychological trauma including flashbacks and anxiety disorders, though systematic data on the long-term mental health consequences remain thin.
How the Bull Dies
In a traditional Spanish-style corrida, the bull is killed in the ring as the final act of the fight. The sequence follows a formal structure. In the early stages, mounted picadores lance the bull’s neck muscles to weaken them and lower the animal’s head. Banderilleros then place barbed sticks into the bull’s shoulders. In the final stage, the matador performs a series of passes with the cape before attempting the estocada, a sword thrust aimed between the shoulder blades to sever the aorta or pierce the heart. When placed correctly, death follows within seconds. When the sword misses or glances off bone, additional attempts are needed, sometimes several, prolonging the process.
Research into the bull’s physiological state during this sequence paints a grim picture. By the time the animal enters the final stage, it has already undergone severe metabolic collapse. Studies of blood chemistry in fighting bulls show a cascade of biochemical disruption: extreme rises in lactate (indicating the muscles have shifted to anaerobic metabolism because they cannot get enough oxygen), spikes in creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase (markers of muscle tissue destruction), surging cortisol and catecholamine levels (stress hormones), and drops in blood pH, bicarbonate, and oxygen saturation.4PubMed Central. Quality of Death in Fighting Bulls during Bullfights: Neurobiology and Physiological Responses The animal’s muscles are running out of glycogen, its blood volume is falling from hemorrhage, and its kidneys may be clogged with myoglobin from damaged muscle fibers.
What this amounts to, physiologically, is hypovolemic shock layered on top of extreme physical exhaustion and metabolic acidosis. The bull is losing blood, running out of energy, and accumulating waste products faster than its body can clear them. Researchers who have examined this process have concluded that the final stage of the bullfight causes a slow dying process in an animal that remains sentient and aware of its surroundings throughout.4PubMed Central. Quality of Death in Fighting Bulls during Bullfights: Neurobiology and Physiological Responses That finding has been central to animal welfare arguments against bullfighting, because it undermines the traditional defense that the bull enters a state of diminished awareness during the fight due to adrenaline.
The Scale of Animal Deaths
Exact global figures for how many bulls are killed in bullfights each year are hard to pin down because they depend on how many events take place across all the countries where bullfighting occurs, and many smaller events go uncounted. Spain, where the tradition is most deeply rooted, holds hundreds of professional corridas per year. Each corrida typically features six bulls, all of which are killed. Portugal has a partial exception: in Portuguese-style bullfighting, the bull is not killed in the ring in front of the audience, though it is customarily slaughtered afterward, so the death still occurs. In Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and parts of southern France, the Spanish model with in-ring killing is more common.
Conservative estimates put the number of bulls killed annually across all bullfighting countries in the range of tens of thousands when both professional corridas and public festivals are included. Each bull is purpose-bred for the ring and typically reaches the fight at four to six years of age. The breeding ranches maintain large herds, and many bulls that do not meet behavioral or physical standards are culled before they ever fight. From a pure numbers standpoint, the death toll on the animal side is orders of magnitude larger than the human one.
The Genetics Behind the Fighting Bull
Fighting bulls are not simply any cattle bred for size. The Spanish toro bravo is a distinct lineage selected over centuries for behavioral traits that make for a dramatic fight: aggression, ferocity, and willingness to charge. Research into the genetics of these traits has found that they have a meaningful heritable component. Heritability estimates for aggressiveness, ferocity, and mobility in fighting bull breeds cluster around 0.3, meaning roughly 30% of the variation in these traits across animals can be attributed to genetic differences rather than environment or training.5Animal Research. Genetic parameters of aggressiveness, ferocity and mobility in the fighting bull breed
That heritability level is moderate, similar to what you see for temperament traits in dog breeds, and it explains why selective breeding has been effective. Breeders test young bulls in the field, observing how readily they charge a moving target and how persistently they re-engage after a confrontation. Animals that show the desired behavioral profile are kept for breeding; those that do not are typically sent to slaughter. The selection pressure has been intense enough to produce a population of cattle that behaves in ways dramatically different from any other domesticated breed. A fighting bull will charge a moving cape repeatedly, even as it accumulates injuries, whereas most cattle would flee or refuse to engage.
This breeding system also means the bull’s aggression in the ring is not primarily a response to pain or provocation. The animal’s baseline behavioral disposition is to charge. The lancing and barbed sticks do provoke pain, but researchers have noted that the bull’s willingness to attack is already present before any injury is inflicted, a product of generations of selection for exactly that behavior.
How Bullfighting Compares to Other Bull-Related Activities
Rodeo bull riding, the most prominent bull-related sport outside the bullfighting tradition, presents a useful point of comparison. A systematic review of rodeo injuries found that roughstock events, which include bull riding, accounted for the highest frequency of both nonfatal injuries and fatalities in rodeo. Bull riding specifically caused more than 80% of catastrophic injuries within the roughstock category.6PubMed Central. Characteristics of Rodeo Injuries and Suggestions for Injury Prevention: A Systematic Review Among bull riding patients with central nervous system trauma, four out of five had severe cognitive and behavioral impairments, including cases of quadriplegia and persistent vegetative states. Thoracic compression, where the rider is crushed by the bull after being thrown, accounted for more than three-quarters of rodeo fatalities overall.
The injury mechanisms differ between the two activities in revealing ways. Bullfighting injuries are dominated by penetrating horn wounds, which is why vascular damage drives mortality. Rodeo injuries skew toward blunt force trauma from being thrown, stepped on, or crushed, which is why head and chest injuries dominate the fatal cases. Both activities involve a roughly half-ton animal with the capacity to kill a human in a single impact, but the specific ways that death tends to happen are distinct. A matador’s greatest mortal fear is a horn through the femoral artery; a bull rider’s is landing headfirst under the animal’s hooves.
One striking difference in outcomes: a study of over 4,000 competitive bull-riding exposures found zero fatalities, suggesting that with modern protective equipment (helmets, vests) and rapid medical response, the per-event death rate in professional rodeo bull riding may actually be lower than in professional bullfighting.6PubMed Central. Characteristics of Rodeo Injuries and Suggestions for Injury Prevention: A Systematic Review Bullfighters, by tradition, do not wear helmets or body armor, and the matador’s sword work requires him to lean directly over the bull’s horns at close range, placing his torso and groin in the most exposed possible position at the moment of greatest danger.
Where the Legal and Cultural Landscape Stands
Bullfighting has been banned or restricted in a growing number of jurisdictions. Catalonia banned it in 2010, though Spain’s Constitutional Court later struck down the ban on the grounds that it infringed on cultural heritage protections. The Canary Islands prohibited it in 1991. Several Colombian cities have imposed bans or moratoriums. Ecuador banned the killing of bulls in bullfights in 2011. In France, efforts to ban it have repeatedly stalled, partly because bullfighting is concentrated in a few southern departments where it has regional cultural protection.
The animal welfare argument has increasingly centered on the scientific evidence about what the bull experiences. The research showing that the bull remains sentient throughout its slow physiological collapse has been particularly influential in legislative debates, because it challenges the older narrative that the animal enters a kind of adrenaline-fueled trance that dulls its suffering. Proponents of bullfighting counter that the fighting bull lives a better life than commercially raised cattle, spending several years on open-range pastures before its single encounter in the ring, and that the breed itself would likely vanish without the economic incentive of the corrida. Both claims have some basis in fact, though neither directly addresses the question of what happens during the 15 to 20 minutes of the fight itself.
Public opinion polls across Spain have shown a gradual but consistent decline in support for bullfighting over the past two decades, particularly among younger demographics. Attendance figures have fallen as well, and many bullrings now struggle to fill seats except for major festivals. Whether the practice will persist as a living tradition or gradually become a historical curiosity is an open question, but the trajectory of both public sentiment and legislative action across multiple countries points in one direction.