FAMOUS bullfighter Iván Fandiño has been gored to death in a ring near Pau, southern France.
He was said to have been bleeding profusely and had lost consciousness when medics took him from the ring on a stretcher.
Fandiño, 36, originally from the Basque Country, sustained a fatal lung injury and went into cardiac arrest in the ambulance after being struck by the bull's horns at the festival in Aire-sur-l'Adour during his second fight of the day.
He had survived injuries in 2014 in Bayonne, France, when he was knocked out cold in the ring, and in 2015 in Pamplona (Navarra) when he was flung into the air.
No bullfighter has been killed in the ring in France in the last 97 years, until now – the last fatality was Isidoro Mari Fernando, at a festival in Béziers, in 1921.
And in fact, last year's death of 29-year-old Víctor Barrio during a bullfight in Teruel in July 2016 was the first fatality in Spain in 30 years.
Whilst more and more regional governments and local councils in Spain are considering banning bullfights – the Canary Islands being a pioneer by doing so in the 1990s and Catalunya following suit recently – France went the opposite way and legalised it five years ago, despite animal-loving protesters calling for it to be stopped.
Even though bullfighting is less of a nationwide tradition in France than it has been in Spain, the 'sport' still leads to the deaths of 1,000 bulls every year in the country, having shifted over the border about 150 years ago.
It is mainly practised in Arles and Nîmes, but not in the centre or north of France.
Tweets have already appeared in Spain 'congratulating' the bull for Fandiño's death, but in practice, when a bull kills a bullfighter in the ring, it is immediately put down, meaning the animals will die whether they 'win' or 'lose' the fight.
