The triumphant return of Spain's star matador after a five-year absence has drawn thousands of anti-bullfight protesters on to the streets outside Barcelona's main bullring.
Campaigners screamed "asesinos", or "killers", as the cream of Spanish society attended the highlight of the taurine year.
"Welcome to Catalonia. We tortureanimals until they die," said one placard.
The contest was hardly evenly balanced. Some 19,000 aficionados packed Barcelona's Monumental bullring on Sunday night to hail the triumphal comeback of Jose Tomas, a dazzling young matador who dropped from view inexplicably five years ago.
The voices of fewer than 5000 resounded in the streets outside. A handful of protesters who slipped into the terraces were bundled into silence.
But the fierceness of the insults hurled, the clashes with Barcelona's formidable police, and the coverage in newspapers marked the event as the most serious yet in Spain's cultural clash between those who celebrate bullfighting as a defining feature of national identity and those who condemn it as barbarous bloodletting.
The conflict has been escalating since Barcelona declared itself an anti-bullfight city in 2004. Enthusiasm for los toros has always been cooler in Catalonia than elsewhere in Spain. Two of Barcelona's main bullrings recently closed through lack of audience, and the remaining Monumental faces closure.
The list of spectators on Sunday read like a who's who of Spanish society. The protesters have no comparable figureheads, but they do enjoy a high international profile. Nearly 200 members of the European Parliament have signed a declaration against bullfighting as the movement gains ground, particularly in Catalonia, where law bans under-14s from attending bullfights. Catalan regional MPs have also proposed extending laws against animal cruelty to bullfighting, which is currently exempt.
But Spain's National Association of Taurine Spectacles condemned Catalan initiatives as "an attempt to extinguish our Mediterranean cultural heritage".
Aficionados are campaigning for Unesco to grant bullfighting World Heritage status.
