Our destination was the port city of Barcelona. Spruced up for the 1992 Olympic Games, it has something to please everyone. A blend of the gothic and modern, Barcelona has museums, art galleries, lovely roads conducive for long strolls, shopping and all the delights that make a trip worthwhile for gourmets. In the fervour of doing the sightseeing routine, the flamenco and bullfight took a back seat. Till on Sunday morning a colleague announced that he had enquired about the bullfight and since it was a weekly affair, our evening was to be spent at the bullring. Little did we know what was in store.

Trumpets heralded the arrival of the attractively dressed matadors. With a flourish of shocking pink and bright yellow coloured capes, they swirled around the ring like dancers ready tobegin a performance. The late evening sunshine bounced off the gold and green coloured armour on the horses as the picadors (men on horses) took a round of the stadium. The trumpets reached a crescendo and the crowd cheered in expectation of the main show.

The ring was empty again and all eyes were focussed on the red door that would let the bull out. The bull came in slowly. The matadors were at different sides of the ring. Incidentally, none of them had a red cloth. They fluttered their cloths to attract the bull's attention and slowly irritated the bull so that he came towards them. Initially I appreciated their agility, the quickness of movement, the way they jumped out of his range before he could harm them.

Then suddenly the picadors entered, their armoured horses were blindfolded. One picador stood to the side while the other approached the bull side on and thrust a lance into his back. Angered, the bull reacted swiftly and started kicking about, the picador retreated. Then the matadors withshorter coloured lances, like batons used in a dance, ran into the ring straight at the bull and in a daring act of bravado stabbed the lances into the animal. The other matadors followed suit so that the bull soon had a crown of lances sticking out of his back.

The chief matador took a red cloth in which there was a hidden sword and the goaded animal was stabbed through the first cut that had been made by the picador. He changed the spear for another sword (probably a sharper one) and stuck it into the bull till his blood flowed onto the mud of the bullring. By this time I had begun to get agitated. I covered my face and thought, surely it can get no worse. But I was wrong. If that wasn't enough, the picadors and the matadors then took a dagger to kill the bull completely. The horses were then brought in to drag the poor animal away.

A game, definitely not. A fair fight, far from it. I would call it cold-blooded murder. A barbaric tradition which continues in the name of tourism. There is nothingthrilling about seeing a poor animal being killed in cold blood without a chance to defend himself, much less a chance to survive.

Many Spaniards are now joining the growing international movement to ban bull fighting. I recalled that there had been no advertisements for this event and that when we had asked for directions to the ring, a local person had given us a rather weird look.

I later learnt that approximately 35,000 bulls are tormented and killed every year in Spanish bullfights. Sometimes what we advocate in the name of tourism as part of tradition is just not worth it. We have to move beyond this. I am no animal rights campaigner but to react against this kind of act you don't need to be a campaigner. You just need to be human enough to see that this kind of barbaric spectacle in the name of tourism has to stop.