PARIS

A bill to ban bullfighting is being introduced, not in Spain but France, according to local media.

Aymeric Caron, an MP of the far-left France Unbowed party, has spoken out about the tradition he calls outdated and cruel, and has promised to bring a bill next week to the National Assembly banning the practice.

“I think the majority of French people share the view that bullfights are immoral, a spectacle that no longer has a place in the 21st Century,” Caron recently said.

Besides neighboring Spain, bullfighting remains quite popular in southern France in towns such as Arles, Beziers, and Nimes that line the Mediterranean coast as well as nearby Bayonne and Mont-de-Marsans.

The practice commences in August for the summer, with thousands of fans attending ferias, or festivals, dressed in traditional all-white outfits with a singular red sash or bandana.

Caron’s objection, one voiced by lawmakers before, is not only cruelty to the animal but that “it’s not a French tradition, it’s a Spanish custom that was imported to France in the 19th century to please the wife of Napoleon III, who was from Andalusia.”

Opponents of the bill see bullfighting as a long-held cultural tradition that brings viewers a dramatic display and confronts them with their own mortality.

Backers of the sport, such as Andre Viard, head of the National Bullfighting Association, don’t see the bill gaining ground.

“This comes up every parliamentary session,” he said. “We tell the other parties, why do you want to be associated with a bill that attacks a cultural freedom protected by the Constitution and territorial identity?”

Caron’s party has an advantage in the bill’s successful passage: France Unbowed won dozens of seats in parliament in elections this past June.

“I know there are MPs from other parties who will support me,” he said.

The bill would modify a current animal welfare law that allows exceptions for bullfights (along with cockfighting) when it can be shown that they are “uninterrupted local traditions.”

An IFOP poll this year found that 77% of respondents approved of a ban, up from 50% in 2007.