“Fraud and favouritism” alleged in bullfight subsidies within la Comunidad de Madrid
CAM president Isabel Ayuso in the Las Ventas bullring (Image from elplural.com)
This week, as the president of the Comunidad de Madrid (CAM), Isabel Ayuso, and other CAM representatives enjoyed the start of the month-long San Isidro series of bullfights at Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring, the Left-wing regional party Más Madrid filed a complaint with the Tribunal de Cuentas in which it claims there is "fraud and favouritism in the management of bullfighting subsidies" in the Madrid region.
La Fundación del Toro de Lidia (FTL), recipient of most of the public monies la Comunidad has made available to bullfighting in recent years, is as much in Más Madrid’s sights as the Partido Popular-controlled CAM led by Isabel Ayuso. The two parties signed up to seven agreements between 2021 and 2025 to - in Más Madrid’s words - "promote la Fiesta del Toro in the Community of Madrid, making the different municipalities of the region with a bullfighting tradition participate in this project".
Among those agreements was one eventually overturned by the Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Madrid (TSJM), where the two parties had agreed to use almost 1.7 million euros to put on bullfights in the region in 2023 and 2024. CAM promised to take 1.4 million euros from the public purse to contribute to this agreement, to which, eight months later, another 80,000 euros was added. The TSJM considered that this agreement involved a "hidden subsidy" that avoided "the controls inherent in public procurement and competitive competition".
For 2025, that approach was replaced by one of "regulatory subsidy", which coincided with the TSJM’s stated view that such agreements should be governed by the principles of Spain’s Ley de Subvenciones (Subsidies Law).
Más Madrid’s complaint to the Tribunal de Cuentas reports that there have been 119 festejos in 27 municipalities of the Community of Madrid between 2021 and 2025 in which, year after year, the same companies have been involved. About half of the contracts during this period involved two companies. One is Espectáculos Marisma SL, headed by one Rafael Ayuso, which organized 37 events at a cost of 1.2 million euros. The other is Francisco Javier García del Peso’s Ofetauro, which billed for 922,000 euros in respect of 24 festejos. In Marisma’s case, Más Madrid have pointed out that, in the last four years while benefiting from most of the CAM contracts, the company’s income has increased by 500%. In 2025, it was responsible for 37% of that year’s contracted festejos and the associated subsidies - beyond the maximum amount, Más Madrid alleges, that can be awarded to any one entrepreneur. Más Madrid says there has been a clear recurring benefit to Marisma, and its complaint speaks directly of a "clearly fraudulent modus operandi" and of a possible "business cartel" articulated in a client network made up of the FTL, the CAM and Madrid city councils governed by the Partido Popular.
As the FTL also organizes projects such as la Liga Nacional de Novilladas and receives some 5.6 millions of euros in funds from other autonomous communities governed by the Partido Popular, such as Andalucía, Extremadura, the Valencian Community or Castilla y León, Más Madrid’s complaint also asks that an audit be conducted on the agreements involved to ascertain whether there has been any duplication of expenses in relation to the FTL’s management, co-ordination, communications or administration.
Más Madrid have also asked - to date, without success - for Miguel Ángel Martín, Director of the CAM’s Centro de Asuntos Taurinos, and the FTL president, the ganadero Victorino Martín García, to appear before the Assembly of Madrid to determine if "basic rules on public procurement, subsidies or the legal regime of administrative agreements have been violated".