Fight Over Bullfights.(France)(Brief Article)

Beneath a hot noonday sun, Robert Marge watches six fighting bulls grazing among sparse trees. One by one they turn to face his car, snorting and showing off the 500 kilos of rage they'll bring to the ring. "Bulls are like nitroglycerin," says Marge, who raises them on his 150-hectare ranch near the southern French town of Beziers. "As long as nobody moves, they're quiet. But inside the corral, they charge--even if they die."

To much of the world, bullfighting has always been distinctly Iberian. But these days, parts of southern France are laying claim to the ancient rite. From the Cote Basque to the arenas of Arles and Beziers, the traditions of the corrida have spread to towns where bullfighting has long been banned, and been embraced with such enthusiasm you'd think the sport had been born there. The rising passion for blood and sand has been denounced by animal-rights activists. Some have sued; others have mounted protests, including one headed by Brigitte Bardot. And last month someone set off a bomb near the bullring in Carcassonne, 100 miles southeast of Toulouse. Yet France's impassioned aficionados fiercely defend their right to these mortal rituals. Bullfighting, they insist, is part of their indigenous heritage, an expression of a shared regional culture that should be protected.

The rest of the Continent should take note. The paradox of an ever- more-united Europe is that as borders between member states become less important, so do the nations themselves--and regional identities assert themselves. It's easy to forget that most European nation-states were created as we know them only during the 19th century, after a long succession of bloody conflicts. "If the chances of war had been a little different, all the regions sharing the corrida might have been together," argues Jean-Michel Mariou, a stalwart fan of bullfighting. On both sides of the Pyrenees there are Basques, there are Catalans, there are common cultures, he says. "The corrida is only one expression of it."

Bullfighting isn't the only cultural tradition that has begun to transcend borders, of course. To name but one other: the Celtic revival, built largely around musical affinities that ...