Catalonia’s parliament in Barcelona voted to ban bullfighting today in the first such prohibition in mainland Spain.

Regional lawmakers voted 68 to 55 for the ban, the speaker of the assembly said.

The bill was the result of a popular initiative backed by 180,000 signatures, according to the Prou platform behind the initial campaign. Toreros have fought half-ton bulls to the death in public arenas for centuries, inspiring writers including Ernest Hemingway.

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Lawmakers in Catalonia outlawed bullfighting Wednesday, making it Spain’s first major region to ban the deadly, centuries-old ballet between matador and beast after heated debate that pitted animal rights against a pillar of traditional culture.

Cheers broke out in the local 135-seat legislature after the speaker announced the ban had passed 68-to-55 with nine abstentions. The ban will take effect in 2012 in the northeastern coastal region whose capital is Barcelona.

Catalonia is a powerful, wealthy area with its own language and culture and a large degree of self-rule. Many in Spain have seen the pressure here for a bullfighting ban as a further bid by Catalonia to stand out from the rest of the country.

The practical effect of the ban will be limited: Catalonia has only one functioning bullring, in Barcelona, while another disused one is being turned into a shopping mall. It stages 15 fights a year which are rarely sold out, out of a nationwide total of roughly 1,000 bouts per season.

Still, bullfighting buffs and Spanish conservatives have taken the drama very seriously, seeing a stinging anti-Spanish rebuke in the grass roots, anti-bullfighting drive which started in the region last year.

But Joan Puigcercos, a lawmaker from a Catalan pro-independence party, insisted this was not about politics or national identity but rather “the suffering of the animal. That is the question, nothing more.”

He said that even though attendance at bullfights is on the decline in Spain it would be morally wrong to sit back and just let the Spanish national pastime die a natural death.

However, the Catalan regional president, Jose Montilla, said Catalonia should have done just that — let social customs evolve to the point where bullfighting would vanish on its own, rather than legislate an end to it and deny people’s right to choose whether to go the ring.

“I voted against the ban because I believe in freedom,” Montilla said.

The result will energize animal rights groups bent on seeking bans in other regions of Spain.

“The suffering of animals in the Catalan bullrings has been abolished once and for all. It has created a precedent we hope will be replicated by other democratic Parliaments internationally, in those regions and countries where such cruel bullfights are still allowed,” said Leonardo Anselmi of PROU, the animal rights groups whose signature-collecting campaign late last year forced Catalonia’s Parliament to debate and vote.

Bullfighting is also popular in Mexico, parts of South America, southern France and Portugal.

The center-right Popular Party, which is fervent about the idea of Spain as a unified country run from Madrid — and also supports bullfighting — said it will fight back against the ban here.

It will press both chambers of the Spanish Parliament to pass a law giving bullfighting a protected status that will bar regions from outlawing it, said Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, president of the party’s Catalan branch.

In the Madrid region, animal rights activists recently presented more than 50,000 signatures as part of a petition to force a similar debate and vote. However, there they face a tougher battle because the Madrid regional parliament is controlled by conservatives who have declared Spain’s ‘fiesta nacional’ to be part of Madrid’s cultural heritage.

The first Spanish region to outlaw bullfighting was the Canary Islands, in 1991. But fights were never that popular there and when the ban took effect there had not been a bullfight for seven years. That makes the Catalonia vote a much more potent case, even if bullfighting is not as popular there as it is in Madrid or down south in Andalusia.