The baby-faced killers

The schoolboy trainee bullfighters were given the calves aged under two to practice on at a public display at an arena near Madrid.

The shock footage showed the youngsters preening like adult matadors after thrusting swords into the area between the animals' shoulder blades and heart.

An older helper then pierces the bull's spinal cord to spare it more pain - although some of the images appear to show the animals are left paralysed but still alive as they move their head and blink their eyes.

The disturbing footage also shows local council workers in Pedrezuela loading the baby bulls onto a mechanical digger before their carcasses are driven away.

Spanish animal welfare political party PACMA released the video - taken during a bullfighting display at Pedrezuela Bull Ring - to show the 'dark side' of the sport.

PACMA President Silvia Barquero admitted she and colleagues had been moved to tears by the images - and said children from the Marcial Lalanda Bullfighting School in Madrid were among those who took part in the display, 

The school was recently handed £21,000 by Spain's Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport after winning the country's annual National Art of Bullfighting Prize.

Silvia said: 'We're used to seeing disturbing images but some executive members were reduced to tears by this video which we obviously saw and discussed.

'Seeing these children preening and making gestures of pride towards the crowd as these young animals lie dying in the background, turned my stomach.

'They're some of the strongest images we've ever published and certainly the first uncensored video of a bullfighting school where you're seeing the dark side of something its supporters try to glamourise.

'Some of the animals are still alive when they're carried away. They go through a terrible amount of pain and suffering.

Luis Victor Moreno Barbieri, vice-president of PACMA whose initials in Spanish stand for The Animalist Party Against Mistreatment of Animals, added: 'I thought I'd seen everything but I'm still shocked by the sadism of some people.'

On the instructions of their lawyer, PACMA executives covered the faces of the child matadors, thought to be aged 14 and 15, as well as the youngsters packing the stands just a few feet from where the bull calves were slaughtered.

The images in the explicit video - recorded on September 29 and released last week - were filmed by a PACMA member who mingled with family and friends of the young bullfighters cheering them on from the crowd. 

(dailymail.co.uk)