RESUMEN:

This study critically examines academic production supportive of bullfighting, arguing that part of this literature serves as a mechanism of institutional legitimization rather than as rigorous scientific research. It explores how certain economic, legal, veterinary, and tourism studies contribute to sustaining the social and political acceptance of this practice of animal torture. The main objective is to identify the methodological, discursive, and ideological patterns present in pro-bullfighting academic literature and to assess their scientific and epistemological validity. To this end, a critical literature review was conducted on university publications, technical reports, scientific articles, doctoral dissertations, and sector-specific studies used to defend bullfighting. The analysis focuses on the application of five specific criteria: disclosure of conflicts of interest, methodological quality, use of sources, treatment of critical literature, and consistency between data and conclusions. The findings reveal recurring patterns of reliance on data provided by the bullfighting sector itself, insufficient methodological transparency, omission of critical evidence, use of legitimizing language, and extrapolations that exceed the empirical results. These dynamics appear across veterinary, legal, economic, and tourism-related studies, creating a discourse aimed at justifying the continuation of bullfighting. The study concludes by interpreting the function of bullfighting pseudoscience as a strategy of institutional legitimization that transforms sectoral interests into apparent academic truths. Accordingly, it highlights the need to strengthen scientific independence, methodological transparency, and critical inquiry in order to prevent the instrumentalization of knowledge.

Palabras clave: animal welfare, anti-bullfighting, pseudoscience, institutional legitimization