This is a guest post written by Fiona from profefiona.com. Like me, she’s an English-speaking expat living in Granada. She, however, comes from the UK. She writes about her experience with bullfighting in Spain.
A lot has been said and written about the controversial tradition of bullfighting in Spain.
What I want to tell you is my experience. I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t think.
Before I moved to Spain it was a kind of abstract concept that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I associated with a traditional image of Spain, with olive trees and jamón and flamenco. It wasn’t an image I expected or tried to square with what I thought life would be like in Madrid.
Soon after I arrived, though, I began to realise that the reality of the tradition would be slightly more difficult to ignore than that postcard image tucked away and forgotten somewhere between a few sulci.
Standing on the platform, waiting for the metro, the TV above my head would report on the latest wins and losses from Las Ventas, the central bull ring. And what I perceived as rather graphic videos recorded and uploaded to the media machine from witnesses’ mobile phones would show the most recent accidents from San Fermín and other bull running events around the country. Rag dolls would be flung into the air and punctured from various directions as I tried and failed to avert my gaze from the news.
So, when my brother came to visit me from London in 2014 and said he wanted to do something ‘Spainy’, we talked about going to Las Ventas to see a bull fight.
Don’t misunderstand me, the prospect didn’t thrill me. I am not a fan of hunting, neither fox hunting in my own country nor any kind of hunting that isn’t carried out simply for the purpose of providing food for oneself and one’s family. However, bull fighting is big business. Matadors earn salaries up in the 6 figures, the sport enjoys government subsidies and roughly 24,000 bulls are killed in front of an audience of 30 million, tourists and locals alike, every year in Spain. Bullfighting as a tradition dates back to 711 AD. Writing it off as a simple brutality seemed a little cursory.
So it was simply left to see one and decide for ourselves. What did I expect? Well, a bull, a matador, a horse, maybe some close calls and that was pretty much it.
I was surprised.
We had managed to obtain last minute tickets for the Novilllos. These are bullfights in which the bull is challenged by men on foot who haven’t yet received the title of “Matador de Toros” (killer of bulls). The bulls used in these types of fights are called ‘Novillos’, bulls that have not succeeded in demonstrating to a stockbreeder the required level of fierceness or aggression. They’re usually younger than the bulls used in regular bull fights.
Trust me, they were big and fierce enough.
We went with a Spanish friend and he and my brother insisted in sitting as close to the action as my nerves would allow. We were 6 rows up from the front, nobody in front of us. To our right was a small brass band, trumpeting every time a new phase or ‘Tercio’ of fighting started. There were 6 fights. 6 bulls. 6 dead bulls dragged across the sand and out of the ring on ropes by horses, to the sound of trumpets.
There were 3 bull fighters in total, each having two goes at two fresh bulls. The fight itself is carried out in 3 stages: in the first, the bull fighter flirts with the bull, letting it charge and observing how it moves. There are recognised moves that the would-be matador must demonstrate while doing so. After he has sufficiently observed the bull and noticed any weaknesses, a couple of horses enter the ring. Atop the horses are men with long lances who’s job it is to stab the bull at the base of it’s neck to make it bleed and weaken it. The bull attacks the horses which are covered in padding and don’t seem too bothered by the whole affair.
After that’s over, the second tercio begins. The same tired, bleeding bull is chased around the ring in an attempt to stab it with multiple ‘banderillas’. This is the round from which the typical image of the bull with coloured sticks hanging from the base of it’s neck is taken. It seems to be a favoured image, representing the tradition in it’s gracing of various fridge magnets and china trinkets sold in any city centre tourist tat shop.
By the end of this second part, the bull walks slowly around the ring, it’s tired, blood drips from it’s back and it’s open mouth. It half-heartedly charges every so often. It stumbles. It breathes heavily, saliva dripping from it’s protruding tongue.
The third tercio is called the tercio of death. El Tercio de Muerte. This is the part where the bull fighter finishes off the bull ‘mercifully’ with a quick sword to the neck, severing the spinal chord. Usually a fatal blow, it doesn’t however kill quickly. The bull (if this part is done properly) falls to the ground and is supposed to die within 15 minutes. Not only is 15 minutes really not a quick or merciful death, in my opinion, but this part was botched 5 of the 6 times we saw it that day.
The reality was a desperate, exhausted, dangerous animal, people skitting around it, hesitant to get close enough to utilise the dagger made for this purpose – to kill the beast and put it out of it’s mystery – lying in the sand, trying it’s best to defend itself to the last.
The first bull broke my heart.
The second less so.
By the sixth I was almost starting to understand it all. It was this that scared me the most, that made me swear I would never go back. Not only was it horrific seeing such beautiful animals ritually tortured and killed one after another after another, but I got used to it. After the 6th corpse was dragged out of the bull ring, the whole thing seemed almost normal.
Now, 4 years later, the blood thoroughly washed from my hands, the whole thing just seems utterly bizarre. I tried to look at it objectively, respectfully as part of a culture not my own, discounting the judgemental, moralistic modern rhetoric but on this occasion, the latter proved right. I support a ban, and I will never go to a bull fight or bull running event again. I hope this article is enough to keep you from going, too, but I understand if you need to see it for yourself. Just don’t sit too near the front, ok?
Fiona Locke is a qualified, experienced ESL teacher working, and sharing ideas, in Spain since 2012. On her blog profefiona.com you can find free resources for TEFL teachers, ideas for classes, and helpful tips for ESL teachers living and working abroad. Follow her on facebook and instagram.
