Bullfighting
is still a tremendously popular sport amongst
the Spanish today, even though it is always
the subject of much debate in regard to
animal cruelty in particular.
The Bullfight
The low
– lying sun floods the arena
with heavy summer light from the west.
There is a buzz
as places fill. Families jostle for space
with older, beret-bearing enthusiasts,
their faces creased with years of farm
toil, and bright young things sporting
sky-blue sunglasses.
Some clutch plastic cups of beer, others
swig red wine from animal-hide botas.
All but those who have paid
for the comfort of real seats in the shade
(sombra)
have bought some kind of cushion: bare concrete
or wooden slats can pull after a while on
unprotected behinds.
Many have chosen to huddle on the cheap
benches facing the unforgiving midsummer
sun
(sol). At one end of the ring,
high up in the top rows, a brass
band strikes up a stirring
paso doble, while on the opposite side the
president of the fight
and his adjutants await the arrival of the
toros
(bulls).
The corrida
(bullfight)
is a spectacle with a long
history. It is not, as some suggest,
simply a ghoulish alternative
to the slaughterhouse
(itself no pretty sight). Aficionados
say the bull is better off dying at the
hands of a matador
(killer)
than in the matadero
(abattoir).
The corrida is about many things –
death,
bravery,
performance.
No doubt, the fight is bloody
and cruel.
To witness
it is not necessarily to understand it,
but might give an insight into some of the
thought and tradition
behind it. Many Spaniards loathe the bullfight,
but there is no doubting its overall popularity.
If on a bar – room TV
there is football on one channel and a corrida
on another, the chances are high that football
fever will cede to the fascination of the
fiesta.
Contests of strength, skill
and bravery between man
and beast are no recent phenomenon.
The ancient
Etruscans liked a good bullfight,
and the Romans
caught on. Of course things got a little
kinky under the Romans
half the time there was no fight at all,
merely the merciless butchery of Christians
and other criminal fodder.
La lidia,
as the art of bullfighting is also known,
really took off in an organised fashion
in Spain in the mid – 18th
century. In the 1830s, Pedro
Romero, the greatest torero (bullfighter)
of the time, was at the age of 77 appointed
director of
Escuela de Tauromaquia de Sevilla,
the country’s first bullfighter’s
college. It was around this time too that
breeders succeeded in creating the first
reliable breeds of
toro bravo (fighting bull).
El Matador
& La Cuadrilla
Traditionally,
young men have aspired to the ring of hope
of fame and fortune,
much as boxers have done. Most attain neither
one nor the other. Only champion
matadors make good money and some make a
loss. For the matador must rent or buy his
outfit and equipment,
pay for the right to fight the ball and
also pay his cuadrilla
(team).
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