Bullfighting And It's Popularity Today
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,...
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