
For 15 Euros each, we buy our tickets (sol y sombre, which allow us to sit in a part of the bullring that's in full sun at the beginning of the corrida, but shaded by the time of the fourth bull) and join the crowd. It's made up mainly of enthusiastic, evidently well-informed, Spanish - mostly couples and families - and the merely curious like us. The Plaza de Torros is a circle of raked sand surrounded by stepped stone terraces where the "groundlings" sit and topped with covered galleries for the richer clientelle. It feels Roman. At 6:00 pm exactly, the wind-band, sitting high up in a covered part of the terraces, begins to play and two dignified old gentlemen dressed rather like musketeers and mounted on white horses, enter the ring. They ride across to the other side at a walk, followed by the rest of the equipage, mounted and on foot. There is polite applause from the crowd and some appreciative calls as the various matadors carry out practice passes with flamingo-coloured capes. Now a smaller band, of snare drums and trumpets, sounds a flourish and a horseman with a lance appears. He is splendidly dressed, hidalgo-style, and puts the horse through its paces, high-stepping, side-stepping and generally lording it. Great cheers from the crowd. Another fanfare from the trumpets, a gasp from the crowd this time, and the first bull bursts out of the pen and into view. The job of the unmounted matadors with their flamingo cloaks now becomes clear. They take turns to attract the bull's attention and to make passes before retreating behind wooden barricades; this performance evidently allows the main act to assess the bull's behaviour and stamina and to decide how much it needs to be slowed down before he can engage with it. This slowing down is done by picadores. Mounted on heavily padded and blindfolded horses, they come up alongside the bull and with heavy, short-pointed lances, stab at the hump of muscle between its shoulders as it tries to gore them. The crowd doesn't like the picadores very much; they know that they can take the fight out of a bull before things have even begun if they're too heavy handed. There's hissing and whistling as one of the picadores stands in the stirrups and bears down hard on the bull, turning the lance in the wound. The picadores retreat, and the bull is left panting and confused in the middle of the ring. Not for long; the solo rider returns armed with a light lance. A furious dance begins between the rider and the bull, accompanied by pasadobles from the wind band.


As we walk back to the car, we pass through an enormous street party.

3 comments:
I appreciated your non-judgemental description of the bull fight, all the more upsetting, though, as you left us to draw our own conclusions about it. How could you stand watching five bulls being slaughtered? I think I'd have got up and left after the first killing.
We saw a long-legged moose walking across the runway of Lachute airport yesterday and though it was in the wrong place (according to human perception, anyway) it kept its dignity and didn't panic. How people can bring themselves to shoot them simply in order to cut off their antlers and stick them up on the house wall as a trophy I do not understand. Well, OK, they eat the meat too, but it's awfully tough. I tried some! I think you'd only appreciate it if you were genuinely starving.
Is there any practical reason for doing away with the bulls of Malaga?
In answer to bigsis: A nice juicy beef steak or two, I expect. If we eat meat, we should face the implications of this decision. Although maybe it could be done (and I hope usually is) with a little more compassion.
I understand what you mean about the meat, but had I gone to the bull fight my sympathies would still have lain 100% with the bulls: what's you described reminds me of school playground bullying... and even worse kinds of torture. There shouldn't be any excuses for that sort of thing; it surely shouldn't be applauded!
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