A few years ago, in middle Mexico, working on a project about locations.

We start in PV, shooting multiple locals, then slowly work our way south.

I eat a sandwich in the airport in LA before boarding, and by nightfall, as we sit in the warm mugginess of the Mexican black, the sandwich and it’s hidden poison begin working on me.

Delusional. Visions. Toxin. Sickness. Food poisoning.

Around PV we have time to kill and we learn about a bullfight. We learn about a female bullfighter, we go.

I shoot Pentax 645, black and white, of the bullfighter, as she readies herself to do battle. It’s just me working, no other photographer, and I’m accepted. I talk a little, walk a little and wait for the light.

We have time before the fight so I wander the plaza and look for details. No real reason for these images, other than they caught my eye. This is the perfect photo moment. Walking and shooting. 645 color.

No assignment, no cause. I can do anything I want, in any way I want. The best images are most often made this way.

I will use these in my journal, as a reminder of this place and this time.

WARNING: Contains some gruesome content/photos (bullfighting).

I had big plans for my last days in South America, but the truth is after two weeks of going at it nonstop in the Galapagos and the jungle, and knowing I’m so close to going home, I’ve lost a bit of motivation and just become a bit tired. Especially after more than a month of traveling with others — the Aussie gals and then tour groups — it was harder to motivate myself to get up early, get a cab by myself, get a bus, find a hostel in a new place, etc. all when I still had to come back to Quito.

So after a couple mornings of being too tired to get up early for a bus (I had originally hoped I could find a daytrip so I wouldn’t have to really worry about any of the transport and details on my own), I gave up on my aspirations of going to the cloudforest in Mindo (even though I had been wanting to do the ziplining since I first planned this trip — I’ll just have to wait til I do a trip in Central America one day, where it’s supposed to be better anyways) and the markets in Otavalo (I settled for the markets in Quito instead).

My first day in Quito was supposed to be one of relaxation, but I felt a bit stressed and lonely. I was dealing with quite a transition after the past two whirlwind weeks, and I spent most of the day in bed on the computer. That and running back and forth to the agency trying to see if I was going to get a refund for my cruise or not. (In the past few days I’ve gone in there at least four or five times. FINALLY today I went in and they said, “I have some money for you!” My happiness was great, and doubled when they handed me $125! Woo! Now I don’t have to make another trip to the ATM before I leave!)

I had a whiny conversation on Skype with Oscar about how I just wanted to go home now and I didn’t feel like making any effort to go anywhere or meet anyone. He said to me, “Oh no, you’ll get off the computer and go to the common room and meet someone tonight, I know it.” And I said, “No, no. I don’t even want to meet anyone. I don’t even want to get out of bed.”

Well, of course he was mostly right. I didn’t have to get out of bed, but one of my fellow dorm mates, Claire, came in and we started talking, and she invited me to some bull fights the next day. But I did stay in bed the rest of that day…ha! I just couldn’t be bothered to do anything, I was so burnt out.

(It was a loud night though. Ecuador was playing Brazil and they had won the first game and needed to win or lose by less than four goals. They lost by three — so they won overall — which meant that everyone was out in the streets yelling and cheering and going crazy. I was glad I didn’t go out, because everyone came back telling stories of how dangerous it was, the fights and thefts they witnessed in front of their eyes. Even one gigantic British guy — close to 6 1/2 feet tall, and big, someone you wouldn’t mess with — said he got jumped by a couple guys!)

Bullfight

Then on Thursday I headed off to the bullfights with a group of four other people from the hostel. The sun was blazing down on us, but I was happy for it because I want to make sure I keep a bit of a tan until I get home!

The bullfight itself…I’m not sure how I feel about it. Claire loves them (she’d been to one that week already and is at another one today) and sees it as an artform, but I think the rest of us had mixed feelings. I’m glad I went, and I chock it up as a cultural experience, but I think it was actually even worse than I’d imagined.

Bullfighting team

They really do torture the bull, and it’s a bit shocking to actually watch an animal die before your eyes. Plus the bullfighters, to me, seem like haughty jerks. Just the way they stand, strut around, taunt the bull…all of it is this obnoxious show where they think they’re hot stuff, but I think they’re just full of it.

There were six fights in total. I had always thought it was just a showdown between a matador and a bull. Not so. There is the main bullfighter, but there are also a number of other “distracting” bullfighters. They run around waving their capes at the bull trying to confuse it, but then always run and hide behind this little gate so he can’t get to them and gets frustrated. Then two men on horses come out and the bull goes for the horses (who are blinded of course) while the men stab at the bull.

Main bullfighter

Then either the main bullfighter or another one comes out with two hooked batons and has to hook them into the bull’s back. He does this twice, so the bull has four of them in his back. So now the bull is bleeding and starting to get tired and distressed. At this point the very first bull that went on actually somehow totally broke/disconnected the bottom part of his foot (kind of like below the ankle, I guess). It was a bit disturbing, to say the least.

Then the main bullfighter comes out. He has a sword, and he spends what seems like FOREVER whipping his cape around getting the bull to run here and there until he’s exhausted. I have to admit, I was secretly always hoping the bull would be a bit of a smarter one and realize that there’s a person one inch away from the cape that he could go after, but they never did. Finally the bullfighter stabs the bull in the neck/back. Sometimes he has to do it a couple times if the sword doesn’t stay.

Dragging away the bull

Then everyone’s cheering like crazy (I think we all kind of just stared in a kind of gruesome shock). The bull lays/collapses down, usually coughing up blood at this point. Then a guy comes out with a small dagger and stabs it in the neck somewhere that kills it instantly. Then the horses come out and drag him away.

So, you can judge by how it sounds as to how you’d feel about a bullfight. I can’t believe PETA wasn’t protesting outside!

At the bullfight with some hostel friends

The bullfights are just one part of a larger celebration here in Quito right now. Sunday is Founder’s Day, and here they begin celebrating the week before. So all week there have been bullfights and parades every day. As we approached the weekend, there’s more and more parades and dancing and singing in the street. Everyone is out on the streets, at restaurants, bars, etc. And they have these open-air party buses called chivas that everyone rides around in, blasting music and having a great time. It’s definitely an eternally festive air here in Quito.

I also attended a bear charity/benefit event the other night with some people from the hostel. They had a raffle (sadly, I didn’t win anything) and it was a good atmosphere. Lots of fun, and I got to bond with my hostel-mates a bit.

Today I went to do some last-minute souvenir shopping in the market here in Quito. It’s been nice just relaxing, catching up on sleep, having some time to be on the internet, and just hanging out with new friends here in Quito.

Tonight is basically my last night, as I have an early morning on Monday for my flight, so I’m sure we’ll do something special (well, every night is always someone’s last night!), not to mention that it’s one of the biggest days of Quito’s celebrations, and I’ll have tomorrow to soak in my last bit of South America. But I’m excited about going home as well, and every time I see a plane fly overheard I get a little bit more excited.

I know that after a while (though I’m getting to drag it out a bit since I’m only two weeks at home, then off to Sweden to see my Oscar which won’t get old very quickly!) I’ll miss my time here, but one thing I’ve realized on this trip is that traveling is in my blood, and I’ll always find ways to make another trip happen. You meet so many people on the road with different stories and situations, and you realize that anything is possible!

Adolfo Suárez Illana & Author (Photo: Carlos Cazalis)

Whilst writing up something more substantial, I thought I would put up a short anecdote about bullfighters in their time off before a fight. After a fight is predictably alcoholic, but before a fight simply cannot be. So, ‘matador’ being Spanish for killer, it should come as no surprise that shooting is a favourite pasttime.

First, a few words of introduction: at the end of September I had The Times journalist Giles Coren come and travel with me round Andalucia for a few days attending various bullfight-related places and events. The two high points were sitting ringside at the Seville bullring, the Maestranza, in the seats given us by one of the Maestrantes, Don Enrique Moreno de la Cova (who breeds the ancient race of fighting bulls, the Saltillos – see the post about them here) and going to the ranch of Don María José Barral where I got into the ring alongside the matador Juan José Padilla and the aficionado-pratico Adolfo Suárez Illana (events I shall leave to Giles to comment on for now).

King Juan Carlos I of Spain and his Prime Minister Adolfo Suárez

Adolfo was then staying with Padilla to train for his own re-entry into the ring. The eldest son of the co-founder of democratic Spain (alongside the King, who is pictured right with Suárez senior), Adolfo kills bulls publicly at the same level as a professional matador, although with far less frequency: something like once a year for ten years. However, last year Adolfo had a year off and contemplated retirement at the venerable taurine age of 45 (from the ring, not from his law practice, journalism, poetry or political life). 

So, I accepted an invitation to join Adolfo’s cuadrilla (team) for the fight that Tuesday in Castellón. However, when the fight was delayed by rain, Adolfo, the team (minus Padilla who was hospitalised after a bad goring in Granada the day before) and I retreated to the house of Adolfo’s father-in-law, the bull-breeder Samuel Flores. Flores’ estates are so great that it is said you can walk from Albacete to Seville without leaving his land, some 300 miles as the crow flies, and the 8,000 acre ranch of ‘El Palomar’ is the most beautiful of it all.

Behind the gates, the two mile driveway meanders through the estate, wending through green pastures spotted with solitary trees and little woody islands of shade. The ground is stony, the stones condensing into boulders as the land rises into great craggy hills all around. It is a fertile but hard and striking landscape, filled with herds of fighting cattle and horses, the latter clustering around the great lake.   

It is also packed with deer - their rutting calls cracking the night’s stillness – along with Iberian ibex, partridge and a variety of other wildlife. For this reason, as well as breeding horses and bulls, it plays host to a great deal of shooting and stalking. It is here that Adolfo, Samuel Flores and the King of Spain have taken it in turns to shoot the three largest deer in the history of Spain.

Meat-eaters amongst the readers should have no trouble with the swift death of cloven-hoofed ruminants - be it a sheep, cow, deer or antelope – unless it is endangered. That said, there are certain animals which I would regard it wrong to shoot for any reason short of conserving their species or another of similar rank* (see note) or a human being.   

That said, hunting of animals is often deeply misunderstood by urban meat-eaters, but this anecdotal blog post is not the place to argue it. I will confine myself to remarking on the vital role that such hunting plays in conservation. In 2008 the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the United Nations-founded body which determines the endangered status of species, adjusted its evaluation of a species also found on this ranch – the ibex - from “near threatened” to “least concern” with the statement:   

“This species is now abundant and its range and population are currently expanding as a result of habitat changes resulting from rural abandonment. Consequently it is assessed as Least Concern. Hunting reservations and protected areas have played a crucial role in species recovery.” (My empahsis, taken from the IUCN website here)

Now, we were actually here to keep Adolfo in shape and undistracted for his forthcoming contest, spending time training with capes (toreo de salon) and sometimes with small bulls which left the ring unharmed (actually, vaquillas, the females, as the males cannot have seen a man on the ground until they enter the official ring).

Serranito, Belén and Author (Photo: Carlos Cazalis)

However, on the second day, infected with the restless boredom of anticipation, Adolfo decided that we should take some time out and asked his team: the banderillero José Antonio Galdón, ‘El Niño de Belén’ and the young matador, Paúl Abdía, ‘Serranito’ whether they might like to help reduce the pigeon population that plagues the ranch; a chance to play with guns at which they jumped. This is from my notes on the day:   

Speaking in English so Belén and Serranito wouldn’t understand, Adolfo said we should go and pick out some guns. I felt a little anxious knowing that Adolfo was regarded as one of the best shots in Spain. Equally, when Adolfo had asked the other two if they knew how to shoot, their blasé manner had me convinced I was facing the judgement of an entire team of experts. I have shot since I was young (see my regretful experience of shooting my first pigeon described here), but no more than a few times a year at most (although I did become House Captain of Shooting at School, but with rifles).

However, I soon discovered that, as in so many things, bullfighters fear of being outdone can leading to a ‘bending’ of the truth, even when counter-proof is imminent. As Adolfo unlocked the gun cabinet - Holland & Holland English ‘Best’ Guns naturally - he explained,   

“Serranito has probably shot once before and hopefully knows how to handle a gun without killing anyone, but watch Belén closely. In fact, you carry the ammunition, I don’t trust them. Also, help me pick out two guns – I don’t want more than that out there. I’ll only take a couple of shots myself as I don’t want to damage my shoulder before the fight.”   

I duly picked out one with a long stock for myself – at six foot I stand a little taller than most of my friends in Spain – and a shorter one for the others. We rejoined them and handed over a shotgun to Serranito and it became rapidly clear that Adolfo’s estimate was correct.

In a moving, ‘rough’ shoot like this it is traditional to walk in a line to reduce the risk of shooting each other, but as I watched the loaded barrels of Serranito’s gun swing past my body for the umpteenth time with his finger resting on the trigger, safety catch set to ‘off’, I broke with convention and told him to walk in front of me. I could rely on myself to avoid blowing his head off, but my confidence definitely didn’t go both ways.   

As we walked along an extended set of farm buildings, we  fired a few pointless rounds at birds passing high overhead, sending pigeon flocks circling. Then, as we neared a head-high wall, another flock lifted off from one of the fighting bull holding-pens and Serranito and I both fired, felling a bird each. Despite the lack of training, a killers eye and reflexes and training served him well. He then handed his gun over to Belén.   

Belén, it should be added here, is one of the finest ‘bullfighters of the silver’, having been denied the matador’s gold when a bull removed his right eye with its horn early in his career. He is also a blunt, honest, cautic, loyal, rustic and hard-drinking individual who is both excellent company and an extremely brave man. However, he is also competitive, proud, with no sense of danger and has to shoot left-handed against his natural inclination.

It was then hilarious to watch Belén peppering the clouds with huge quantities of shot in record time. Double-barrelled shotguns of this type, with barrels side-by-side, have two triggers. Belén, true to form, pulled both at once to increase his chances of a hit. However, zero doubled is still zero. The massive explosions echoed off the hills disturbing wild and human life for miles around and occasionally one or other of us would have to duck to avoid suffering a fate the pigeons were completely safe from.

Spying a likely place, and for my own safety, I left Belén blasting the heavens and wandered off to another set of buildings to bag my second bird of the day. On hearing a change in the shooting tone – from dynamiter to sniper – I returned to find Adolfo handing the gun to Serranito, having briefly taken it from Belén to reduce the risk to bystanders and to fire a few shots himself. At his feet lay three pigeons.

As we ran out of ammunition no more birds were circling and I gave the last of the shells to Belén so he would have chance to salvage his immense pride. Despite the fact that there were half a dozen pigeons now roosting in the trees beside the house on our return – “sitting ducks”, as they say – he still couldn’t hit a damned thing, sending wood chips – but no feathers – flying as he vented his rage on the tall pine trees. Adolfo even suggested throwing one of the dead birds in the air to increase his chances, and Belén scowled at him through his one good eye. I withheld my laughter as even the young, quiet and immaculately polite Serranito joined in ribbing Belén.

And that is how bullfighters unwind when they can’t drink… below is a photo from the fight Adolfo fought two days later, which I am writing up now, and below that a film of his fight before that one. Maybe 45 is not so old…

Adolfo Suárez Illana (Photo: Carlos Cazalis)

(*Note: By ‘rank’ with reference to animals, I mean where they stand on a modernised version of Aristotle’s scala naturae – the so-called Great Chain of Being - which starts with man, goes down through apes, dolphins, whales, elephants, monkeys, dogs and cats, horses, the ruminants, rodents, and so on into birds [the crow and parrot families are actually higher], reptiles, amphibians, insects, plants etc. The ranking here is something I have spent years trying to approximately work out, and have a lifetime ahead of me doing so with more precision. The principle is simple, though. A complex mental life should not be extinguished lightly. For example, elephants recognise themselves in mirrors, bury their dead and grieve, so we should take ending that awareness – and causing that emotional pain in their herd - very, very seriously. This is a medieval notion, rewritten in the light of empirical observation, and shorn of any religious connotations.)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison – 1,750 words

The Plaza was only a hundred metres or so from the hotel and when we arrived there we were surprised to find it being prepared for a bullfight.  Now, I would like to see a bullfight but this trip wouldn’t have been the best time because Christine is an animal lover and almost certainly wouldn’t have approved.  From the signs in the shop windows we established that the event would be on Sunday afternoon and we would be gone by then so we were relieved that Christine wouldn’t be here to get distressed about it.

The Plaza is in a marvellous location with a big irregular shaped square that is used for town festivals and the occasional bullfight; it is surrounded by a hierarchical arrangement of buildings of two and three storeys with two hundred and thirty-four wooden running balconies, called ‘claros’ and shops, bars and restaurants on the ground floor all spilling out onto the pavement.  It was the location for one of the opening scenes, a bullfight, in the 1966 film, ‘Return of the Magnificent Seven’ and was also used as a location for the film ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’. 

We spent a few minutes soaking up the atmosphere and the sunshine and then we compared menu prices in the bars and selected the cheapest on the sunny side of the square and settled down for lunch at tables compressed between the back of the bullring grandstand and the front of an interesting tourist shop selling a miscellany of local craft products.

This was a fairly nerve-racking time for me, Kim and Mickey because Sue has barely recovered from the unfortunate gastronomic experience of Portugal, especially the seafood salad at Peso Da Regua, so it was with some trepidation that we selected a combination of mostly safe and unfamiliar items from the tapas menu and waited for them to arrive.  We needn’t have worried however because it was delicious and we enjoyed tuna salad, hot chicken wings, fried potatoes and tortilla but I noticed that neither Sue nor Christine were tempted by the calamari. 

After a fine meal and a couple of glasses of Spanish cerveza we set off to explore some of the tiny streets running off of the square.  We walked first through narrow streets of whitewashed houses to the south and top of the town and to a castle with excellent views over the houses with brown, cream and ochre tiled roofs that were reminiscent of Tuscany.  Beyond the houses there were the surrounding villages and the predominantly buff and grey coloured countryside stretching as far as the horizon.  From this elevated position it was possible to appreciate that despite its close proximity to Madrid that Chinchón is essentially a small Spanish village and despite the Plaza, which grabs all the attention this is a living and working community.

The castle was in an extreme state of disrepair and closed to the public so we had to make do with a wander around the exterior and a peer through the keyhole of the main gate which confirmed that it was probably too dangerous to allow visitors to wander about by themselves.  It was late afternoon, it was hot and we were all tired after a long day so we thought it best not to try and see all of Chinchón on this first afternoon and save some for later in the week.

From the castle we took the road back into town which took us through lazy whitewashed streets where old ladies in black dresses sat gossiping in the doorways and men folk sat on benches discussing important matters of the day.  In the centre of town along streets leading off the Plaza there were a few shops, a mini market, butcher, grocer and a fishmonger, an electrical shop that didn’t look as if it had sold anything for a very long time, a florist and a photographer.

The town was very quiet and I was worried about finding a shop that was open for alcohol supplies for later but after a little bit of searching around we chanced upon an unusual little place with all the things we needed.  It was a traditional mini-market with a random selection of goods set out in no particular order but with an especially impressive wine selection.  We purchased some for later and went back to the hotel for some relaxation.  Those of us that had a balcony enjoyed an hour in the sun with a glass of wine and those of us that didn’t stayed in their rooms.  Actually we weren’t that mean and we offered Mickey a corner of our balcony to share but he was sulking now and turned the offer down flat.

After an hour or so we reassembled in a little bar opposite the hotel for pre-dinner drinks; all of us that is except Kim who had misunderstood the rendezvous arrangements and had spent half an hour wandering about the town looking for us.  She was a bit grumpy but a couple of glasses of white wine calmed her down and after that we returned to the Plaza Mayor looking for somewhere to dine. 

The town was still quiet with few people about and when it came to dining arrangements there wasn’t a great deal of choice.  It was barely half past nine but most places were closed and we were lucky to find somewhere that was barely open and seriously thinking about closing until we put a stop to that by sitting ourselves down at a pavement table and calling for a round of drinks and the menu.  There was only a limited menu but we each made selections and then shared it between ourselves when it arrived.  It was rustic and traditional but it tasted good and it was filling and none of us really cared because it had been a long day and we were all tired so soon after we had emptied our plates we left so that they could close up and we returned to La Condesa de Chinchón for an early night.

It had been an excellent first day, much hotter than we had dared hope for and there was clear sky that some of us enjoyed from our balconies that looked promising for the next day.

I have started creating a series of funny bullfight paintings for the 123 Greetings Studio. They are part of a bigger project, from which the aim is to create a whole collection of paintings/designs which can be sent as greetings cards at such occasions as thanksgiving, Christmas, Advent, New Year, Valentines, etc…  A quite interesting work in fcat, I really enjoy to strech my brain to try to find good ideas, and then to try to convert them in some attractive picture, which could incite people to send them to their friends, familiy, etc.. a big honour for me if they do, by the way!

I will show you in this blog some of these bullfight creations, which I have done very recently. At some point, when I have enough I will put them together in a Youtube video, and give the link. In the meanwhile if you want to send them as ecards, or just look at them, go please to my 123 Studio Gallery. If you go there, please have the patience to browse through the different pages, i have quite a lot of ecards downloaded there, and many  have nothing yo do with bullfight…  which of course does not mean they you shouldn’t look at them!!! 

This one, I hope, will unify pro- and antibullfight people, won’t it?

]]> http://apetcher.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/spain-2009-motorways-and-navigation/ Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:00:19 +0000 Andrew Petcher http://apetcher.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/spain-2009-motorways-and-navigation/

Spain is currently the World’s second most popular tourist destination after France, with the population of forty-five million being increased every year by as many as sixty million foreign visitors, 80% of whom make straight to the excellent beaches along the coasts.  But we are keeping away from the tourist hot spots and in the continuing search for real Spain have now visited Galicia and Cantabria in the north, old Moorish Andalusia in the south and the central regions of Castile-La Mancha and Castilla y Leon.  This time, still staying well away from the crowds and the busy Costas we had plans to visit the modern capital of Madrid and the old capital city of Toledo.

Geographically Spain is quite magnificent with green forests in the rainy north, mountains and vast plains in the central regions and deserts in the extreme south east.  With an area of just over five hundred thousand square kilometers Spain is the second largest country in Western Europe after France and with an average altitude of six hundred and fifty metres it is the second highest country in Europe after Switzerland. 

It was an early morning Ryanair flight and in razor sharp clear skies the plane crossed the Atlantic Spanish coast somewhere close to the city of Santander and then we crossed the massive northern mountainous regions of northern Spain.  It was barren and rocky with huge pine forests and blue shimmering lakes, long straight roads snaking between towns and villages and from above it was possible to begin to appreciate the immense size of the country.

Closer to Madrid the predominant browns gave way to vibrant greens and finally into a mosaic of colours and contrasts as the aircraft made its final descent and landed at the airport.  Then, apart from having to wait for an hour because the flight was early, collecting the car was gloriously simple as well and soon we were heading out of the city on the A3 motorway and on our way towards our destination, the town of Chinchón, about fifty kilometres south of Madrid. 

This wasn’t quite so straightforward and soon we had gone astray in a labyrinth of new motorways and unfamiliar road signs and driving rules and as junctions flashed by before we could interpret the directions fairly soon we were lost and trusting to luck.

We knew that we were going in roughly the right direction because the sun in the south was in front of us and we recognised the city of Cordoba, also in the south, from the road signs.  Lady luck was with us and we eventually reconciled the road that we were on with the road map that we had with us and we were relieved to discover that we were on roughly the right road and we hadn’t taken too much of a detour.  Within a few kilometres we left the motorway and settled down to the second half of the journey on quieter rural roads that were much less demanding.

Not far out of the city the scenery became very attractive with acres of olive trees laden with fruit and fields of withering vines, dying back now, their work completed for another year.  In the trees and on top of pylons there were stork nests and in the sky buzzards hung above us on the thermals looking for lunch in the fields below.

We arrived in Chinchón at about half past one and ignoring the edge of town tourist car parks steered the car towards the Plaza Mayor at the very centre of the town.  The streets were narrow but not nearly as challenging as those that we had negotiated last year in Carmona and it only took a couple of circuits of the back lanes, including driving up a one-way street the wrong way before we located our hotel La Condesa de Chinchón (named after a painting by Goya), parked the car with some difficulty, because I cannot get the hang of reverse parking in a left hand drive car, and then presented ourselves at reception and checked in.

It was an excellent hotel, modern but traditional with a pleasant garden and excellent facilities and we had a good deal on the rooms.  We were mostly delighted with our accommodation and I say mostly because Mickey, who considers himself an unlucky traveller when it comes to hotel room allocation, was the only one without a balcony.  And it was a shame about that because the balcony was a really special feature, facing west and with a splendid view over the pretty garden.

We hadn’t been sure what sort of weather to prepare for, last year at this time in Andalusia it had been cold so we had travelled in warmer clothes just in case.  We didn’t need them today however because the temperature was in the high twenties centigrade so we after we had settled in we changed into more appropriate summer clothing and left the hotel to make our way to the Plaza Mayor and some lunch. 

You find your seat in the grandstands and sit down. In front of you is a big circle of yellow sand, surrounded by a red fence.

Horns blow, a gate opens, and the toreros (bullfighters) come out into the ring. Band music starts up.

The Parade (paseillo)

All the toreros walk together across the ring in a little parade, along with the horses and mules that will take part in the fight.  They bow to the president (presiding authority) who sits in the box of honor; then they get behind the fence.

The Bull Appears

Silence. Suddenly a gate opens in the fence and the bull comes running into the ring, its head high. It charges anything it sees moving, man or cape. Bullfighters (subordinates) wave a big cape at it to make it come their way, then they get behind the fence before it reaches them.

Now the main bullfighter steps into the ring and stands firm while the bull charges him. It looks like the bull will get him. But he holds out a big cape and the bull barges right through it, galloping past, just inches away from him. The crowd cheers, maybe they already shout “Olé!”

The bull turns around and comes back.  The torero again stands still and receives the charge, holding open the big pink cape. Again the bull drives right by him through the cape. This will happen several more times and then a trumpet blows and the torero gets back behind the fence, leaving the bull alone in the ring.

The Picadors

Out into the ring come men (picadores) mounted on big horses.  They look a little like heavy-set Don Quijotes because they wear some armor and hold a lance.

The horses (there are two) wear a long padded skirt for protection. The bull charges one of them and while it is trying to gore the horse, the picador on top drives his lance into the bull’s shoulder muscles. The lance has a pin to keep it from penetrating more than a couple of inches.

Two or three times the bull charges a horse and gets lanced. Then a trumpet blows and the horses walk out of the ring.

The Banderilleros

Now it is the turn of the banderilleros, bullfighters who put in banderillas—decorated sticks or harpoons. Holding these in both hands, they provoke a charge and when the bull arrives they avoid his horns by deftly stepping aside and at the same time they drive the two sticks into its shoulder muscles.

Three times they do this, so the bull has six banderillas hanging from his shoulders (if none fall out). Then they leave the ring.

The Bullfighter Alone with the Bull

Now comes the final part: the close passes and the killing of the bull. The head torero comes out holding a smaller cape and a sword. Alone with the bull and working very close, he provokes charge after charge. The danger is evident.

The horns just miss his body as the bull drives through the cape. The torero’s  way of effecting these passes, his grace and timing, make this final part of the fight the most tense and exciting.

The Kill

Finally, he raises his sword and, running directly at the bull,  drives it between its shoulder blades.

If the sword is well-placed, the bull will die immediately. Sometimes the bullfighter needs more tries before it falls down dead.

The Applause

That is all. If the crowd likes the torero’s work they will wave handkerchiefs to ask the president to give him one of the bull’s ears as a prize. The torero walks around the ring, receiving the ovation of the spectators.  The dead bull is dragged out of the ring by a team of mules.

Six bulls will be fought and killed in the same way during a bullfight—two for each of the three  star toreros.

..

(a compendium of queer words for the modern fag with a passion for the Middle Ages added hebdomadally on the Sabbath day)

99.) Tauromachy
-noun singular

a.) The art of bullfighting.*

b.) a bullfight.

[Origin: From the Greek tauromakhia meaning "bull fight."]

*Gruesome, but undoubtedly of interest as one of the most macho sports performed in one of the most dashing uniforms, bullfighting most likely has its origins in the rituals of the bull cults of ancient Mesopotamia and Crete. Of note is that, while the bull is traditionally killed at the end of a fight in Spain, Queen Isabella opposed this aspect of the sport during the 16th century and perhaps as a result the bull is never slain in Portugal.

Life is like a ring. The problem is bull. And there you stand all alone in the arena watched enthusiastically by thousands of bewitched spectators. You have to dodge. Be tactful. Agile and sharp to overcome the bull. If you don’t, the bull will trample you. Crush you to death.

Standing firm on your feet in adversity teaches you the lesson you can only learn in the lyceum called life.

I just returned from a traditional Spanish bullfight. It was appalling. I have spent the last three hours in quiet convalescence.

I don’t really know what I expected going into it… I mean, I heard the warning from the masses that it was gory mess. Of course I didn’t listen. I must have been sold on the fact that if I am living in Madrid, I MUST experience this part of Spanish culture.

Although the whole episode was incredibly unfulfilling, I have to say, the setting provided an immense amount of entertainment. The bull was beastly and zipped around the stadium in an enraged quest to attack the skinny matador. The matador was sporting what looked like a skin-tight, gold one-piece with a pink back side (much like the pink-heineyed monkeys you see at the zoo.) The contrast between the savage creature and the haughty combatant was comical.

The fight began with a friendly little parade of horsemen and matadors. It was exciting. Cute, even. But it ended with an unforgettable scene of bloody carnage. Everything in between was a disgusting sequence of events. Skip the next paragraph if you have a weak stomach.

Here is what happens: The matadors and horsemen tease the bulls with pink flags for a while before proceeding to prod knife-things in different parts of it’s body. After slowly weakening the bull, it is stabbed with a huge spear. (You can literally see blood spurt out.) Once it falls to the ground, they spike it’s head over and over again. They even grind it around a little. They attach it to a horse, parade it around the ring (leaving a bloody streak), and drag it off.

I am pretty bummed that I supported such a disgraceful form of entertainment— what PETA entitles, a “Tradition of Tragedy.” I suppose I will try to make up for it in moments of silence for the 10,000 bulls killed each year… and vegetarian dishes.

Same bullfighter as the last entry; this was taken just minutes later.

This is from last April, a bullfight here in San Cristobal. Sorry, I don’t have the bull fighter’s name.

I decided that I couldn’t live in Sevilla for one semester without going to a bullfight.  Thus, I went to one.  And, I not only went to a bullfight, I went to the last one of the season on September 27th, which was also the Fería de San Miguel.  I didn’t know this before, but the Plaza de Toros (bullring) in Sevilla is one of the 2 most important bullrings in Spain.  It is also the oldest bullring in Spain!

Corridas de Toros (bull fights) are always done with 6 bulls and 3 toreros (bullfighters).  The 3 toreros on Sunday were Antonio Ferrera, Alejandro Talavante, and Daniel Luque.

Ferrera

Talavante

Luque

I would say that overall, the corrida de toros was a cultural event that I’m glad I went to.  It was pretty gruesome, but…  The ring has room for 12,500 people, and I would say that about 9,000-10,000 were there (guesstimation). It was very cool to see so many people and oddly felt as if we were at a football game, más o menos.  Everytime the torero did something “daring,” the crowd would yell bien! or muy bien! or olé!.  That was pretty amusing.  There was a super aficionado sitting next to us and he was very into it.   The whole thing lasted about 2 hours.

the opening procession. the men on the horses are known as picadores

this guy is called a banderillero and is holding really sharp sticks. He's getting ready to "pounce"...

this is Ferrera during his first round

look how many people there were!

Luque during his celebratory walk around the ring. Not to gross you out, but he's holding the orejas (ears) of the bull...

picture of the last bullfight. "action shot"

So each torero has a posse of helpers, including the picadores and banderilleros and some others.  In fact, I didn’t even think that the torero did that much because he only entered the ring/fight near the end when the bull was already weakened.  The torero uses a red cape, but his helpers used a neon pink and yellow cape (which, interestingly, matched the hot pinkness of their socks).

If you are so inclined, you can watch this video clip that I took (sorry, very low quality). But listen to all the people yelling and the band that just happened to be sitting right next to us!  Don’t worry, there’s nothing in it that should make anyone squeamish.  It actually just shows off the “skills” of Daniel Luque, the torero, whom the crowd went crazy over.  He’s only 19 years old…aka younger than ME…what…

Hope this post wasn’t too gruesome!

]]> http://animalblawg.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/catalonias-last-bullfight/ Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:35:37 +0000 David http://animalblawg.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/catalonias-last-bullfight/

David Cassuto

Photo: Carlos Cazalis for The New York Times

Catalonia –  Spain’s ferociously independent northeastern region may have seen its last bullfight.

According to the NYT:

Over the last three decades or so, dwindling interest among young Catalans has combined with pressure from animal-rights advocates and from Catalan nationalists to cripple toreo in Catalonia. Across the region’s four provinces, bullrings have closed; Barcelona’s is the only one still active.

There is currently a referendum before the Catalan Parliament to abolish the practice.   What’s more, there is dwindling interest in bullfighting all over Spain, even as many resist outside pressure (from the EU and others) to ban the practice.  Read the full story here.

This referendum and accompanying dwindling public support for bullfighting represents real progress.  While some may offer Hemingway-esque lamentations for the death of a longstanding cultural tradition, I say: Let this be the first of many steps away from bloodsport practiced in the name of cultural patrimony.

More an idea than a satisfactory execution, this. I was hoping to emulate Picasso (!) in his amazing bullfight picture where the matador’s cape flows around the scene like blood. I used up a whole pan of Alizarin Crimson in this and don’t know if it was worth it.

The Romans founded Cordoba on a bend in the River Quadalquivir and made it the capital of a province (Hispania Ulterior Baetica).

Great Romans like Caesar and Pompey spent a lot of time in Cordoba and  Seneca, the greatest Roman Stoic philosopher, was born there. About the time Seneca left for Rome Augustus  ordered the construction of a  spectacular bridge—the kind that was meant to last.  It did. Walk now across it above the broad river, just as all the old Romans did. For a moment nothing seems to have changed.

In fact, the waters are way down. The Guadalquivir used to be navigable and barges came up all the way from Seville and the Atlantic.

If you started across it from the south side, where a medieval fortress stands, you will come to the Old Quarter and the Great Mosque or Mezquita.

Mosque?

The Romans came and went. Then a few centuries later Cordoba  had a second great moment in history. It became the capital of a fabled empire, where wise kings ruled in courts like universities.

Al Andalus

In 711 the Arabs invaded Spain and quickly conquered almost all of it. They made Cordoba the capital of their new empire: Al Andalus.  By the tenth century about as many people lived there as do now, roughly 300,000.  That made it one of the largest cities of the time.
It was rich and one Caliph outdid another in magnificence.   Philosophers and poets produced beautiful and lasting work in the courts of Abd ar-Rahman I, Abd ar-Rahman III,  Al Hakam II,  and Al-Mansur Ibn Abi Aamir.

The Muslim scholar Averroes  brought about a revival of classical culture which changed the West. All this while the rest of Europe was barely surviving.

The Great Mosque

And the best of their architecture, the great Mosque, still stands to prove the dream was true, Al Andalus was really that splendid. The Mezquita, as it is now called, was the work of many Caliphs and is a sort of Muslim St. Peter’s. (It is in fact a Catholic Church today.)

A walk through the quiet forest of marble columns, many of them lifted from ruinous Roman buildings, takes you back a thousand years.  There is nothing like it–perhaps the greatest show of splendor  surviving from that shining time. The arches go on and on out of sight and they are inlaid with colored bricks and decorated with infinitely fine plaster reliefs. Those are the original cedar beams on the ceiling, carved and gilded by generations of master carpenters.

The whole temple is so huge that the Spanish Christians, once they had conquered Cordoba centuries later, built a cathedral inside it.  And that cathedral, large as it is, seems only like a kind of intrusive chapel in the vast Mosque!

There is a strange feeling of peace and timelessness as you sit under one of the orange trees in the courtyard outside the Mezquita.

Tradition has it that there was once harmony between the religions.  Jews were allowed to contribute to the learning of the time and some of the greatest poets, philosophers, and scholars of Al Andalus were Jewish. Maimonides was born and lived his best years here, and the poets Yehuda Halevy, Moses and Abraham Ben Ezra, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, and others.

A monument to Maimonides in a tiny Cordoba square

The End of a World

Christian kings finally took Cordoba away from the Caliphs in 1236.
Today most Spaniards think not of its distant history but of its beautiful snow-white patios with the walls all hung with pots of geraniums.

And the pretty, narrow streets of the Old Jewish Quarter, where you might hear this  copla from another time:

Adónde vas, bella judía
Sola y a deshora?
Voy en busca de Rebecco
Que está en la sinogoga

Where are you going, beautiful daughter of Israel
All alone and so late?
I’m going to the synagogue,                                                                                            To meet Rebecco

..

..

Cayetano at the Feria Goyesca (News Image)

If nostalgia is memory laced with a sense of mourning, the knowledge of the absolute finality and unrecoverability of time past, then it is only right that the memories of bullfights, with their built-in mortality, are more nostalgic than others.

Sitting on a plane on my way to Paris, I can’t help but look back on the feria of Ronda with a sense of loss. It was a remarkable time indeed

On the early evening of Friday, September 4th, my bus wended it’s way through the glacier-slashed mountains down towards Ronda. I felt fresh and vigorous, my mind recharged from a visit to London involving a stag night that lasted three days and involved me at one point going into a field and riding a strange horse under the moon without saddle, bridle or head collar – a story for another time.

Ronda is perched precariously on a landscape sliced in two by some vast tectonic knife. This is the town Hemingway described in his Civil War novel For Whom The Bell Tolls that I am currently rereading. This is the ravine the local conservative Nationalists were hurled to their deaths in by the drunken mob representing the honour of the Republic, who then had even worse terrors inflicted on them when the Fascists took it back in the name of old Spain.

It is also the town from which bullfighting had its birth, because this is where the first matador of the modern bullfight, Pedro Romero, was born, and this is where Spain’s oldest bullring stands.

Despite its antiquity, I am here to see Ronda’s youngest son, Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, whom I met and interviewed for the London Times’ Sunday magazine a few months ago (see post here). At the time we appeared to get on well. Having pointed out that journalism was not really my craft, he became interested in my book and surprised that I had got into the ring with live animals. He also seemed to understand and respect my attempts at impartiality on the subject of animal cruelty. Most of all, he expressed an artistic and emotional conception of the fight which is closest to what I think the bullfight is capable of being, and the direction in which its justification lies, if such a justification is indeed possible.

We talked for two hours or so, running over into this preparation time for that afternoon’s fight, which is why I regretfully called proceedings to a close. He then invited Nicolas and I to join him in the callejón, the alley around the ring in which the bullfighters stand. We met briefly after the fight when I declined his invitation to dinner so he could undergo the inevitable post-fight come down in a more relaxed manner and we have been in touch by telephone ever since.

So, although I could not claim close friendship, I had been trying to see Cayetano again for some time, but one or other of us was always unable to make it. However, with Ronda he left nothing to chance, arranging tickets for the sole, sold out bullfight of the feria, and arranging for Nicolas and I to stay in his hotel – the only one with a room in town.

To recap, aside from being a sympathetic human being who is also a matador, Cayetano is from one of the greatest bullfighting dynasties in Spain. His great grandfather was a matador called Cayetano Ordóñez y Aquilera. Born in Ronda in 1904, he took his alternativa, only after which one becomes a full matador, in Seville with Juan Belmonte as his padrino, or ‘godfather,’ and fought under the name ‘Niña de la Palma’ with great success in his youth. Hemingway knew him a little – he formed the inspiration for the character of the matador in The Sun Also Rises – but claims Cayetano the elder “went bad”. However, he had five sons who were matadors, one whom, Antonio Ordóñez, rose to great fame and note in Spain in the 1950s.

Hemingway returned to Franco’s Spain at the behest of Life magazine who wanted him to write about Antonio in 1959, who had become by then such a phenomenon in the ring that his wife‘s brother, the famous Luis Miguel Dominguin, had returned to the ring from retirement to maintain his crown against this upstart interloper. The resulting duel between the two for the hearts of the crowd across Spain became a series of articles compiled as The Dangerous Summer.
Before then, in 1954, Antonio, in honour of the 200th birthday of Pedro Romero, arranged a Feria in Ronda in his honour in which the bullfighters and ring attendants in the single corrida (there is a novice fight the night before and a horse-back fight the day after) should wear uniforms inspired by the paintings of Goya – hence the name: the Feria Goyesca de Pedro Romera. Antonio’s was designed by Pablo Picasso.

Antonio’s daughter Carmen Ordóñez was no less famous in her short life. First she married the matador Fran cisco Rivera y Pérez, who fought under the name, Paquirri and gave birth to Cayetano and his matador brother Francisco. She had divorced Paquirri by the time he died from injuries sustained on the horns of the bull Avispado when Cayetano was eight.

When I arrive in town, I quickly take in the sloping streets, white-washed buildings, the pretty parks and the predominance of statues linked to bulls and the fighting of them, before getting in a taxi and asking for the Hotel la Fuente de la Higuera. We drive out along the hills outside Ronda and keep turning right until we are on dirt tracks. We then arrive at the nicest boutique hotel I have yet seen in Spain, set into the hillside looking out over the ravine to Ronda. It is half past-seven and I am greeted effusively by the German owner Tina Piek in flowing English who leads me to a lovely open suite which opens onto a private terrace look up into the hills and a huge bed draped in mosquito nets, before telling me that Cayetano and his girlfriend Eva are resting in their room.

I unpack and set off into the hills to run off the lethargy and grime of travel, stunned by how green the landscape is, the mountains of the Sierra de las Nieves giving this region of Spain some of its highest rainfall. When I arrive back I grab a vodka and tonic and am ushered through to join the table of the maestro. It is only now that I realise that Cayetano has taken over the entire hotel and its only guests are him and his girlfriend, his manager Curro Vasquez (a former matador of some note) and his wife and myself, with Nicolas arriving the next day.

We embrace and talk about inconsequential things, aware that we have fallen into a friendship which has aspects of convenience, my book research and his public profile, but also has something honest in it. The age we live in may be media driven, but the bullfight remains a pillar of honesty within it – at least on this side of the horns. He tells me what Ronda means to him and his family. And I ask if his grandfather ever knew he was going to become a matador:

“No. Although I do remember one time when we were driving around my grandfather’s farm, I was about 18, and I said to him that I wanted to fight a bull in a village festival.” Such things are done with smaller bulls by aficionado-practicos, not full matadors. “And my grandfather said to me, ‘train hard’ and that was it. When my brother Fran started, my grandfather was his manager, and I think he worked him hard. Very hard.”

From there we talk about the ring and how half his grandfather’s ashes are buried under it, in front of the toril gate as he wished the bulls to run over him as they enterred. It is there, because the ring has a different structure to more modern rings, that Cayetano must stand to salute the President of the ring.

Speaking of the famous dead, we talk about his time on the West coast of the US, where he studied film and media in Santa Monica. He tells a story about how they were discussing Orson Welles’ contribution to film in class and the professor says Welles was buried, “somewhere near Malaga in Spain.”

“And I thought to myself,” said Cayetano, “do I tell him? No, it would be too much, but I was so tempted.”

“What?”

“Orson Welles is buried under the tree at my grandfather’s house. They were great friends and Welles loved the bulls.”

I ask him about his brother Francisco, another famous matador of this age. This fight will be Cayetano’s third – last year he couldn’t due to extensive internal bleeding and liver damage caused by a bull. Fran has fought the other years beside him, and is the manager of the bullring at Ronda: a job he must be doing well as it is the third most visited tourist attraction in the country.

“I think this year he thinks it is good if I fight alone, so it belongs more to me this time. I will miss my brother in the ring though. It will be sad not to have him there.”

There is a pause.

“So, what will you do tonight?”

I realise that despite the feria at which he is the man of the moment, Cayetano is staying at his hillside retreat, readying himself for the ‘big push’ of the day to follow.

“I was thinking of heading into town to see the feria.”

“If you want you can drop by my casetta,” the tents that compromise the almost fairground components of the ferias. “My peña (a club of aficionados) has one there. Let me phone ahead for you.”

Which is how I end the night standing by a vast electric fan being plied with drinks by the eager childhood friends of Ronda’s youngest son in a heaving tent to the ecstatic sevilliana music of yet another feria. It is by far and away the most popular tent in the feria, and the women dancing there are by far and away the most beautiful (Cayetano has modelled for his friend Giorgio Armani, after all).

I give up at three in the morning when things are still hotting up and walk down crowded streets looking for a taxi. I pass a group of what we call ‘youths’ now in England, wearing hooded tops and sitting drinking on a patch of derelict ground under grafitti. Do they pose a threat? I think as I pass them in my suit. I realise not. They are sitting in a circle with a guitar playing flamenco and taking it in turns to sing: the civilising influence of music, you might say. Or of having a good soul.

Everywhere there is music. Two girls pass in the street and flirt with their eyes, and when I don’t respond as they pass, they sing a few bars of a sevilliana to me. It is half past three by the time I find a taxi, but still there are prams in the street pushed by smiling families. I take a last look at the moon from my terrace before going to bed and hope that Cayetano does not end the same way as his father, dying on the horns of a bull. However, I fall asleep reading a translation of a Perez-Reverte novel someone has left in the hotel and am struck by the line: “every man should be given the opportunity to die standing up.”

The next morning I crawl out of bed and head to the main terrace for a coffee where I am embraced once again by Cayetano and his girlfriend Eva Gonzalez. I realise that I have not had a chance to speak to her properly. She is a tall, beautiful young woman who won Miss Spain a few years before and has found further fame as a television presenter. However, now is not the time, even more than the night before he is distant and isolated in his mind. So I leave him to it and set off running again, this time in the midday sun.

Along a flat and painfully hot stretch of road a four wheel-drive pulls up, in it are the president of Cayetano’s club, Juan Antonio, and another heavily set young man from the night before nicknamed, Rubio, ‘Blondie’, for his light hair.

“You are crazy like a bullfighter too?” They say, pointing at the burning sun. I am probably five miles from the hotel.

“If you drink, you must run.” I reply.

“Si, tu eres loco.”

They drive off laughing – with affection, but laughing nonetheless.

Nicolas arrives around lunchtime and we start to unwind by the pool. Eva is at another table with a friend and the friend’s young daughter. Cayetano appears in boxer shorts at the window and waves to us. Soon after his team arrive with suit carriers and he appears again, shouting down to the little girl:

“Do you want to see me dress?”

She runs up eagerly.

Nicolas and I take siéstas and arrive at the ring, cameras, notepads and a chilled bottle of sherry at the ready, to see the vast crowds outside. And these are the people who aren’t even going into the ring. This is celebrity bullfighting, the like of which even José Tomás cannot match. What he is to a select group of aficionados, Cayetano is to the general public, especially in Ronda. Although it is not just he who draws the crowd. The audience contains its fair share of notables as well.

The Fight

Inside I see the understated beauty of the ring. It has something medieval about it. No whitewash, the stone pillars hinting at the mountainous rocks from which it was quarried. However, it is hard to see the detail for the packed ranks of the audience. There is not an empty seat in the house. Nicolas and I move down to the seats Cayetano has given us in the front row of the audience so that our legs dangle down into the callejón behind where the bullfighters will stand.

At that moment, we see they are walking across the ring for the paseillo and we also the suit that Giorgio Armani has designed and made for Cayetano, a stunning creation in a bluish grey laced with silver thread and Swarovski crystals giving it the appearance of modern tailoring applied to something from the court of Louis XIV. As the most junior matador present – measured not by years since birth (Cayetano is a year younger than me at 32), but years since becoming a full matador – he stands in the middle of the other two fighting that day – Miguel Ángel Perera (whose fight in Madrid forms my introduction to the bullfight page found here) and José María Manzanares.

Cayetano salutes the president standing on the ashes of his own grandfather and walks over to the barrera. He is as distracted as I have ever seen a man. The other two matadors are also wearing special outfits, but unfortunately the same one, scarlet trimmed with Goya’s favourite black. Like two women arriving at a cocktail party in identical outfits, they avoid standing near one another. Their teams are also wearing different outfits as well, and one wonders about the expense to the matadors of having such things made which can only be used one. Even the ring assistants are dressed in outfits from Goya paintings, although these make them resemble deck hands on a pirate ship.

The first bull comes out of the gate at a slow walk, and I begin to think that this bull has no interest in fighting, when he spies a flapping cape across the ring and accelerates from standing to gallop in a single bound. As he passes me, I notice that they do not place the divisa in this ring, the small pin carrying the colours of the breeder which agitates the bull before entry. This one is entirely untouched, and he charges hard. Manzanares meets him beautifully with the capeand I remember that although I do not like him as a matador, he has undeniable skill and flare. He looks like a young, lean Brando, with the heavy eyebrow ridges and overly strong bones – a boxer’s face unmarked by the glove.

The bull is then given only one lance by the mounted picador before Manzanres demands the horses leave and the first act is over. In the second, the banderillas, the barbed sticks, are placed fast and without drama. Everyone wants to cut to the chase, and matador’s the work with the smaller red cape, the muleta.

Twisting into the charging bull on this again and again, Manzanares shows a beautiful line of the body, and yet their is an aggression and domination in his passes that is somehow ugly – my notes call him a “beautiful brute” and “a bull without art”. The bull itself is at this point an odd mixture of aggression and fatigue, rearing at the end of the passes. However, there is not much more to this fight than that, and when Manzanares goes in with the sword, I can see the bunched muscle of the shoulders actually preventing the blade from going in. However, it does go in the second time and the death is quick.

The crowd seem an eager bunch, silent when necessary, but generous with applause for good work. They demand an ear for the performance, but the president is more sober than they and ignores the appeal.

The second bull comes out in the same way, with a noticeably massive morillo, the complex of shoulder and neck muscles that give the fighting bull its trademark shape and unique ability to lift and throw anything from a man to a draft horse. This one looks like it could make short work of an elephant. Perera, who some say is the most important up and coming matador and a real competitor to Cayetano, stalks out on his unnaturally long legs – the only matador I have met who is taller than me – and begins a sequence of perfect veronicas with his feet together which look like they would not be out of place coming from José Tomás. In fact, I suspect he has been watching that matador whose effect on aficionados is so singular.

Again, the bull takes only one pic – the matadors seem to be competing to see who can inflict the least damage before the final caping with the muleta. With this instrument, Perera begins really to work, building up a faena, a ‘display’, of linked passes of interesting emotion and danger, again in the manner of Tomás, close to the body, not looking at the bull, feet together. However, unlike Tomás, Perera’s judgement is minutely out and the bull hits him hard – I cannot tell whether with horns or shoulders – and he is sent flying to the ground. The bull comes after him on the ground, plunging its horns into the dirt of the arena, before redjusting its aim and coming down towards the centre of his back. At exactly that moment the other matadors and Perera’s team arrive, one flashing his cape before the bull’s muzzle, cutting short the thrust so that it does not penetrate the jacket.

Perera gets to his feet, dusting himself off, and Cayetano asks if he is okay before they leave him to his bull again. The President signals for the music to start and he begins to cape again, but something is broken in his style. His rhythm is off, and the passes now just look dangerous without being moving or powerful. They have no link between them, and when he kills, it is clean but one is left with nothing.

Now Cayetano comes out in his exquisite suit, and the crowd sit up in expectation. He walks over to the barrera and sits down on the ledge it has about a foot up from the ground which bullfighters often use as a step over the wall to flee the bull. The bull charges in and is directed around the ring by his team stationed at various points – this has been planned – until it reaches him. Against the barrera the matador not only has no where to run, but if he is hit with his back to a wall, the injuries are far worse. However, he passes the large cape over the bull’s face in a beautiful veronica, and it turns and he does the same again and again. This is without doubt the best so far, even taking into account the inevitable prejudice I have developed in favour of the matador.

The horses come in and the bull is pic-ed once, but heavily so. Cayetano makes no pretense of wanting the bull pristine when it is returned to him. His banderilleros are the most efficient there, and he then dedicates the bull to the plaza with style, and to a roaring applause. When he cites the bull, which is now stationary by the barrera, I notice his brother Fran for the first time, himself wearing an immaculate suit of the business variety. He is banging the wooden wall to get the bull moving. It seems his brother is as much ‘in the ring’ as he could be without fighting himself.

Cayetano begins a lovely series of passes, enfurling his own body in the cape so the bull appears to be drawn in to wound him, whilst in reality it actually seeks out the fast moving end of the cape, which it passes before it too is wrapped onto the matador’s body.

For his next faena, he begins on his knees with the muleta, passing the bull again and again, until the bull trips and stumbles and he stops, letting it get its breath back. Not that he stops performing, making his muleta perfect on the sword and appearing to slowly form his body into the correct shape for a pass, all the while allowing the animal to regain its wind.

He passes the bull again and this time it hits him, knocking him to the ground, and although the bull does not turn from its charge, leaving him clear, all eyes are drawn to the incredibly fast moving shape of Fran vaulting the barrera, sprinting across the sand to his fallen brother’s side, far faster than any of the other matadors or Cayetano’s team whose job this is.

Cayetano sends his brother out of the ring and cites the bull for another charge, the bull calls to him, and he answers, calling it. They make another series of passes which are good, but not excellent, because the bull is now fatally tired. Cayetano collects the killing sword from his mozo de espadas, his ’sword-page’, and lines the bull up with the cape, before arcing the blade up backwards over his head in a semi-circle until it is aimed at the weak spot between the bulls shoulder blades, to one side of the spine. He calls, he charges, the bull rises to meet him and the sword goes in. Almost immediately the bull falls to the ground dead, and crowd becomes a sea of waving white handkerchiefs. The President yields this time and Cayetano is awarded an ear of the bull. He takes his lap of honour.

There is now a pause, and Nicolas and I tuck into the bottle of sherry as a 1950s fire engine circles the ring, spraying water onto the fine sand so it is not blown up by the rising wind. The wind which is the matadors worst enemy after the bull itself, stripping him of control of the life-saving capes. Cayetano stands in the callejón with his brother as various press photographers do their worst.

When bull four comes out, there seems neither drama to it nor to Manzanares who is fighting. It would seem that everyone is bored, according to my notes that includes the bull, although I suspect that was not the case. My eyes wander to Cayetano spraying something on an injured calf muscle. Towards the end, Manzanares tries to up the pace by working purely en redondo, wrapping the bull completely around him like a belt, his right hand leading it with the cape, his left apparently pushing its rump. However, as I have said before, the posture and facial contortions of this bullfighter seem to me annoying. He insists on himself and his greatness. A beautiful pass is a beautiful pass, I have no need for the matador to look me dead in the eye afterwards and say, “ole!” I am annoyed when he is awarded two ears for his work. By this stage I cannot deny a bias.

Perera walks out into the ring and his bull comes into the ring like a demon, and Perera leans that long body into him and performs a series of excellent veronicas, most notable for the smooth turning of the body.

When the horses come out and the other matadors also enter the ring the help protect them, I notice that Cayetano’s elegant suit has great patches of blood under either arm as though he had been sweating thick blood. Then I remember how José Tomás had left the ring in Jerez with his crotch soaked in blood, but no where else. It is strange how a matador’s style, and thus where they most frequently pass the bull, can mark them.

The bull takes only one pic, before the president changes the acts, and then the second act of the banderillas – because Perera also has an efficient team – is over in under three minutes. Perera has obviously told them to hurry to maximise his time with the muleta so he can truly show his stuff to the crowd.

He walks to the other side of the ring from the bull, places his feet together, the muleta held lightly by his side, and he calls the bull in this trademark José Tomás, ‘you shall not pass’-manner. It is beautifully done, but the bull hits the cape with such velocity that it is taken out of Perera’s hands. Again, he puts in the best moves, but lacking rhythm, no feeling can be transmitted to the audience. Realising this, he tries to up the emotional ante by taking greater risks, but it is too late for me. I can see that the bull is tired and the danger is not real, he is resorting to trickery. As my notes say, “Perera messes around with the bull too much.”

Now, when he has exchanged swords for the killing sword, the bull retreats back to the toril gate by which it entered. It has found a querencia or ‘lair‘, in which it feels safe and is thus at its most dangerous, acting on whim and refusing to charge. This is what happened when Perera got gored so badly in Madrid the year before. In losing his rhythm caping, he lost control of the bull and thus allowed it to dictate its place of death, endangering the man in the process.

Hesitant to go in over the horns in this place, he is given an aviso, a trumpet warning that he is in extra-time, and so he steels himself and goes over the horns anyway, delivering a neat and brave kill. The crowd, who fell for his tricks (and are in full feria mood) demand ears for him, but the president rejects them. This time the crowd won’t give in and Perera looks furious as the president becomes deliberately stubborn. Out of the corner of my eye I see Cayteno swearing under his breath, whether because the president is upsetting the crowd and he has to please them next, because the crowd is watching him as an Ordóñez in the family ring, or because he genuinely thinks Perera deserves it, I’ll never know. Although I suspect all three.

It all becomes comic when the beleaguered president uses a handkerchief to signal that he wants the next bull out pronto and one of the ring lieutenants interprets this sign wrongly, fetching an ear from the body of the bull which has now left the ring. When he comes back with the bloodied lump, the crowd go quiet until the president, now furious, sends the ear back out of the ring again to rejoin the body. The crowd become angrier than the president and I am reminded of the early 20th century accounts of riots at bullrings over things like this, leading to the ring being burnt down. I take another swig of sherry and discuss this with Nicolas deciding that it is unlikely in modern Spain, but at least this ring is built of stone rather than anything flammable.

Cayetano now has to walk into a hostile ring, and one can see his anger. The crowd are not against him, though. As one of them shouts,

“Matador, fight the president, not the bull.”

He sets his face into a hard mask of concentration and opens with some beautiful capework before rushing through the acts of the picadors and the banderilleros. He dedicates the bull to his girlfriend Eva and then he walks out onto the sand. He kicks off his shoes for the improved purchase and grounding of stockinged feet, and gives the best set of stationary, feet together passes of the day. He then goes into an unusually good set of long, deep, strong right-handed passes, and the president tells the band to start.

Cayetano now starts a master class in how to combine dangerous and good capework with a sense of showmanship without sliding into the fraudulent or gaudy. The kicking off of the shoes may or may not have been necessary, but it is the closest a matador can get to rolling his sleeves up. Now he uses the music, taking long woodwind solos as pauses to give the bull time to regain its breath, while he angles his body slowly and places the sword in the right place in the muleta, so that when the brass and percussion strike up again, the bull is fresh and he is ready to begin the dance again. However, this would not work unless he had the mastery of the muleta and the courage to bring the bull close to back it up. A beautiful frame still needs a beautiful painting within it. The most notable thing about his style is how much he brings the bull around his body, but without taking this dynamic too far. The beauty lies in the matador appearing to draw the animal around, not in pushing it yourself, as Manzanares does.

Nicolas and I become excited for our friend, who now stands on the cusp of the great success he has been driving at for so long. The crowd are behind him, the president is behind him, and it is all in order for a great victory. All that remains is the kill. He is handed the steel sword and begins his trademark manoeuvre, squaring up to the bull then bringing the sword over in an arc above his head until he is staring down the blade at the bull. Then he calls, moves the cape in his left hand, and charges the bull with the sword, piercing deep and right so that the crowd are on their feet cheering before the animal has hit the ground, which happens moments later. The crowd take out their handkerchiefs and the president is quick to respond. Two ears are awarded and Cayetano begins his lap of honour.

As he does so, an enchantingly pretty girl, no more than 8 years old, runs into the ring in a dress. Cayetano takes her hand, and leads her round the bloodied sand to the roar of the crowd. This is his brother’s daughter – and a granddaughter of the Duchess of Alba, the most titled woman on Earth – and Francisco normally leads her round himself when he fights. A brother and daughter within the ring, a brother without, the grandfather beneath it – Ronda is certainly Ordóñez country.

The three matadors are then hoisted onto the shoulders of the crowd and taken out through the main gate. I later discover that the crowd outside the ring reach such a frenzy that they begin to tear at Cayetano’s clothing. Luckily, Armani’s stiching is both crowd and bull proof.

I see something similar leaving from another exit where I witness Eva’s fame as people mob her, the crowd so packed around her that I cannot even reach her to lend a hand.

The After-Party

Arriving at the pre-dinner drinks at our hotel, I talk first to Pom Piek, the Dutch husband of Tina and co-owner of the hotel. Tall, blonde and tanned, with the easy laid-back charm of a lifelong traveller (he had just returned from a month of sailing between the islands of Indonesia) we fall into banter about the fight. It turns out that Cayetano stayed at the hotel before his very first fight in Ronda as a novice and, since that was a success – and the hotel was so sympathetic to his pre-fight needs –  he has taken the whole place over every year subsequent. So Pom has seen the evolution of the man and the fighter.

He remembers the first fight when Cayetano paced the terraces through the night and finally asked for hot chocolate to help him sleep at six a.m. The next morning the great figures of the bullfight arrived to support the scion of the House Ordóñez, and Pom – who has lived with the Masai in Kenya – said it resembled the herd elephants gathering around a youngster in time of trouble. However, now Cayetano is very much in control, very much the maestro. We also discuss the change in his style, Pom thinking he has been learning from his brother how to reduce the risks, whilst I suspect he has simply got better at his own style and learnt how not to get hit that way. The most striking thing about this brief taurine chat between two Northern Europeans is the lack of fire and phlegm that our Latin cousins would have put into it.

When the thirty or so dinner guests are all assembled, Cayetano and Eva descend from their suite – Cayetano’s Armani traje goyesca exchanged for Giorgio’s more normal look of black jacket, white shirt, and jeans. We embrace and I offer congratulations as Cayetano leads me round the room peforming introductions. A little later, when we descended onto the grass where the candelit tables are, I ask him in a moment of quiet, how he really feels.

“Have you ever done something with so much adrenaline that you are completely and utterly overwhelmed. More than a tentadero with the vaquillas? (see my attempts at this in the ring here) A bungee jump or a skydive?”

“Running the Miuras in Pamplona?”

“Yes,” he laughed, “I forgot you were crazy like that. Well, do you remember how numb you were after.”

“It’s true. I seem to remember drinking through that part.”

“Food first, that later.”

I notice his smile is a little less forced now. I say,

“All the time I have spent with you up until now has been before a fight, this is the first time I’ll get to see you after a fight. You know, relaxed.”

“Relaxed. Oh yes my friend,” he said, “tonight you’ll see me really relaxed.”

I sit down on a table with Cayetano’s manager Curro and various young attractive women – including his wife. I am next to Lucia Nuñez, a family friend of the Ordóñezs and cousin of my own friend Tilda. It is she who tells me how Cayetano’s brother Fran is having his own party in town – the wild party as opposed to the quiet one out here in the hills. After the roar of the crowd, I know which one I would rather be at.

As the wine flows freely I start speaking to Curro – who does not speak English and whose rapid, economical Spanish I find so difficult to follow. We have all become a little bawdy by this time and Curro mentions something about an incident he had with a nun when he was ten but will elaborate no further. Someone suggests that such a meeting was not spent on the knees – referring in Spanish to praying. I counter that unless it was a portogayola, a caping manoeuvre performed on the knees at the beginning of the fight at the ‘cage-door.’ I have no idea if the sexual pun will work in bullfighting Spanish, nor whether it is one step too far from a Protestant Englishman. There is a momentary pause as people take in what I have said, and what the pun is referring to, and then they almost fall off their chairs with the sort of explosive laughter which comes from utter surprise. After that I relax.

As dinner draws to a close, I notice that above on the main terrace large numbers of people are gathering and Lucia tells me her brother Xavier has gone to collect a group of gipsy flamenco singers and guitarists – the evening looks to be warming up.

From there on, my memories become hazy again. I remember meeting Cayetano’s impossibly tall and elegant cousin Paola, the daughter of the great Luis Miguel Dominguin, and discussing something about bulls and something about theatre – her husband is an actor and director. I talked with him too, but in Spanish which I simply cannot remember. I remember the gipsies playing and singing, and Xavier introducing me to the oldest most senior one, in a beautifully cut suit over an elegantly thin figure, his grey-black hair slicked back from the dark, clear cut gipsy features. He took my arm and sang a flamenco song to me, for me. And Cayetano came over as well and we stood together listening, and then he said, “now you have lived.”

And there was much talking and singing after that. And some dancing. And some flirting, although not too much (with my girfriend in England) and Curro watching over his astonishingly beautiful and youthful daughter who spoke perfectly English with a sense of mischief. And her boyfriend was watching too, and had a sense of sadness about him, like a general who has seen his enemy’s reinforcements from his vantage point, but whose army has not and who carry on fighting bravely.

At some point around two Nicolas gave up and went to bed, but I carried on, standing with between four gipsies, clapping in and out of time, as they serenaded Cayetano and Eva, the Englishman lost in a sea of music and wine, not sure if he was making the rhythm, following it, or simply nothing to do with it and everyone else was too polite to complain. Whatever the musical truth, I was happy then. It was four, then five, then six, and I was still happy, so I chose that moment to leave and to go and sleep under my mosquito net with all the doors and windows open, a little flamenco in the distance accompanied by the occasional fox or night bird.

When I woke up, everyone had gone and Pom and Tina suggested I stay on to recover and write for a few days in their even more beautiful and dramatic hotel section, The Lodge, since they had no guests there, I was welcome to stay for free. Cayetano was last seen sitting with the old gipsy at nine in the morning drinking rum, his friend’s passed out around him. Then he got up and paid his bill – and mine – and left. It was Sunday and he had a fight on Thursday and some recovering to do. But I had indeed seen him relax with a singular style and resolution. If you can call it relaxing…

Alexander Fiske-Harrison – 6,710 words

In my last post I said I would publish some more photos from my bullfight paintings exhibition last year, at the bullring in Turre (Almeria, Spain), this charming little town where we live. I had got the special authorisation from our mayor for that, to be honest I had expected it to be denied as I applied, only 2 days before!The fact is they had never been confronted with such a petition in our town hall… but our mayor is a modern man, he even made sure himself that I got the space I needed, just by the entrance.

We don’t have a real bullring here in Turre, so on some important occasions, like the town fiesta in October every year, a mobile arena has to be constructed. Of course, it is just a tiny one, but I must say that I adored to ‘participate’ in the bullfight there. It was quite intimate, and of course the ambience was great, a bullfight here being quite a rare event..

It was quite hilarious as the fire engine arrived and parked just by my exhibition. It really looked as if they were expecting that some anti-bullfight fanatics would arrive and set my paintings on fire!

On the other side of the fire engine… I guess they were the horses from the picadores…

In fact there were horses everywhere outside the bullring, before the bullfight started. I suppose they had no room to “park” them inside the mobile arena. ..

and this is where the bulls were parked, at the back of the arena, inside the lorry which brought them., waiting for their appearance on stage… and their death, unfortunately. I can tell you, there was a lot of restless movement and banging inside there, quite scary! Always sad when one thinks that these beautiful wild animals, so full of energy, will be killed within 10 minutes after the beginning of the fight. I must say that I suffer much more under this thought than under the sight of them being killed… It somehow makes me more conscious of the occasional unfairness of life and death…

I once had the opposite experience. I was invited to go to “the butchery” (I don’t know the right word), inside the arena, just after a bull was killed which I had just seen fighting. It was a deep existentialist shock, to see  this wild animal which had fought so bravely some minutes ago, hanging there by his feet and being skinned… I will never forget this!

]]> http://labelleaurore.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/bullfight-what-a-corrida-is-about/ Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:43:31 +0000 labelleaurore http://labelleaurore.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/bullfight-what-a-corrida-is-about/

Toreador

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to see a Corrida here in Juriquilla, Querétaro, Mexico.   A corrida is not for the softed heart because as you know, the animal gets to be killed at the end of the show. 

Speaking for myself, I just love Corrida.  It is an act of dancing between the man and the beast, full of colours and traditions that existed in Mexico for many generation.  I have listed chronologically each even that happens in a mexican corrida since for me, it is important to understant the why and how of each scene in front of my eyes.

A Corrida starts with the paseillo , with everybody involved in the bullfight entering the ring and presenting himself to the public.

paseillo

alguacilillos

Two or sometimes in this case, three Alguacilillos, on horse’s back, direct themselves to the presidency and symbolically ask for the keys to the “puerta de los toriles”. Behind that door there are the bulls.

With the door being opened and the first bull entering the ring the spectacle starts. It consists of three parts, called tercios, being separated by horn-signals.

3 toreros

There are three toreros in each Corrida (on the picture, see one green torero, one purple torero and one gold torero), by the way, and each will have to torear two bulls.

capote

In the first tercio the bullfighter uses the capote, a quite large rag of purple and yellow color.

picadores

Now enter two picadores, on horse’s back and armed with a sort of lance.

el picadore

The second part is la suerte de banderillas.

banderilleros

Three banderilleros have to stick a pair of banderillas into the attacking bull’s back.

banderillas

In the final “suerte suprema” the bullfighter uses the muleta, a small red rag.

muleta

He has to show his faena, his masterity to dominate the bull, and to establish an artistical symbiosis between man and beast. The Corrida ends with the torero killing the bull by his sword.

OSCAR MANUEL SAN ROMAN NEIRA

IGNACIO GARIBAY ZEPEDA

What a show it was. 

FERNANDO OCHOA CHÁVEZ

All the pictures were taken by me, and I am still working in learning how to handle this little beauty of mine!

Well, some days ago I started to present to you here my bullfight ecards series, which I created for the 123greetings Studio…. today I was away, and when I came back, my mailbox was filled in with mails from the Studio announcing that many of my ecards had been suppressed. I noticed quite fast that they were the bullfight cards, and I suspected at once, of course, that the theme was a problem. And in fact here is the reason why (click on the picture to see why and browse the latest news of the site)

and yes, I am upset… for many reasons, but I won’t speak publicly about it  

Our plan was to spend most of the final day in Chinchón, have a final lunch in the square and watch the excitement build towards the event before leaving for the airport.  What we had reckoned with was that just before midday all of the entrance gates to the Plaza were suddenly closed shut and entry after that was strictly by ticket only.  That was a bit of a disappointment because it wasn’t especially thrilling just hanging around outside so we sat and had a drink and without tickets to an event we couldn’t attend anyway, even if we had, we were forced to assess the options available and then change our plans.

On our way to Toledo a couple of days before the town of Arunjuez looked as though it might be worth a visit and as it was more or less on the way back to Madrid we decided to go there and see the Royal Palace.  We returned to the hotel and picked up the car and our bags and after negotiating our way out of the town made the thirty-minute drive to Arunjuez, which is a town that was declared a World Heritage Site in 2001.

It is hardly surprising that with forty-three listed sites Italy has the most World Heritage Sites but for those who think of Spain as nothing more than a country of over developed costas with concrete condominiums, marinas and golf courses it might be a shock to learn that Spain has forty sites and is second highest in the exclusive list.

On every visit to Spain I seem to be visiting a new World Heritage Site so when I counted them up I was interested to discover that I have now been to fifteen and that is over a third of them.  In 2005 I visited Barcelona in Catalonia and saw the works of Antoni Gaudi and Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau. Then in 2008 I saw the Historic Centre of Córdoba,  the  Caves of Altamira in Cantabria, the Old Town of Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville.  In 2009 in the motoring holiday around Castilian cities I visited the Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct,  the Historic Walled Town of Cuenca, the Historic City of Toledo and the Old Town of Ávila.  Interestingly though, there are no World Heritage Sites in Madrid.

When we arrived we were surprised at just how busy it was and there was limited parking space available and lots of people out for a walk.  We stopped first at the royal gardens and walked inside to a sort of museum where the receptionist explained that there were no tours today but it didn’t matter because we were short of time and almost certainly wouldn’t have bothered anyway and then we moved the car a few hundred metres closer to the town and walked instead to see the Royal Palace.  King Juan Carlos has eight Royal Palaces to choose from but I suspect he doesn’t stay at this one very often, most are close to Madrid and one is on the island of Mallorca.

As we walked through the gardens with their water features and flower beds and in the company of lots of local people I began to think about all the reasons that I like Spain and one is that for someone like me on the shorter side most of the people are what I regard as normal size.  According to Eurostat the Spanish are the shortest people in Europe and the average height for a man is five foot seven inches and I feel that that is just about the perfect size and it makes me feel quite comfortable.  Officially Dutch men are the tallest at an average of five foot ten inches and although not included in the Eurostat figures the Croatians claim to be an average six foot one inch.  I went there last year and I can confirm that they are indeed big lads.

We walked all the way around the grand white stone palace, some of the gardens and the natural weir on the River Tagus and we would have liked longer in this very pleasant little town because it would have been nice to have lunch here but we were ever mindful of the flight times and the one hour drive back to Madrid airport so reluctantly we left Arunjuez and made our way back.

At first this was quite straight-forward and we joined the motorway for the capital but as we got closer it became more and more confusing and I became convinced that the motorway system had been designed by someone with a perverse sense of humour because as we approached the airport it began to resemble the electrical wiring diagram for the space shuttle.  Luckily there were always directions for the airport because without them we would surely have got hopelessly lost.  We arrived back in plenty of time, returned the car to the man from the car hire company, went directly to the departure lounge and waited patiently for our flight home.

This had been my sixth visit to Spain in eighteen months and now that I have abandoned the costas for the countryside I cannot wait to return again.

I have been accused in my last post to break the image we all have of the wild fierce bull… in fact I was just trying to reconciliate everybody, because although I love bullfight, I hate the fights around it…

so, here it is again, the beast!

Bon appétit, Toro!