Story: Blood and Sand

The sun poured onto the saffron sand, picking out crimson drops of blood encrusting its surface. A hush had descended on the 19th century auditorium as the man in the sparkling suit, head held low, eyes intent, drew out a sword from behind his red cape. His gaze was fixed on the huge creature in front of him: a panting, angry bull, pawing the ground and snorting while the blood splashed down from the web of muscles encircling its massive neck. Six hundred kilos of testosterone concentrated into two frighteningly large, wide horns, with points as sharp as sabres, facing a lithe slip of a man squeezed into a tight suit, his only defence a red cape and this sword. He held the bull motionless in front of him by the sheer force of his stare.

Slowly the matador raised the sword and turned his body so that his whole energy was directed in an arc through the weapon. As the audience held its breath, he surged forward and, in one movement, sank the sdword up to its hilt into the bull’s neck. The animal danced in a confused circle, while the man stood there still holding its gaze. As the bull’s knees started to buckle, the creature suddenly burst forward with its last gasp of life, but the matador did not flinch.. He raised a hand and, the tenacious look still pinning the bull, slowly lowered his outstretched arm, inches away from the top of the bull’s head. With this movement, almost at the matador’s command, the bull sank at his feet. For a split second before it died, before the thunderous applause and waving of white handkerchiefs started, the bull and the man were held in a perfect moment, the fight over, strange comrades in the curious ballet that is bullfighting.

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Bullfighting is big business in Spain today. it is estimated that 150,000 people are in some way involved in the industry. Despite the condemnation of international animal welfare groups, shifts in attitude have been slow in coming. The owners of the 300 bull breeding farms represent a powerful lobby group, receiving subsides from the EU and exemption from the 1998 amendment to the Treaty of Rome which covers animal welfare. In 1996 the Ministry of Culture provided nearly 40 million pesetas to support the corrida (bullfight). This does not include the subsides given to individual bullrings by local and regional councils. In 1998 the total number of fights staged in Spain, France and Portugal reached 1,813, almost 200 up on the previous year. After the slump in popularity witnessed in the 1980s, bullfights are on the rise.

The reasons are legion. The young people of Spain are becoming impressed with bulfighting again, the language of the fight is part of the hip patter which the coolest young people talk. Television stations pa big money for major bullfighting events; indeed, it is hard to escape the corrida on television during the season, which runs from April to October. Matadors are revered as rock stars, mobbed at every turn, followed around by groupies and comfortable showing off their homes in teh glossy pages of ¡Hola! magazine. Populist young matadors like Jesulin de Ubrique and El Cordobes attract hordes of young people, women especially. This generation of new matadors has a particularly common tyouch and they are as disliked by purists as they are by the anti-fight lobbies. Jesulin de Ubrique even staged a fight just for women:almost 10,000 women packed the ring and the television coverage received record ratings. Purists fear that such displays are turning the fight into a circus, that the original art form – the supposedly great, glorious and mystical fight between man and beast – will be cheapened.

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The origins of the bullfight lie in a region of wild mountainous beauty in the Andalusian interior, in the White Town of Ronda. This was the birthplace of the Maestranza, an order of knights that laid down the rules of early bullfighting on horseback, an aristocratic pastime. Legend has it that in the 18th century, Francisco Romero jumped into the ring when an aristocrat had been unseated by a bull, distracting the animal by waving his cap. The crowd loved this display of clowning bravery and the modern bullfight was born. The Romero family embellished it further: Francisco’s son Juan is credited with organising the matador’s team. However, it was Francisco’s grandson, Pedro Romero, who, in 1785, laid down and demonstrated the rules of the fight in the newly built Plaza de Toros with his series of passes and moves, many of which are still, in use today. Fighting well into his seventies, Romero killed about 6,000 bulls in his ring, and died at the age of 90, having never been gored.

Each corrida begins with a procession. To the accompaniment of the paso doble, two mounted, traditionally dressed alguacilillos (constables) lead in the three matadors, followed by the cuadrillas (team) and the bell-bedecked mules that will drag off the dead bulls. With the matadors wearing their traje de luces (suit of lights), followed by three similarly attired banderillos and two picadores mounted on horses wrapped in armour, there is no denying the splendour of the spectacle. The fight itself will last some two hours, during which time the three matadors will dispatch two bulls each.

A hush descends as the band announces the imminent entry of the first bull. The door to the enclosure snaps open with a bang and the bull trots ponderously into the ring. The fresh bull is put through its paces by the banderillos and the matadors, who will make some passes to study its movement and pac. Some matadors choose this moment to make their most outrageous and dangerous moves, before the bul is tired and injured.

With another blast of the band’s horns, the picadors are led in. these mounted, padded fighters, with their wide-brimmed hats, lances and armoured horses, vividly recall the tradition linking this event with its aristocratic past. The bull is encouraged to charge one of the picadors, who can now attack it with the lance, piercing its neck and back muscles in order to make it lower its head, without which it would be impossible dangerous to fight on foot. Undeniably the most gruesome part of the corrida, this suerte de picaris intensely disliked by aficionados. For the horse it is clearly not a pleasant experience ?? its ears are stuffed with rags to shut out the noise of the bull and spectators, its vocal chords may be cut to stop it screaming in pain and it may be injured despite its padding. Also, many picadors are over-zealous in stabbing the bull, leaving it too drained to put up an effective fight. After three such attacks, the horses, blind-folded on the right eye (the one that faces the bull), are eld out and the suerte de banderillas is trumpeted in.

The three banderillos take it in turns to place a set of banderillas (darts mounted on coloured shafts) into the bull’s neck. The banderillo attracts the bull’s attention by moving his own body rather than a cape, so that the bull chrges and the two are running towards each other before the banderillo springs up between the bull’s horns and stabs the two darts into the bull’s neck or back. He then safely moves out of the bull’s line of vision, but sometimes a canny animal will chase his tormentor, resulting in an undignified but rather comical leap to safety, recalling Goya’s sketches of the ring.

The suerte de matar can now begin. the matador enters the ring alone, having swapped his pink and gold cape for the red muleta. He raises his knotted hat to the president of the fight and the guest of honour, as often as not royalty during the major festivals. He dedicates the bull to either an individual, to whom he tosses his hat, or to the audience ? by far the most popular decision, earning instant goodwill from an irreverent crowd ? when he places his hat in the centre of the ring. Thus begins the fluid engagement of animal and man that crescendos into a graceful, twirling dance as the matador draws the bull ever closer to his body, sometimes using the bull’s haunches as it brushes past to pirouette round and face it again. In reality, of course, such moments are almost as scarce as the clean kill through the heart; the animals often too weak, confused or close to death to engage effectively, or the matador may not make the mental connection with the bull which is necessary to raise the fight into the realm of artistic ritual.

The kill itself is rarely achieved with one thrust of the sword. Usually a dagger is subsequently used to sever the bull’s spinal chord, causing instant death. If a bull has been especially brave, the spectators will applaud it heartily at its death. The bull’s body is then dragged out by the team of mules. Should a matador have impressed the audience, they will wave white handkerchiefs and demand an award one ear, two ears and the tail, and the matador will walk around the ring, displaying the trophy to the audience, whose cheers are onkly matched by their eagerness to shower him with gifts: a variety of objects that ranges from the customary flower to wineskins, ahts and handbags. The highest accolade a matador can receive is to be carried out, shoulder-high, from the ring’s main gate by an excited crowd.

Mention cruelty to an aficiando and he will talk fo the shoddy practices that, in the last few decades, have haunted the corrida. Allegations of foul play include shaving of a bull’s horns –not only incredibly painful but also disturbing to its sense of balance– to lessen the risk for the matador, the drugging of bulls with sulphates to induce severe pain and further malcoordination in teh ring, or the injection of sedatives. The World Society for the Protection of Animals insists that one of the signs of a civilised society is that there is no gratuitous cruelty to animals for the sake of sport, and talks of educating people.

An aficionado wil argue that if the corrida didn’t exist, the Lidia breed of bull would die out with it; that the industry has done much in the 1990s to clean up its act and that the corrida is not a sport anyway, it is a cultural event. And sure enough, newspaper reviews of bullfights are found not in the sports section but under the heading of culture.

The fight is billed as a contest of life or death, but for the bull there is only certain death. For the matador and the aficionado, however, there is what the Spanish all ‘the bullfighting worm’, a worm that enters the brain through the retina and eats you up so all you can think about is the fight. Those with the worm are not hard to find. The King of Spain is one of Spain’s great aficionados. The future of bullfighting looks secure.

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