I might be about to lose some friends.
That’s sad of course but I’m prepared to take the risk. It
comes with talking about a certain Spanish cultural practice in terms more
nuanced than condemnation to the ninth circle of hell.
I was in Valencia last week for the annual festival of
Fallas (if you’re speaking Castillian Spanish) or Falles if you are speaking
the local Valencian language. Fallas has grown from being uniquely Valencian to
being a world event of cultural significance immortalised on a list kept by
UNESCO, who seem to have jurisdiction over this kind of stuff. I had a blast at
Fallas and I intend to write something about it soon but for now I want to
concentrate on one specific corner of the festivities. That’s the bit that took
place in the Plaza de Toros, which if you are interested is located right next
to the North Station just outside the medieval city centre.
Oh dear. The Plaza de Toros. We know what that is don’t we?
It’s where the Spanish practice their cruel “sport” known as bullfighting.
Every civilised person knows that bullfighting is barbaric and to inflict pain
and humiliation on a sentient creature in the name of sport must be condemned
in the strongest possible terms. The chances are that most people reading this would
agree with those sentiments to some extent.
And straight away we have a problem and I am going to try to
explain why.
I lived in Madrid with my family for a couple of years in
the mid 90s and in the second of those years we rented a house from a landlord
who was a great aficionado of the bulls. The landlord had (still has) three
daughters and the youngest of the three had inherited her father’s interest.
Between them they taught me a lot about their passion and I came to a level of
understanding in excess of most foreigners’ but still far behind theirs. I
suppose this is why I am trying to shift my readers’ understanding just a
little.
The first challenge that we have is that it isn’t easy to
talk about this subject in English. The terms that have been adopted by
English-speakers are more or less meaningless to the Spanish. For a start it
isn’t called “bullfighting” in Spanish. There is no sense in which this is a
fight as we might understand it. The bull is going to be dead at the end come
what may.
Even if the torero ends up dead, a member of his team will finish the bull.
What’s that? What’s a torero, and how might he end up dead?
The torero is the guy in the fancy suit who waves a cape
around to induce the bull to charge at it. He is also the one who (assuming he
is still capable of doing so) finally dispatches the animal with a sword that
cuts its spinal cord. In English he is often referred to as the matador and
indeed “matador de toros” which means “killer of bulls” is a real title and is
actually used. But torero is the more usual name. And how does he end up dead?
It’s rare in modern times but it remains the case that 600 kilos of fighting
bull equipped with sharp horns is a pretty deadly adversary. Those horns might
have been designed expressly for the purpose of opening arteries. And sometimes
they do. Modern medical attention means that gorings are very rarely fatal
nowadays but sometimes, in a small bull ring, in a remote province, the medical
facilities just might not be up to the job.
And while we’re on the subject of the toreros, just a word
about the pronouns. The overwhelming majority of toreros are male but there are
a few, a very few, women who have achieved that status. I saw the first female
torero of modern times, Cristina Sanchez, appear as a novice at Las Ventas in
Madrid in around 1994. She later “took the alternative” - “tomó la alternativa” over
the border in France in 1996 to become a full matador de toros. However she
retired from the ring after three years and there have not been too many
following in her footsteps.
So back to the language. If it’s not a fight then what is
this strange sport?
Well, for a start it’s not a sport. For the critics who cry
“How can they call this a sport?” the answer is simple. They don’t. If it were
a sport the newspapers would report it in their sports pages and they do not.
The posh papers in Spain actually have a specific section in which they report
on the Corrida – a word that literally translates as “run” – as a cultural
event or even an art. Definitely not a sport.
What about the other problems?
It’s cruel and degrading!
This charge is harder to dismiss although it is worth
splitting out the two components. The popular British tabloid view of the
Spanish as a race of people who delight in the torture and degradation of dumb
animals is almost entirely fiction. Who would have thought it? Tabloid
journalists making shit up? Whatever next? I can’t speak for every small fiesta
in every small town in the country but the idea that Spanish people like
nothing more than shoving donkeys off church towers or setting fire to furry
animals in the name of a perverted pleasure is a long, long way from the truth.
The bull that enters the ring at the start of a corrida has the respect of the
crowd merely for being a bull. The crowd wants the bull to do well. It wants
the bull to provide a stern test to the torero. It knows that the bull will end
up dead but it wants its death to be a noble one and in my opinion it is, compared
with being herded into a dark cage, stunned with a bolt gun and having its
throat cut surrounded by the urine and faeces of the hundreds of others that have
gone before it. On the whole I would defend the charge of degradation fairly
vigorously.
But cruelty? This is more difficult and there is no doubt
that for the final fifteen minutes of its life the bull does suffer significant
pain. An inept torero can make the final dispatch much more traumatic than it
need be. Jumping back to the degradation for a moment, there are few spectacles
to match the anger of a knowledgeable crowd at a corrida if the matador fails
to do his job properly at the moment of truth. So, yes, the bull suffers pain
for around fifteen minutes and ends up dead. Compared with a bull that has been
bred purely for meat it has a few minutes more pain although arguably a lot
less fear and at least it has the opportunity to strike a few blows back at its
tormentor. On the other hand the four year life of brave bull (that’s the best translation I can
make of toro bravo but it isn’t exact) leading up to those fifteen minutes is
more pampered than that of any other domesticated animal except possibly
thoroughbred racehorses. Fighting bulls are raised by specialist breeders from
bloodlines that go back through generations. Some hard-core aficionados
maintain that the quality of the brave bulls has never recovered after most of
them were lost during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s but it isn’t for want
of trying. The program of the corrida usually lists the breeder of the bulls before
the names of the toreros who will go into the ring with them.
So there are a few things that it isn’t but then what is the
corrida about?
There are many ways of thinking about the corrida. It’s a
direct throwback to the games in the Roman arena. It’s a spectacle on a grand
scale with music and brightly coloured costumes. But what it is above all else
is a place where men – and a very few women – test their skill and courage in a
public arena. More or less every society there has ever been has had ways in
which young men are tested to prove their manhood. Sometimes it is traditional
like the Land Diving of
Vanuatu, sometimes it is modern like the various gang initiations in Los
Angeles and other American cities. It seems to be hard-wired into the human
psyche at some level. A form of the corrida has existed since classical times
but in its modern guise it dates back to the early 18th century. For
almost three hundred years it has been the most prominent way for a Spanish man
to prove his courage. When the torero steps into the ring his aim is to win the
respect of the crowd, to prove that he is worthy to kill the brave bull that
has the crowd’s respect already.
Perhaps the most telling argument against the corrida is
that it is outdated. In the 21st century there is no justification
for this type of macho demonstration of manhood. It’s an argument that has
found support in Spain and the Autonomous Region of Cataluña outlawed the
corrida in 2012. This might have had more to do with Cataluña’s aspirations to
independence from Spain but the measure could not have passed the regional
legislature without a degree of genuine support. Between 2007 and 2012
attendance at corridas in Spain fell by 40%. Partly this was due to the
economic crisis but it must also reflect a waning interest among Spanish people.
So on the whole I expect that the tradition of the corrida
will gradually fade away. It will linger longest in Madrid, Seville and across
the southern region of Andalucía but eventually it will be uneconomic. Perhaps
there will come a point when an ambitious politician will judge that there is
advantage to be gained by promoting its final demise.
Meanwhile many people will continue to inveigh against the
continuation of this tradition and it is of course their absolute right to do
so. Those who avoid the use of animal products of all kinds may do so on the
grounds of animal rights without the suspicion of hypocrisy. Those who continue
to eat meat or consume cows’ milk are perhaps less certain of the moral high
ground and must fall back on other arguments. Perhaps the degradation that they
worry about is not that of the bull but rather that of the crowd of people that
draws pleasure from the spectacle. It’s a thought.
In writing this piece it has not been my intention to
persuade anyone of the value or the justification of the corrida. You will make
up your own minds on that and probably have already done so. I am more
concerned that if you condemn it you do so based on a clear view of what it is
and what it is not. Over time it will probably go the way of other outdated
traditions and when it does something will have been lost from the world. I
think that is a little bit sad but I suppose I am in the minority.
