The Bullfight

How could I not go? It would be like going to Rome and not seeing the Coliseum or going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower. Despite my instinct, I wanted to see this cultural fanfare.

Every Sunday night the crowds gather at the Plaza de Toros. Some people sit in the sun (el sol) while others choose the shade (la sombra). We opted for the latter. Families come together to share this moment – much like fathers and sons watch baseball and football together in the States.
The floor of the stadium was covered in sand. As one of the administrators walked around with white paint creating two circles in the sand, the band tuned their instruments.

As the clock approached 8:30 pm, we could see the matadors convening on the opposite side of the arena from us. The band played music you expected to hear at a bullfight – heroic and patriotic pumping and pounding with drums. The matadors finally entered the arena and the crowd went wild.
The tension in the stadium began to build as the matadors prepared their capes and decided where they would stand. A man stood in the middle of the stadium and presented a sign that I thought was the name of the first bull - Zacarias. It said 502 on it. 502 kilograms? Over a thousand pounds? Was this right?

One of the side doors that radiated from 10 o’clock opened and out races the bull - a chestnut colored, muscular and branded steer with a green and red string falling off its shoulders.

The matadors enticed the bull towards them by waving their pink capes. The bull charged. The matador would hide behind wooden barriers to escape getting gored. Then matadors from another area of the stadium would come out and tempt the bull in their direction with their capes. This continued for a while - each matador saving himself from the bull’s horns behind the wooden barriers.

I connected with my Taurean soulmate. I tried to make eye contact with the bull; trying cosmically to tell him to kill the matador some how.
Out came the picadors – the men holding long sticks with sharp points on them. These men rode atop horses covered on all sides with padding. The picador’s job is to stab the bull between the shoulder blades to weaken the bovine. The matadors tantalize the bull with their capes. As the matadors pull away, the picadors stab their steel pointed javelins into the bull’s body.

As I turned my eyes away, I could sense the commotion that was happening around the bull. Bother bull charged into the horse with his horns but he was lured away by the matadors. One of the picadors pierced the bull one more time with his spear and then all the picadors left the arena; their jobs done.

The next part was just as disturbing. A number of matadors entered the arena with long pointy sticks in each hand. One by one they would call and tease the bull. As the bull charged, the matador would jump in the air and come down into the bulls shoulder with the two points. The bull moved away from the human, injured with blood streaming down its trunk and front legs. Another two matadors succeeded in penetrating the bulls flesh. The colorful sticks moving around the body of the bull with no way for the poor bull to remove them on its own. Oh how I wanted the battled bull to bust lose and lance through the flesh of the matadors with his horns.

My wishes wouldn’t come true on this night. The bull was breathing desperately. The main matador approached the bull with a red fabric behind which hid a sword. His purpose was to tire out the bull and then stab him with that sword. Within a few moments, this happened and another matador stabbed the bull in the neck with a dagger.

The crowd cheered for the matador while the ‘cleaners’ came to take the bull’s fresh carcass away. The cleaners tied a rope around the bull’s horns and their group of horses dragged the dead body along the sandy arena floor. This gave new meaning to the saying ‘dragging the bull by its horn’.

We saw another round with a far more spirited black bull. He gave chase and was angrier. I sincerely hoped he’d hurt one of the matadors. But alas, this match ended exactly the same as the first.

For all its majesty and tradition, I was very angry by this spectacle. I did not think it was a fair fight. Of course the matador with his long sword would be seen as courageous. If only the bull had wounded the matador with his sharp horns, then I would have seen this as a fight among equals. Hand-to-horn combat would have been more appropriate – the only weapons being the ones on the body of the animals themselves.