(pic: last kill of the bullfight/last paragraph of blog)So updating my blog isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Each day I am tired from the day/night before. I take long siestas during the day, when I should write my blogs. So I am going to blog about a few events each time I blog, rather than just making a list and telling myself I will get to it… sometime. So now I will finally talk about the bullfight. I bet this is much anticipated, well assuming y’all still read this.
First off, I must say that the bull fight was gruesome. Secondly, it was an amazing experience. We arrived at the Plaza de Toros and it was scorching hot. We didn’t know if our seats would be in the sun or the shade, so we decided to buy some fairly overpriced beers to cool us off. We arrived only a few minutes before the fights which seemed to be a little late because the stands were full.
The standard bullfight consists of 6 bulls, who will ultimately perish, and 3 bullfighters, who hopefully will not. Each bull fighter, or toreros, gets two bulls. There is a standard procedure of how each bull will be fought. First a horn is played and the bull comes flying into the ring. Then there are multiple people with capes of a larger size, and not red, who mess around with the bull. I have heard it is to test the bull and a way for the bullfighter, who isn’t there yet, to watch and see the behavior of the bull.
Then once the bull is tested, two men on horseback ride into the ring. The people with capes are there to distract the bull from charging the horses. The horses are covered in armor, but it looks like padding. The horses are also blindfolded for obvious reasons. The men on horseback each have a lance. They then allow the bull to go up to the horse which he usually attacks. The padding is enough to protect the horse, but the horses are still in danger. The man on horseback then proceeds to stab the bull right behind the bull’s neck, drawing a lot of blood and weakening the bull. The amount of times the bull is stabbed depends on how much the bull is fighting the horse and whether or not the crowd whistles. If the crowd whistles during this time, the man on horseback will not stab the bull anymore.
After the horses leave the ring, three men go into the ring without capes. They are accompanied, however, with people that were testing the bull earlier. They have two flags that have sharp ends to them and their goal is to place them in the bull’s back, or shoulders, close to the neck. Then they will get the bull’s attention by making noise or yelling “toro!” which means bull in Spanish. The bull will charge at them and they will be running sideways, making the bull change directions. They then run towards it at the same time, reaching over the horns of the upset, bleeding bull and stabbing them with two flag like objects. They have to be very swift, and possibly insane to do this.
After the bull has been approached by 3 different men and stabbed 6 consecutive times, it is time for the matador to fight the bull. He enters the ring with applause and a head held high. He will then have his red cape and do strange maneuvers with the bull. The bull will keep charging the red cape while the matador attempts to make the bull do it consecutive times, which is very cool to see. The bull fighters literally are inches away from being knocked down, or stabbed.
After the bull fighter has “fought” with the bull, it is time for the kill. The bull fighter then walks to the edge of the ring and handed a longer sword. The sword is curved and not very sharp along the sides, only the tip. If someone were to try to just force that into a bull, it would not happen. The sword is designed to be forced into the bull by the bulls force against the sword while he is running. The matador holds the sword in an interesting way, too. He places the palm of his hand at the bottom of the sword’s handle. He then makes a fist around the base of the handle and holds it like so, waiting for the bull. He will then shake the cape, instigating the bull once again. As the bull is running, he drops the cape, and gets up high and forces the sword downward through the bull’s back into the heart, if all goes well. The force from the bull running is what gets the long sword all the way into the chest cavity.
Okay so now my experiences. The bullfight was very gruesome. Each fight ends with horses dragging the dead body around the ring and then out of the ring. The kill would be hard to watch at first. The first two fights I didn’t know what to think. But after that I began to appreciate it, in some weird way. It got exciting once you get over the fact that the bull is in pain and suffering literally until it dies. Then again when I type sentences like that, I feel like taking a stance against bullfighting. But I have better things to do I guess.
One of the bullfighters was actually a woman. Well, hardly. She was 18 years old. It was ridiculous to imagine her out there. At one point throughout the fight she dropped her cape, and dropped to her knees, face to face with the bull. Literally. She then opened up her outer jacket, waving her chest at the bull. The crowd, including myself, went absolutely nuts. It was when I realized that bullfighting is meant to be entertainment. They are entertainers. And I was certainly entertained by all three of the fighters.
My favorite was also the crowd’s favorite. I have no idea what his name is, but he was, well, a badass. That’s pretty blunt. But he was so entertaining. He did so many twirls with the bull and was in total control of the beast at all times. It was very intense. He is said to become one of the greatest, but I don’t know much about that topic.
There were a few bull deaths that were hard to watch. One bull took at least a minute to finally go down. After being stabbed into the chest through the back, it stayed standing. Fighting to the very end. It wasn’t fighting the fighter anymore, but it was obvious the bull knew not to give up. It tried for a long time to not go down, but eventually it was too much.
Another kill that was fairly brutal was the last, most exciting, kill of the night. It was the young lady (woman?) who had the honors. The bull, like the previous, would not go down. The sword was in the bull still, allowing blood to come out. But apparently the matador (matadora?) missed the heart, so the bull was not dying like it should. Stupid bull. Then they handed the girl-bullfighter something shaped like a sword except it was like a cross on a handle. The cross part at the end was to reach and pull the sword out of the bull so it would bleed. Instead of just doing that, she took the ‘t’ shaped object and approached the bull. She then jammed it into the back of the neck in one fluid motion, dropping the bull instantly. It was definitely the most exciting, and brutal, kill of the night.
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