La Corrida de Toros

La Corrida de Toros

My knowledge of bullfighting started with Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun also Rises which I read when I was about 17 or 18. That was a long time ago and since then I have read countless other descriptions of La Corrida de Toros, literally “the running of the bulls” in Spanish. Most recently I reread travel writer Paul Theroux’s juvenile criticism of the spectacle in his book The Pillars of Hercules in which he cheered for the bull to gore the torero. I would say that my own views on the subject lie somewhere between Hemingway and Theroux but closer to Papa. I have traveled quite a bit I countries that celebrate La Corrida de Toros, I had never felt obliged to attend one myself.
I was downtown one day during Fallas checking on how to get a bus to the airport when I rode past the ticket windows in front of the Plaza de Toros next to Valencia’s train station. In conjunction with the Fallas celebration, the bull fighting season opens earlier here than other parts of Spain. After all these years of reading about it and avoiding the spectacle, I decided that it was time to see for myself what goes on inside the ring.

It had been raining all day after more than a solid week of sunshine so I was prepared to sit in the rain for my first Corrida. The rain finally stopped about two hours before it was to start. I had a glass of wine in a bar across the street. It looked like something out of a Hemingway short story and may very well be. There were black and white photographs of matadors on the wall and old carteles, or posters, of bullfights held long ago. When I came outside again there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Bullfights are very popular with tourists in Spain but as I entered the Plaza it seemed like it was almost all locals on this particular afternoon.

For 1€ you can rent a pad to give you a bit of comfort as the seats as just a slab of concrete. The rows are very narrow and we were lucky enough that there was no one sitting in front of us. We were instructed that tradition dictates that you bring your own sandwiches to eat during the breaks. I was also told that a lot of the men smoke puros, or Cuban cigars. Any excuse to smoke a great cigar is fine with me. I have to say, if there is a better place to smoke a cigar than a corrida in Spain on a sunny day, I haven’t found it yet.

I went to my tobacco shop and picked up a couple of smaller cigars called panatelas. I like these because there aren’t as toxic as the bigger ones that I used to smoke. They generally last about 20 minutes to a half an hour and they don’t leave your mouth feeling as if someone took a dump in it while you weren’t looking. When I walked into the stadium I immediately began to suffer from cigar envy. A bunch of guys sitting next to me were all smoking Cohiba’s that looked almost long enough to double as walking sticks. If I go to another corrida I will bring a bigger cigar.

I wasn’t sure what I would think about bullfighting. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be violently opposed to it as was Paul Theroux who saw it as incredibly cruel and barbaric. I understand that not every culture on earth is exactly like the one in which I was brought up. Theroux’s criticism of the Corrida just seemed to be coming from someone who knows nothing of Spanish culture and has no desire to do anything to alleviate that ignorance. This is an odd attitude for someone who writes about travel. I don't know why anyone would attend a corrida if they find them to be objectionable. I have heard people complaining while they are watching the spectacle and I have asked them what did they think was going to happen. It's as if these people think they are going to a movie or a play and a bullfight breaks out unexpectedly.

Although this was my first corrida, I have read enough about it that I did know what was going on, step-by-step. I knew what sort of thing represented a good corrida. I knew that each corrida is divided into three parts, or tercios: The picadors on horseback, the banderilleros who put the banderillas into the bull’s neck, and the matador who perform a series of maneuvers with his cape and then kills the bull with his sword.

Even I could see that the fourth corrida on this day was rather exceptional. The bull was strong and fierce and everyone did their job well. When it came to the kill the matador plunge his sword deep and the bull dropped immediately. People waved white handkerchiefs and seat cushions to signal for a trophy for the matador. He was awarded an ear for his efforts, the only prize awarded at this corrida.

The following day I picked up the newspaper to read the account of what had transpired at my first bullfight. As with anything else, this world has its own vocabulary, some of which I already knew. I will leave you with a few vocabulary words that you may find useful if you ever decide to go.

Bullfighting terms

• Corrida.........A Bullfighting show
• Tauromaquia.....Bullfighting
• Plaza de Toros….Bullring
• Lidiar..........To fight
• Puerta grande...The main door to the arena
• Gradas...Seats at the back of the ring (cheapest seats)
• Barreras........Front seats
• Sol/Sombra......Sun/Shade - the choice as to where you sit
• Muleta..........A small red cloth stretched over a stick (Palo)
• Capote..........The red cape
• Paseillo........The parade of fighters at the beginning
• Ruedo.........The ring
• Estoque.........Sword
• Espada..........The matador's sword also called the ESTOQUE
• Matador/Diestro.The top bullfighter, the one who kills the bull
• Novilladas......Beginners fights held separately
• Rejoneador......Horse-mounted fighter
• Toril...........Enclosure for the bulls
• Picador.........Fighter to weaken the bull
• Banderillas.....Barbed darts on colored shafts placed into the bull's shoulders
• Puntilla........A dagger that is stabbed into the base of the bull's skull
• Puerta grande...The main door to the arena


I live only about three blocks from Valencia's plaza de toros, a wonderful neoclassical structure built between 1850 and 1860 and designed by Sebastian Monleon based on the Roman amphitheater of Flavio Marcel. It is every bit as interesting on the inside as on the outside, and the outside is spectacular. I have been to several corrida de toros (bullfight is the atrocious translation which I won't use here) while living in Spain. I have also seen a few dozen others on television, back when they were broadcast on regular TV. Now the corrida is only carried on the pay channels. I have also witnessed a few bull festivals in local villages in the community of Valencia.

I hadn't really made up my mind on the event until I went this past week and witnessed one of the more thrilling displays you'll ever see. It wasn't just what was going on in the ring that impressed me, but everything going on inside the plaza de toros. Let's just say that it was one of those nights when everything went perfectly. I love to smoke a big, fat cigar and walk all around the entire structure, from top to bottom. I love the view of the city from the outer galleries. I like to watch as the bulls are removed from the ring and taken directly to the butchers. It's funny to watch as very young kids—boys and girls—watch in complete fascination as the bulls are cut up. “Look, Alejandra, that's where meat comes from!” they all seem to be thinking.

I love how they will let you bring in whatever you want. None of this, “No outside food” business at the corrida. People bring in coolers of beer, sandwiches, wine bags, and bottles of champagne to celebrate the evening.

Some people in Spain say that the days of the corrida are numbered, that it will slide into the past. When and if that happens Spain will become a bit more like every other country in the world and a little less idiosyncratic. I wouldn't like to see that happen. I never try to defend the corrida when I discuss it with Spanish people, and I feel as an outsider I shouldn't criticize it either (not that I would). I just think that it is something that Spaniards will work out for themselves. I will enjoy the corrida while it lasts.

San Fermín
A San Fermín pedimos
por ser nuestro patrón
nos guía en el encierro
dándonos su bendición

(San Fermin, as our patron, guide us in the run, giving us your blessing.)
-Prayer recited three times before the running of the bulls (encierro) in Pamplona. Sung to the tune of “Caesar, those who are about to die salute you!”

A firework is rocketed into the air on July 7th to mark the opening of the Festival of San Fermín, a yearly icon in Pamplona, Spain heavily romanticized by Hemingway. I have visited the lovely city of Pamplona but haven't attended the festival. I can't really say one way or the other how I feel about bullfighting. I've been a few times to see bullfights but I don't plan on going to San Fermín. Maybe I'm too old although even as a young man I possessed an abundance of survival instinct and common sense. I do enjoy watching it on television every morning when they broadcast the daily encierro. This is when the bulls, accompanied by the calming effect of an equal amount of steers (also with long horns), run through the streets of Pamplona among a bunch of people (somewhere between 1,500-4,000) dressed in traditional white shirts with red handkerchiefs around their necks. The idea is to outrun the bulls, some weighing close to 700 kilos, as they make their way through the narrow streets to the Plaza de Toros. The six bulls come from a different breeder every day and will be featured later in the day in the afternoon bullfights. In a Spanish dictionary I found this definition for the verb encerrar from which encierro is derived: to put a person or an animal in a place where it cannot get out. San Fermín covers both of those. The only defense runners have is a rolled-up newspaper and their own swiftness. Sound like fun to you? Me neither.

The encierro begins every morning promptly at 08:00 during the eight days of the festival and is over in a matter of a few minutes. Just about every day at least one person requires the skill of trained medical people. Deaths are not unheard of during the encierro and there have been 14 since they began keeping records in 1924. I have seen many, many serious injuries in the past two years of watching it on television. In an accident unrelated to the encierro, an Irish tourist died at Pamplona this year falling off a high wall (in 2007 two people fell to their deaths at the same spot on the Redín Wall). It's a little like spring break with bulls. Pamplona seems like a dangerous place to be during San Fermín so for now I don't mind being a TV spectator...or I may take a train up there this week. Anyone feel like going with me?

From my Spanish friends I have heard nothing but bad things about the festival at Pamplona. There is nothing but drunk, belligerent tourists; there is no place to stay; everything is overcrowded; and bulls have sharp horns are just a few of the complaints from those who have survived. Most of the people I have talked to admitted to going to the festival when they were teenagers and wrote it all off as foolish disregard for their own safety.

Spanish television broadcasts the encierro every morning and they treat it like a major sporting event. They go over every meter the bulls traverse and show instant replays and slow motion clips of exciting moments. They actually time how long it takes for the bulls to run from the corrals to the bullring. On the coverage one morning they showed doctors and nurses in a Pamplona hospital emergency room watching the broadcast, anticipating the injuries they would soon be treating. If I were a taxpayer here in Spain, I would be a little upset about government health care paying to have some drunk's butt stitched up after a goring.

In 2007 there was a big brouhaha over a man who took his ten year old son to the encierro. They showed the kid running down the street ahead of the bulls. He looked like he was having a blast, something the authorities should consider when the father is sentenced. They have since changed the rules at the festival. This year on the last day of San Fermin, kids under 10 get in free! People do a lot of dumber things at San Fermín than bring under-age children to run with the bulls. In fact, from my view from the couch in my living room, just about everything people do at San Fermín looks pretty stupid.

How many times were you told as a kid not to play in traffic? How many times were you warned of the dangers of alcohol? To me, San Fermín looks like a few thousand people completely ignoring these two bits of sage advice. After the encierro, if you are not already one of those laid out on a stretcher speeding towards the emergency room, they have an even more dangerous game for you to play. People feeling suicidal and those who have always wondered what it feels like to take a horn in the ass, file into the ring of the Plaza de Toros and get chased around by a young bull that always looks thoroughly pissed off. There might not be any ambulances available after the initial wave of casualties during the encierro so remember to apply direct pressure until help arrives. Keep saying that prayer to San Fermín and see if that helps.

I would never run in the encierro for a lot of reasons—physical cowardice being somewhere near the top of that list. An even greater fear for me than getting gored in the stomach is the total embarrassment of being injured, because you just know that they will show it over and over again on TV. I'm not looking to be the day's entertainment, not like that. I completely understand why other people do it, as stupid as it may seem to me to risk your life in some drunken festival in a remote corner of Spain.

I think the encierro is no different than doing tricks on a skateboard or any of the other “extreme” sports. I think that humans have evolved to such a degree and we have eliminated just about all of the risks faced by our ancestors where now just about everyone can expect to live to a ripe old age. In the past simply surviving the birthing process was a fight against the odds. In an era of seat belts, knee pads, guard rails, non-slip shower mats, child-proof medicine bottles, and life jackets, people sometimes need to feel a little bit of risk in their lives. Everyone rebels against the certainty of life in different ways. Instead of running down a narrow street being chased by crazed cows, I'll stick to ignoring other safety advice, like not closing the lid before striking a match when I smoke a cigar, or leaving my bike helmet at home on occasion. That's about as extreme as it gets for me these days.

Bous al Carrer (Valenciano for “Bulls in the street.”)
After watching the encierro every morning for almost a week on television, and unsuccessful in my attempts to talk anyone into going to Pamplona for the final days of the San Fermín Festival, I opted for the next best and closest thing. There is another week-long festival in the small town of Picassent just a few kilometers south of Valencia. Every day during the Picassent festival there are bulls running around in the streets in one section of the town, religious processions, and lots of food and drink—this is Spain, after all. It wouldn't be quite the same thing as San Fermín, something of a much lesser magnitude, but Picassent is only a twenty minutes from Valencia. Instead of buying a plane ticket for Pamplona I just needed to pull my metro card out of my wallet.

There are dozens and dozens of these bull festivals in villages throughout Spain during the months of summer. Most are not really geared to stimulate tourism, something we noticed immediately in the almost-empty Saturday night train to Picassent. Once we stepped off the train the festival seemed to be in full swing with bar patron spilling out into the street. Most of the festival revelers were soaking wet from being hosed down in the square a few minutes before we had arrived and no one seemed to notice a few tourists who seemed to have got off the train in Picassent by accident. As far as I could tell, we were the only out-of-towners at the festival on this evening. In Valencia I feel that although I may not exactly fit in, I also don't stand out like a sore thumb. Here in Picassent I felt as if I had lost all of my camouflage.

It only took us two beers in two bars to find our way to the section of town where they let the bulls loose. One quadrangle of the town is enclosed in heavy iron gates to keep the bulls in and allow people to escape. The festival had not begun because there were very young children walking around inside the closed area, as well as old folks sitting out on lawn chairs. Still, I was a bit hesitant to climb through the bars and walk around. I kept an eye on all of my escape routes should I happen upon a mad bull or any other sort of threatening livestock.

There are bars and restaurants inside the enclosed area with iron gates and wooden barriers protecting the customers. It's like this entire part of the village is one big shark cage. If I remember correctly, in the movie Jaws the shark bit through the cage like an impatient kid unwrapping a Christmas gift. Not only did I want heavy bars between me and any crazy bull, I also wanted to be on the second floor looking down. There are elevated grandstand areas where people can sit and watch the events which fell right in line with my safety demands. Unfortunately, I didn't see any place to buy a high-powered rifle so I felt like my security was still a bit incomplete.

They let the bulls out into the street one at a time. The bull would run around the square while a few of the braver (or more foolish) of the participants dodged the animal as it galloped past. After a while they would bring a steer out into the street to calm down the bull and then lead it back into the corral. I had brought a cigar along with me, and like at the corrida, this seemed like an ideal place to light up. I am always self-conscious about blowing smoke around so I left the safety of the second story bleachers and climbed down to street-level to light up. At first I stayed inside the barriers but the bull only came by once in a while so I stepped outside into the street. I know that smoking the occasional cigar has its risks but I would have never thought that two of those risks might be the horns attached to a 1,000 pound bull. There were lots of people outside the gates after the bull passed but then I could see the crowd splitting in two as the bull made its way back toward this area. I tried to make may way back inside the bars with as much dignity as possible but that is a bit difficult when you are screeching like a teenage girl in a slasher movie. Smoking can be hazardous to your health.

Back in Valencia later in the evening, I was talking with some Spanish friends about the festival. I stole a joke from Caddy Shack when someone asked me if I had run out in the streets with the bulls. I said that I had wanted to run with the bulls, as I pointed to my knee and winced as if in pain from an injury, but that I couldn't because I was a big coward. I don't think these people had seen the movie so this got a good laugh.