Bullfighting in My Time

I snapped these pics when I splurged on sitting on the shady side at the
Maestranza Bullring in Sevilla in September 2005.

When I first started to love Spain, I loved bullfighting right along with it. I loved the spectacle, the daring, the honor. The complex structure and the different opportunities each fighter had to show his prowess were fascinating, and the culture of poor young men (and more recently women) being able to make it big through talent, guts, and life-risking seemed like a fairy tale.

In the summer of 1998, I went to the Maestranza bullring in Sevilla every Sunday to sit in the sweltering sun and see the apprentice bullfighters get more kills under their belts, with mixed results. Even at its goriest, the whole ritual was a heady thrill to me, inflaming all my sensibilities that preferred "Spanishness" above all. None of the American students in my group went with me. None of them had the same sense of Spain that I did. I took my mother in September 2005 and leaned forward to get a better look when she covered her eyes.

If anyone asked how I could conscience such a practice, I argued the following:

• The bull represents a Roman god who must be defeated. This is a battle of good versus evil that will continue in some form for all time.
• The bulls live fantastic lives, free range, doing what they like, for years. The end of that charmed life is unpleasant, but it's short.
• Sure, the bull always loses, but sometimes the man loses, too, so it's not as unfair as you would think.
• The meat is not wasted, but served as food in the bars around the bullring. You might as well get a spectacle out of the necessary butchering.
• There is no way to love Spain as much as I do and not like a good bullfight. It's the single most Spanish institution, period.

The Canary Islands banned bullfighting in 1991, but that could hardly threaten my sense of cultural unity, because the Canary Islands sit far away, off the coast of Africa. Catalunya's 2010 ban (effective 2012) didn't phase me, either, because Catalunya is an autonomous region with its own language and which has never desired to appear culturally attached to the rest of the peninsula.

But this year I finally woke up to hypocrisy of enjoying los toros while being outraged to the core that precious, rare, rhinoceroses are all too routinely killed for sport and monetary gain. I can easily argue against my previous self:

• A real, live bull represents only himself.
• There are many ways beef can be butchered without causing terror, rage, and profuse bleeding in the animal. Terror, rage, and bleeding are all things we could do with less of in the world.
• Any game with the threat or certainty of death of either party belongs in the realm of fiction, not the real world.
• It's insane to enjoy watching death, whether the meat is going to be used later or not.
• In the final analysis, one does not need to recreationally kill bulls to prove his or her Spanishness.

There is a whole industry built around bullfighting, and far be it from me to want to put even more Spanish citizens out of work. But inevitably, the practice will fade and I'm now on the side of those who hope it will fade sooner rather than later.

In the future, I will only go to a bullring to attend musical events. (Yes, bullrings can be used for any stadium-type event! No waste of architecture! I also think the bullfighting museums should remain open to keep that part of history fresh in people's minds.) I can't wait to go back and investigate what exactly the essence of Spain involves, now that bullfighting is out of my mental picture!

Update! OMG! The greatest Spanish singer-songwriter went to the bull festival opening day, March 2, in Olivenza! He looked incredibly dapper in the stands.

If going to a bullfight was the only way I would ever be allowed to sit next to Manolo García, I have to admit I'd be there with bells on! We all have a price.

Bullfighting through History

Cantiga de Santa Maria 144, panel 3 (Late thirteenth century)

Bullfighting -- that quintessential, controversial, Spanish pastime -- has a long history. Most researchers agree that present-day bullfighting is just the latest (and last?) incarnation of the kind of events as infamous as the gladiator games of ancient Rome. During the Middle Ages, the former Romans in Spain developed more and more complex bull baiting games, as evidenced in the pictures in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. The first panel shows a very fine specimen of a bull enclosed in a plaza while spectators become participants by taunting the bull safely from upper stories of the plaza's buildings. We already see lances and darts, which presage banderillas and picos, and one man in the balcony even waves his cape to capture the bull's attention.

Cantiga de Santa Maria 144, panel 4

In the second picture, a man has unwittingly wandered into the plaza and is chased by the bull. The spectators do what they can to help the man escape.

These pictures inspired a scene in the early parts of my novel Seven Noble Knights. The bloodshed and gore were a great opportunity for me to begin developing those images before any humans come to harm. I shared an excerpt for the last Six Sentence Sunday.

In  the eighteenth century, bullfighting took on all the rituals and trappings it has today. The modern traje de luces is a super-bedazzled, sporty version of eighteenth-century nobles' clothing. In the twentieth century, bullfighting became a huge industry, especially after Ernest Hemingway appropriated it as the pinnacle of manliness. I came upon Papa Hemingway's innovative writing just after the obsession with Spain dropped into my head, and I adored his depictions of the agony and the ecstasy of the golden age of bullfighting. I can still highly recommend Death in the Afternoon. For a no-nonsense guide to the mechanics of a modern bullfight, look here.

My own take on modern bullfighting will appear this Wednesday. In the meantime, perhaps you'd like to see my homages to Hemingway and that most risky of arts: Alternativa   El Novillero

El Novillero: Alternativa, part II

I wrote this second Hemingway tribute the year after "Alternativa." I further developed the story, keeping the same characters as if it were the day after the first story took place. I think you'll notice a slight relaxation of the Hemingway features.

This story also met with great acclaim, but only took third prize in the county writing contest this time around.

A part three exists, but I'm not sure I want to include it here. Please opine in the comments if you'd like to see it. In the meantime, enjoy the further adventures of Raúl the cowardly torero.

El Novillero

It was a good bull, Raúl knew. It was large enough to impress the audience, large enough to look bad and fierce, but not so large that Raúl could not get his short arms over the horns.

But his hands shook. When he moved them, he felt that the cape was wet with his perspiration. Perhaps if he had chosen a lighter color… but it was too late now.

He looked up into the stands at Elena. She wore a black dress in the hot Madrid summer. It covered her wrists and neck and ankles. Her mantilla was black and it from a black comb. Raúl’s best friend had given Elena the comb. Two black presents. He had also given Raúl the bull.

Ernesto had been an artful matador. This should have been Ernesto’s bull. The poster showed that this Wednesday was Ernesto’s alternativa, his first fight as a full matador. But now it belonged to Raúl. It was rightfully his.

Possibly the bull did not understand this. Did it care that it belonged to Raúl and not to Ernesto? Possibly Elena did not care, either. The picadors did not care. This bull was for Ernesto, the most artful matador to have died a novillero. The most gifted torero to have died outside the ring. Possibly the audience did not know this.

What they certainly did know was that Ernesto was the best novillero to have died with stomach pains and vomiting one day before his alternativa.

Raúl shuddered. When he thought of Ernesto’s stomach pains and vomiting, he was sure that he felt the same right now. Sweat was trickling down the side of his cheek. Up in the stands, Elena could see the glistening and she was glad she did not know just how nervous he was because it had to be bad. She felt ashamed. In the hot black dress she remembered Ernesto and she wondered how it could be that he would die on the Tuesday before his alternativa. She was sitting just behind the bald critics with their sweaty shining heads and their yellow notebooks and their expensive pens. She wondered what they would write about Raúl, and then stopped because the question answered itself with looking at him.

Ernesto had been an artful matador. The day the apoderado had come to town, Ernesto had impressed him. “I come to this town,” he said, “because it is the most forsaken town in Andalusia. We all know that the most forsaken towns have the best toreros in them!” All of the rich madrileños who had arrived with the apoderado laughed with him, because if anyone knew when the apoderado had told a joke, it was he.

Raúl had thought, “Yes, it is true. The most forsaken towns have the most determined toreros because everyone knows the that the danger of the bullring is the only way to escape the poverty in Andalusia.”

Raúl had danced for the man. The sun was glaring on him and he did his best work with the heifer and the heifer didn’t scare him because she wasn’t very brave. Then it was Ernesto’s turn and Ernesto glided the cape as well as he could around the cowardly heifer and he kept his body straight and fine and he did not sweat like Raúl had, even though both of them felt the Andalusian sun on their bare backs. Raúl thought he was feeling the blisters from the heat as he watched Ernesto. And then Ernesto was done.

“That heifer will be fine meat,” said one of the rich madrileños, who was in the bull-buying business, “but she will never bear a brave son.” No one listened to him because no one listens to a person who speaks the obvious.

Ernesto had stood next to Raúl and the apoderado had breathed in their faces. “This one,” he had said, looking at Ernesto with some unaccustomed respect, “will be a fine matador. This one has art.” The madrileños and Raúl and Ernesto and the heifer waited in silence for the rest of the judgment. For this had truly been judgment day. This had been the goal of the young men’s lives. This had been the purpose of all the training, the worrying, the breathing. Here it was.

The apoderado was one inch from Raúl’s face. “This one,” he had said, “is artless. He is brave. But artless.” His yellowed eyes were staring into Raúl’s young ones. “He is determined. He will never be good enough for the ring. Never make him your understudy. He would kill his own brother to rob him of his place in it.” He glanced at Ernesto.

Raúl had never had a brother. All he had ever had was his friend.

The music was playing loudly in his ears, unlike the many times Raúl had heard it in his dreams. Distant then, it now took away his power to think. It took away Elena in the stands and it took away Ernesto. He forget that his friend was the reason he was wearing a black traje. Was this not Raúl’s alternativa? The alternativa of Raúl?

The great fighter’s hands shook spasmodically, then the rest of his body. He leaned over and vomited. The vomit was the only moisture he had had in his mouth for a long time. Perhaps there had been no moisture since that last drink with his friend, and his friend had had his last drink. Raúl disgusted himself. This was his alternativa, but only be default. The apoderado knew.

Elena watched the first matador without interest. The crowd was shouting “Olé!” and it was thundering in her ears. She looked at Raúl, waiting for his turn. The vomit had disgusted her. She wondered why she had not been not allowed to see Ernesto’s body. She didn’t think Raúl could hear the crowd at all. His heart was beating too loudly. Elena could not bear to look at him. Was it fear? Raúl had always been brave, even more so than Ernesto.

There was blood on the sand and the horses dragged the first bull away. Raúl’s sunburned body was hunched slightly. No time passed at all before they dragged away the second bull and Raúl was marveling at the trickiness of time when reason invaded his clouded head and he knew that it was his turn. “You’re up, señorito!” one of the other matador’s banderillos was saying.

“I know! I know!” Raúl answered disgustedly.

He could feel the hot red sand distinctly through his black cloth slippers as he was walking all the way across the ring. He dedicated his fight to the wife of the owner of the ring, who was sitting on the front stands, by throwing his ceremonial cape up to her. He had explained to Elena that he would have to do this because it was his first full fight was a matador. Elena was sitting in the stands and she did not care if he dedicated his fight to the queen. Only Ernesto’s fight would have mattered. She clutched her rose so tightly that the thorns drew blood in her hand.

Raúl’s arms were weakened by the vomiting and he was glad that the cape landed in the right place. The owner’s wife dutifully threw down her rose for him. He bent to pick it up and felt the acid slosh in and out of his stomach.

His arms shook in a disgusted attempt to leave his body while he was standing and waiting and the bull was let out. It was a good bull. His trained eye studied its moves while the members of his cuadrilla did the first teasing. The picadors were behind Raúl on their horses and they were ready with their pics. Men were standing by to lead the bull away in case Raúl was gored.

There it was. Ernesto’s bull was coming for Raúl. Raúl had stolen it and that was the only way he could ever have gotten into the ring.

Elena watched in the stands as Raúl did something no other matador had done before.

He dropped the cape. 

Alternativa: A Bit of Famous Writer History

I wrote this story long, long ago, for a high school assignment. We were studying the uniquely spare, masculine style of Ernest "Papa" Hemingway at the time, so hopefully in this story you will notice characteristics of that master. The story enjoyed great success at the time, winning second prize for fiction in the county-wide writing contest. I have a strong suspicion that editors today aren't interested in Ernest Hemingway tributes, so here it is now for your enjoyment. Come back soon for the sequel!

Alternativa

He felt that if he went to bed early, he might have a clear grip on Wednesday, though it was not yet Tuesday night.

When he woke up he was sick. His chest hurt. He could not understand it.  His legs hurt. He shivered. As he realized the sickness was through his body and up to his brain, he knew that that was it. Perhaps if he had not realized he was sick… but it was too late now.

Then the maid came in with the tray of breakfast and she saw him lying there with a pale face and she hesitated. Just then his stomach began to hurt and he vomited. The maid looked shocked. She said, “I’ll just leave this here,” about the tray and left it on the dresser.

He wondered whether she would get help or if she would pretend she hadn’t seen him so that when they carried his dead body out of the room and to the river there would be no one to blame.

He pretended that Elena was there and he kissed her several times to say goodbye. He did not want to be thrown into the river without saying farewell to Elena. He kissed her again. “Goodbye,” he said.

Then the maid came back and she was looking blurrier than before. She came near to him. “I’ve sent for the doctor,” she said while she bent down to touch his face. “What happened to you?” It was a shame for such a fine young man to be so sick, especially on the day before his alternativa in Madrid. She felt pity and looked at him. Just then his stomach began to hurt again and he vomited. He tried to miss the good maid but he could not tell if he was successful. When things go blurry on you it is hard to tell these things.

Ernesto thought, “She is saying in her head, ‘I am looking at a coward and a fool. He does not want to do something on Wednesday so he dies on Tuesday.’” This was not what she was thinking at all, but it was what he believed. He was sure she was seeing right through him, down to the core of him, where his fear lay. He had had this fear ever since his apoderado had come and told him and Raúl that he had scheduled Ernesto’s alternativa, his first full fight as a matador, and that it was to be in Madrid. Ernesto had never been to Madrid before this and while he and Raúl were riding into the city the day before and he saw the bullring, he felt almost as sick as he did now. His hands had become cold and sweaty and they had been shaking, be he hid his fear because Raúl did not know that he was afraid, even though they had been friends since birth, or since they had seen their first corrida. Which had come first?

If Raúl had known you were afraid, he would surely have left you, laughing his head off or cursing you and the ground you stood upon and your mother. Well, maybe not your mother, because Raúl had known your mother as long as you had and Raúl was thankful your mother had been there when you were trampled by the cow because that way no one could blame him. Raúl was not afraid. Raúl would not have fear if he had your fortune. Raúl had always known what he wanted and that was to be a first-rate matador. But you were luckier than he was because Raúl might have courage, but he had no art. He would be cursing the day he saw you and your mother if he knew that you had been afraid. But you had no fear of the Madrid ring now because you were going to die and Raúl was going to take your place at your own alternativa because he was your understudy. He had always been your understudy because he may have had courage, but he had no art.

The doctor was long in coming. The maid felt it, too, in the sweaty room that smelled like stale vomit in the heat of Madrid summer. “Don’t worry, señor,” she said to Ernesto when she saw that he was looking at her. She was sitting on a stool by the bed and she had a bowl of water and a cloth to keep him cool. Ernesto wondered why she was wasting her time on him. She surely had better things to do than sit in this room with a novillero who will not live to see his alternativa on Wednesday. “Do not worry,” she said. “You will be fine tomorrow. They will give a brave bull to the senior matador and he will give it to you. And then you will never have to do another alternativa because one in Madrid is valid anywhere in the world!” She was very happy to think of these things for the young man, but he only vomited again.

You made yourself sick when you thought that Wednesday was your only chance for glory and you gave it up in order to die. You were sick to recall how afraid you had been of your chance at glory. But you did not show any of this because if Raúl knew, he would be laughing at your funeral. He would wonder why he had ever been your friend. He would be disgusted to have to take your alternativa because it was touched by your cowardice. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Raúl had always known what he wanted.

Ernesto looked at the maid. She did not know how serious it was. Ernesto asked her where Raúl was. Raúl had always been your friend and he’d always been brave.

When Ernesto and Raúl had ridden into Madrid and Ernesto had become a coward, Raúl had been brave as always. He had stopped at the nearest tavern and bought some wine to celebrate. His hands were not shaking. He drank a lot of wine. Ernesto only watched until Raúl said to him, “Come, friend, and celebrate! It is your alternativa and not mine! Why must I carry the burden of celebrating for us both?”

“Truly, my friend, I am not thirsty,” Ernesto had said. But Raúl insisted. Ernesto drank a little because Raúl had always been his friend.

And now Ernestos’ chest hurt and his legs gave him pain and he sometime vomited. Raúl was looking at bulls and Raúl had always known what he wanted. But Raúl had no art.

“No art in anything!” Ernesto shouted.

“Hush!” said the maid.

“He has no art and he will be taking my alternativa!”

“No one is taking your alternativa but you, señor.”

“He will be making those awful veronicas of his with his legs spread two meters apart and he will kill with his body hunched over and my name was on the poster!”

She thought he was delirious.

He wanted to tell her what had happened because it would be a great relief to him, but he did not want to trouble this nice maid who had wasted her time on him when he was going to die. He also did not think that she would believe him because he was probably already acting delirious.

Maybe it was more serious than she had thought. She hated waiting for the doctor.

“I am going to die,” Ernesto told the maid. “You do not believe it but it is true!”

He wished Elena were there so that he could tell her he was going to die so that she would not be upset when Raúl told her, after they had thrown his body into the river. He remembered how Elena had always been proud of his art, in a concerned way. He could not have loved her if she had not always begged him to be careful. The other thing he loved was that she was understanding when it came to his work. He wondered if Elena would marry Raúl now that Raúl would be the only survivor of the two. Ernesto did not mind if Elena married Raúl because then she would know that her future would be secure. A matador with no art is perhaps the safest person to marry. But he would not be able to tell her anything before he was thrown into the river because he drank when his old friend asked him to.

       You drank because Raúl had always been your friend and you hid your fear because Raúl would laugh. Raúl might have laughed. He might have cursed you. But he might not have poisoned you if you had shown your fear like a real man. Now a real man was taking your alternativa because you were afraid even to show your fear and because the real man had always known what he wanted. You were going to be thrown into the river by that man and he was going to take your brave bull and the audience would probably not like him anyway and would never have a career because he had no art. You wished that that man was in the room because he had always been your friend and you wanted to tell him.