Bullfights are an integral part of many fiestas. In the south,
especially, any village that can afford it will put on a corrida
for an afternoon, while in big cities like Madrid or Sevilla, the
main festival times are accompanied by a week-long (or more) season
of prestige fights.
Los Toros , as Spaniards refer to bullfighting, is big
business. It is said that 150,000 people are involved, in some way,
in the industry, and the top performers, the matadores , are
major earners, on a par with the country's biggest pop stars. There
is some opposition to the activity from animal welfare
groups but it is not widespread: if Spaniards tell you that
bullfighting is controversial, they are likely to be referring to
practices in the trade. In recent years, bullfighting critics (who
you will find on the arts and not the sports pages of the
newspapers) have been expressing their perennial outrage at the
widespread but illegal shaving of bulls' horns prior to the
corrida . Bulls' horns are as sensitive as fingernails, and
filing them a few millimetres deters the animal from charging; they
affect the bull's balance, too, further reducing the danger for the
matador .
Notwithstanding such abuse (and there is plenty more), Los
Toros remain popular throughout the country. To
aficionados (a word that implies more knowledge and
appreciation than "fan"), the bulls are a culture and a ritual -
one in which the emphasis is on the way man and bull "perform"
together - in which the arte is at issue rather than
the cruelty. If pressed on the issue of the slaughter of an animal,
they generally fail to understand. Fighting bulls are, they will
tell you, bred for the industry; they live a reasonable life before
they are killed, and, if the bullfight went, so too would the
bulls.
If you spend any time at all in Spain during the season
(which runs from March to October), you will encounter Los
Toros on a bar TV - and that will probably make up your mind
whether to attend a corrida . If you decide to go, try to
see a big, prestigious event, where star performers are likely to
despatch the bulls with "art" and a successful, "clean" kill. There
are few sights worse than a matador making a prolonged and
messy kill, while the audience whistles and chucks cushions over
the barrera . If you have the chance to see one, the most
exciting and skilful events are those featuring mounted
matadores , or rejoneadores ; this is the oldest form of
corrida , developed in Andalucía in the seventeenth
century.
Established and popular matadores include the veteran Enrique
Ponce, César Rincón, Victor Mendes, Joselito, Litri, David "El Rey"
Silveti and José María Manzanares. Two newer stars are Sevilla's
golden boy, Antonio Bareas, and the 18-year-old prodigy Julián "El
Juli" López. Cristina Sánchez, the first woman to make it into the
top flight for many decades, retired in 1999, blaming sexist
organizers, crowds and fellow matadores - many of whom
refused to appear on the same bill as a woman. A complete guide to
bullfighting with exhaustive links can be found at
www.mundo-taurino.org .