Bull Fight!!!!

What a great April week in Sevilla. This past Wednesday, I went to my first bull fight! The bull fighting season starts right before the Spring Fair (this week) and goes through October. it was such an interesting cultural experience. Apparently the bull fights in Seville are some of the most famous. This week they’ve had famous bull fighters such as El Juli and El Cid. (I don’t even really know who they are, but trust me, they’re famous over here). So here’s a little info about the bull fights:

There are 3 bull fighters at each correo, or bull fight. A bull is called a toro, and a bullfighter is thus called a toreador. There is the main toreador, called the matador who actually kills the bull. Each bullfighter has other toreadors who help him throughout the fight. Each fighter gets 2 bulls, and they go until the bull is killed. The reason why bullfighting is so controversial right now is because they kill all the bulls in the ring during the fights.
Starting the fight, all 3 toreadors and their teams walk out into the ring and present themselves to the President. Then the first bullfighter and his team prepare for their first bull. These bulls are bread for bravery and aggression. They have never seen a human on foot, nor have they ever been outside their pastures. Each bull wears colored tags that show which breeder they come from as well.
When the bull enters the ring, the toreadors use their bright pink on one side, yellow on the other capes, or capas to distract the bull and draw his attention to different parts of the ring. Then the riders on padded horses, called picadors, ride out, they use a long spear to stick the bull in the back of his neck to weaken the neck muscle. Then, three of the toreadors use long sticks with barbs in them, called banderillos, to stick into the bull’s neck muscles to further weaken it. Each one of these toreadors gets a chance to stick 2 barbed sticks into the bull, 6 in total. In my opinion, these are the bravest guys in the ring, because they don’t have capes to distract the bull, and they have to get really close to the bull in order to get these things into the bull.
After they get these sticks in, it’s time for the main event: the Matador. The main bull fighter comes back into the ring with the famous red cape. It’s this bullfigher’s job to study how the bull moves, and conquer the bull. The matador uses the cape along with his knowledge of the bull to get the bull to charge the cape when the matador wants him to. He uses sounds and the cape to make the bull charge and do a few passes. Each time, the bull charges the cape and the matador pivots on his foot so the bull can charge again. It’s really difficult to explain just how much effort and patience it takes for the matador to understand the bull, as well as the majestic way the matador conquers the bull and has control over the bull. By the end, it seems as if the bull is doing exactly what the matador wants him to do, when he wants him to do it. It’s pretty amazing.
And now for the climax. It’s time for the matador to kill the bull. With his slightly curved sword in the palm of his hand, he lines up in front of the bull. He has to stick the sword into the right place in the bull’s neck in order to miss the vertebrae and make it to the heart or the chest cavity. He has to have the bull charge him, therefore charging into the sword, in order to have enough power to get the sword into the bull. A good kill comes when the matador gets the sword all the way in on the first try and hits the heart. Right after getting the sword in, the matador and other toreadors will crowd around the bull until he finally dies If done well, it only takes a minute or two before the bull finally dies. If it’s a bad kill, the matador will either have to try to get the sword in again, or they will just have to stick a knife into the bull’s brain to kill it immediately.
After the bull is dead, a team of horses rides out and the bull is tied to the back of them and dragged out of the ring. Then a clean-up crew sweeps away any remains of blood or deep footprint to get ready for the next bull.
If a bull comes out of the ring and is injured or lame in anyway, he is not fit to fight. They then bring out a few cows (lade bulls) and have the bull follow the pretty cows out of the ring, where they kill him outside of the ring. All the bulls that participate in the bullfight, even if they are handicapped and cannot fight, end up dying. If the matador doesn’t kill the bull, they will be stuck in the brain to instantly kill them. One of the bulls we saw broke one of his horns when he charged the side of the ring. Because of this, they brought the cows into the ring, then the bull followed them out. After he had left the ring, they would have killed him back in his pen or holding area. So the bull fight we saw, there were 7 bulls killed that day.
Sound a bit sad? I guess it is. But their entire life, they are treated well in plentiful pastures with lots of lady cows around. They are only bred for the bull fight, so they have no other purpose in life. The bull fight was a bit bloody, but it was really interesting to see this cultural event. It was so different from anything else I’ve seen. I actually enjoyed seeing it. I hope you enjoy the pictures, although they really can’t do justice to the actual event.