‘We call that animal El Toro de Oro, the Golden Bull,’ Bartolome Bestard, honorary American Consul in Mallorca, told me. ‘He’s so smart that when he sees a camera he shows the one-day matadors where to stand. But don’t laugh! That bull personally has paid for those three apartment houses over there. A fabulous animal.’
As my Spanish friend implied in the dialogue which opens this chapter, many intelligent and progressive Spaniards decry bullfighting as a blemish upon their country’s reputation. In 1965 I saw a series of excellent fights on government television, but in 1966, following a disastrous corrida which revolted many people, the broadcasts were quietly eliminated. Word went out that the government had decided that public reveling in bullfights must stop, at least over television. (In 1967 the programs were resumed.) More significant was what happened on Sunday afternoon, September 18, 1966, when Vanderford and I attended a corrida in Madrid, only to find that without previous warning members of the Guardia Civil had stationed themselves at all entrances and were turning away children under the age of fourteen. Later the government encouraged the rumor that this was henceforth to be the law in all cities. ‘They’ve determined to stamp out bullfighting by driving young people out of the arena and onto the football field,’ a matador told me. ‘In the end they’ll succeed.’ (In 1967 this ban was still in force.)
The best-reasoned and most forceful condemnation of bullfighting to have been voiced in recent years is that published in 1962 by Eléna de La Souchère, a Barcelona woman of French descent who fled Spain after the Civil War:
Beginning in the eighteenth century, the uprooted and somewhat indolent masses who pushed into Madrid and Sevilla conceived a passion for the arena. Bullfights, which until this time had been occasional single combats for the pleasure of the knights-combatant, now were transformed into periodic spectacles; the professionals of the arena reappeared.… These games were the response to a deep-rooted psychological need. The people had ceased to participate in public life and the psychologically passive plebeians refused henceforth to take any risk or assume any effort; nonetheless, they craved a chance to demonstrate their aggressive instinct.… In Madrid, as formerly in Rome and Byzantium, the people continued to fight and to triumph but through an interpreter an appointed slayer-of-beasts—with whom they could identify.…
The corrida in fact completes the destruction of the conditions which gave it birth. The games of the circus are costly, voracious. There is not enough bread—and the wheat fields lie fallow as far as the eye can see, giving graze to the corrida bulls. The farmer trudges behind his antique wooden plough: The bullock is a luxury, reserved for the minority of wealthy cultivators. Thousands of bulls are sacrificed each year to the arenas. The circus devours the unsown harvest, the bull unharnessed to plough the scanty soil, the glebe land, which is the raw material of bread and of man’s labor.
Each village should awaken from the torpor into which all have fallen. But the corrida is an obstacle in the path of necessity which orders man to work. This torpor is born and nourished by the perpetuation of man’s resignation. Every Sunday, the circus games sap his vital energy: the intensity of a prolonged and repeated emotion summons all his energies, gathers them, strains them to paroxysm, breaks them by an abrupt relaxation, knots them together once again, breaks them once again, to the rhythm of the bull’s charge and retreat, charge and retreat. In this impassioned catharsis, the active energy of a people becomes so many nervous sparks strewn on the sterile sand of the arena. Becoming accustomed from an early age to the death-spectacle, the dolorous diversion, destroys the sensitivity of the human being. Henceforth, he is predisposed to any abuse, any cruelty. Familiarity with bloody spectacles goes a long way toward explaining the sadistic abuses which have marked the revolutions and the civil wars in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spain. By tolerating the arena games, by promoting them and allowing children to witness them, the Church and the public authorities have shown to what extent they submit to the terratenientes, landowners, who raise the bulls; and they show once again how indifferent they are to their essential task: education of the masses.
On the other side of the ledger, the idolatry of these circus games has been condemned by all the great figures of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century liberal Spain, from Blasco Ibáñez to Pío Baroja and Ortega y Gasset. In that era all of the progressive forces, particularly the liberals and the anarcho-syndicalists, were alarmed by the psychological effects of the corrida. Their alarm was all the more pronounced because the ravages of the arena, physical ravages first of all, are felt most in the lowest classes: each Sunday during the bullfight season is marred by several accidents. In a special issue, September-October, 1962, devoted to bullfighting, the Madrid magazine, Indice, published the complete list of Spanish toreros killed in the arena since the end of the eighteenth century. Listed were the names of some 278 victims between 1900 and 1962; in other words, considering the brevity of the bullfight season (from Easter to the autumn) one death every six weeks.
But the corrida perverts even more than it kills. Its false prestige has demoralized generations of young workers; in presenting a gilded mirage and factitious universe it tempts their appetites for luxury, for vainglory, and instills in them a disdain for useful work. Yet the majority of apprentice toreros have not even a chance to prove themselves in regular corridas. While casting about for engagements they subsist on shady deals.
A varied fauna buzzes about the walls of the arena … these down-and-outs perhaps were once the hopes of a season; ever suppliant, they cling to the neighborhood of the plaza in low taverns filled with the stench of refried oil. The adolescents who hang about the arena in search of work will join them one day. And others, and still others … The arena wins. It spreads out. It eats into the city, as an ulcer eats into healthy flesh; the ulcer is devouring the city.
Señorita de la Souchère speaks for many, but her figures on deaths from bullfighting apply primarily, of course, to a previous condition. One man altered the trend of those figures, and outside the bullring in Madrid, matadors have erected a statue to him: ‘Dr. Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin.’ Four-fifths of bullfight deaths in times past came because horns infected with animal manure produced instant gangrene; most of these men would have lived had penicillin existed in their day. Today Fleming’s miracle drug saves literally dozens of bullfighters, and he is properly their patron saint.
In her criticism, Señorita de La Souchère implies that the meat of the fighting bull is wasted; this has never been true. In the old days the carcasses were butchered at the bullring and passed along without charge to hospitals and poorhouses, but today the meat is carted to selected butchershops throughout each city and sold at a slight reduction. At the ring at Pamplona, I came to know Señora Aniceto Oloriz, a small, doughty woman with a marvelous smile and reddish hair who supervised the butchering of the dead bulls as promptly as they were hauled from the arena. About ten minutes after Paco Camino killed a bull, Señora Oloriz had it cut into quarters and early next morning was hawking it at her stall in the Pamplona market.
In recent years bullfighting has been increasing in popularity and probably more people are seeing it now than ever before. New arenas are replacing old in cities like Burgos, Avila, Badajoz and Córdoba, while completely new ones are being erected where none existed before. The number of corridas fought and attendance at them have grown. For every great Spaniard who has opposed the art, one could name two others who have supported it.
Much nonsense is perpetrated when foreigners compare bullfighting with football, especially when they see the huge stadia used by the latter or read that a hundred and ten thousand fans have attended a football game, as compared to a maximum of twenty-four thousand at a bullfight. Also, they see boys all over Spain kicking footballs in the street, and it is not illogical to conclude, ‘In Spain football is the rage. It’s all that kids play, so bullfighting must be dying.’ The first two statements are true. Football has becom
e Spain’s lovely madness, as I have shown.
A TYPICAL YEAR—1966
Full matadors Novice matadors
Total corridas 599 480
Number of bulls killed 3647 28361
Number of matadors eligible to fight 172 81622
Number of matadors fighting 116 247
Average corridas per matador 5.2 1.9
Median corridas per matador 7 3
Number of matadors fighting only:
Three times all season 9 29
Two times all season 10 42
One time all season 17 77
Number of promotions to full matador 24
Top pay one matador one corrida $25,000 $1,600
Bottom pay one matador one corrida –$100 –$50
Corridas fought in:
Madrid 51 43
Barcelona 51 16
Palma de Mallorca 31 1
Sevilla 18 14
TOP MATADORS
Full Matadors Fights Novice Matadors Fights
Paco Camino 95 4Flores Blázquez 58
M. Cano ‘El Pireo’ 78 4Pedrín Benjumea 53
M. Benítez ‘El Cordobés’ 74 4J. L. Bernal ‘Capillé’ 50
Diego Puerta 71 Ricardo de Fabra 48
José Fuentes 70 4Paco Ceballos 45
S. Martín ‘El Viti’ 68 4F. Rivera ‘Paquirri’ 38
3J. M. Inchausti ‘Tinín’ 68 A. García ‘Utrerita’ 38
3S. Palomo ‘Linares’ 64 Fernando Tortosa 35
Jaime Ostos 53 4A. Sánchez Bejarano 35
5Fermín Murillo 51 6F. Rodríguez ‘Almendro’ 31
But this does not mean that bullfighting is dying, for the two seem not to be in competition. The truth is that football is a popular sport which commands an enormous following, and bullfighting is an artistic spectacle which retains its traditional adherents. An analogy might be the popular movies in Japan as compared to the classical art of kabuki. One does not eliminate the other, and no football player has attained in Spain the popularity enjoyed by El Cordobés. The status of bullfighting, as of 1966, is summarized in the accompanying table.
These figures require comment. They summarize the season of 1966 in Spain only and do not take into account corridas in Portugal, France, Mexico and South America. Contrary to what some say, the total number of corridas fought each year has been increasing rather than diminishing.
To me, the startling figures are those for the total number of aspirant matadors and the minuscule few who make the grade. Most depressing is the number of established matadors who are able to fight only two or three times a year. These are the proud and gallant men with whom the citizen who follows bullfighting becomes so familiar. In his three fights a year such a full matador down on his luck may earn for himself a total of a thousand dollars, and on this he must support himself, keep his hair cut so that he looks prosperous, his shoes shined and his clothes sharp. And he must frequent the popular bars so as to be seen. Since his professional pay will not permit these things he must scrounge from his family, his wife or his girl friend; if unusually lucky he will be able to attach himself to some well-heeled businessman who in his youth vaguely wanted to be a matador and who now finds pleasure in supporting a matador so as to feel himself part of the ambiente. It is this situation that accounts for the minus figures at the line ‘Bottom pay one matador one corrida,’ for many times unscrupulous impresarios will allow a beginner (and not infrequently a full-fledged matador) to fight in a given city if the matador pays for the privilege. If a man has prospects of only one or two fights a year, and if he has a friend who will foot the bill, he will accept and will pay for the privilege of once more appearing in the suit of lights, once more leading the parade as the band plays. As for the number of times full matadors are bullied into fighting for seventeen dollars an afternoon or nothing, these are so common as not to warrant a special line in the statistics.
One of the four Córdoba memorials to Manolete.
To understand the lure of bullfighting, one must go, I think, to Córdoba, where the city operates a taurine museum dedicated to the five so-called Caliphs of Córdoba: Lagartijo (1841–1900), Guerrita (1862–1941), Machaquito (1880–1955), Manolete (1917–1947) and El Cordobés (1936– ). The numerous rooms are evocative of these peasant boys who attained folk immortality, and as one moves among the ancient costumes and posters and sees the mementos of their dramatic lives he can catch a glimpse of what bullfighting meant to the underprivileged; but more can be gleaned, I believe, from walking the streets of Córdoba and seeing those grandiloquent monuments to Manolete, whose death at the horns of a Miura bull in Linares stunned the city. Fronting the church of Santa María in the peasant barrio there is a huge monument; a little farther along, at the square where his once-impoverished mother lived, there is a second huge monument which must have cost more money than she has spent in her life; beyond, there is a plaque in the wall indicating where the great man was actually born; and in the cemetery there is a monument surpassing them all. showing the matador recumbent. But more impressive to me than the museum and the monuments, which are, after all, dead recollections, is the Bar San Miguel, not far from where I lived in Córdoba and into which I stumbled by accident. It is run by a fine-looking man in his thirties, Manuel Barrera, and it consists of five rooms literally covered from floor to ceiling with mementos of El Cordobés: three different niches built into the walls display full-sized plaster statues of the matador; half a dozen carved heads stand about; and at least five hundred framed photographs hang in rigid order.
Before he became famous El Cordobés used to hang out in this bar, Barrera says proudly, ‘and I was one of the first to recognize his ability. The world’s first Club El Cordobés was launched right here … in my bar. My sister carved the first full-sized statue of him. That one. We make plaster casts of it and sell them to El Cordobés clubs throughout the world. He’s the greatest man Córdoba ever produced. He’s immortal.’ In the bar hangs a framed slate with categories painted on in white enamel with space for the relevant figures to be added in chalk.
One of the statues carved by Barrera’s sister.
EL CORDOBÉS
THIS YEAR
CORRIDAS 82
EARS 138
TAILS 28
THIS WEEK
MALLORCA 1 ear
There are many such bars through Spain, each dedicated to a predilected bullfighter, and if the art is on the wane, the habitués of these bars, the members of the numerous clubs and the other fanatics do not know about it.
On the other hand, the perceptive traveler soon discovers that bullfighting is an anachronistic spectacle; if the Republicans had won the Civil War in 1939 I suppose they would have outlawed it in deference to progress, and most progressive Spaniards would have approved. The victory of Generalísimo Franco provided the art with a reprieve, for bullfighting is essentially a reactionary operation dependent upon large areas of uncultivated land and a feudal system; now that a new generation of managers is about to take over responsibility from Franco, men alert to opinion in Berlin and London, it is quite possible that bullfighting will come under serious pressure. It will be interesting to see if its 1967 return to television will become permanent.
Why does one bother with a spectacle so archaic and so often disappointing? On July 13, 1966, when I got up extra early in Pamplona to be with the bulls on the last day of the running, I went to Marcelino’s restaurant after the bulls had passed and had a breakfast of bacalao (steamed salted codfish) and then went on the unforgettable picnic at the Pass of Roncesvalles. In the patio de caballos I renewed acquaintance with Domingo Ortega and El Estudiante, and had my picture taken with Antonio Ordóñez, who had been miserable on his first appearance and who wanted to recoup this day. In the plaza I exchanged amiable greetings with the Curro Romero devotee on my left, who took the opportunity to remind me that, by all accounts, Curro had been sensational a few days before in Madrid. ‘The kind of matador we dream about,’ he said, repeating himself.
The fights this day were ordinary, with here and there a few details, and then the fifth bull, a big red one, came out. Looking back on it, I can scarcely, believe that in the early morning this extraordinary bull had passed my doorway with only a few inches separating us, but I had been so excited that I failed to notice. ‘A big red bull like that? You didn’t even see him?’ friends asked afterward. I said, ‘He wasn’t there,’ nor had he been, so far as I was concerned.
But he was certainly there that afternoon. He pertained to Andrés Vázquez, a matador of only ordinary qualifications but who was to prove the truth of what I claimed earlier, that any professional, when he gets the dream bull, will at least have the basic techniques for giving it a great fight. Whether he does so or not is another matter, and much can go wrong in the process of leading a noble bull from the first cape work, to the horses, through the muleta work and on to the moment of death, so that many fine bulls are wasted.
Among the bronze figures who carry the casket of Joselito, beau ideal of matadors, walks a boy who bears an even graver burden: the gnawing worm of bullfighting.
On this day nothing went wrong. The bull entered the arena at a gallop and roared to the center of the ring, where he stopped, motionless, as if posing for a poster. He then charged toward the first cape that showed itself, and as soon as the crowd saw how true he moved, a loud shout rose from the stands, applauding the bull and expressing the hope that at last we were to see a good fight. Vázquez, recognizing the quality of the beast the luck of the draw had thrown him, ran into the ring and took charge, unfolding a series of slow and majestic passes in which the bull followed the cloth as if his nose were pasted to it. I had not seen such passes for some years, nor had the crowd, and the applause grew, with six or seven bands playing at the same time in a kind of super-bedlam. The horses now entered, and for once we saw a powerful bull charge the horses three times, take all that the picadors had to offer, then slide each time off the horse, and into the cape of the waiting matador. Vázquez, El Pireo and Ordóñez in turn launched beautiful series of passes in ivhich the bull followed the arabesques of the cape with arabesques of his own, more astonishing in that he used his long and powerful body to execute his passes. It was magnificent and the bands roared with delight.
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