Fighting for the Bulls

V UNIVERSUM

Fighting for the Bulls The new corrida season opens this May in Madrid. This year promises to be particularly intense as tempers flare following a ban on bullfighting imposed in Catalonia in 2012.

Text

Anna PAPCHENKO

Translation

T

he first and most important corridas of the 2014 season, held in the Spanish capital from May 1 to June 8, have been prepared with great care. Supporters of tauromachia in Spain launched a counter attack on all those who want to ban "a barbarous vestige".

Las Ventas, a bullring in Madrid, this year has the most star-studded line-up of participants for the last ten years, breeders have selected the most savage bulls, while deputies passed a law pronouncing bullfighting a national treasure.

— Dad, look there is blood on the bull! shouts a little girl about five years old excitedly to her father, who brought her to the arena. p. 140

Shamil GARAEV

— Don’t worry about it, honey, it does not hurt, replies a smart-looking dad in glasses, trying to calm her down.

The girl in a fluffy skirt and velvet ballet pumps continues to munch on her sandwich, presented to her by a caring parent not long before. There is a whole bag of food nearby.

Two fair-skinned women from Scandinavia seem to be slightly more skeptical to the reassurances that the bull does not hurt when stuck in the withers with sharp darts. They follow every successful hit with groans and inadvertently cover their faces. Their command of the language is clearly not enough to heed the arguments of a stout Spaniard in a straw hat, who is

trying to explain the body structure of the animal and the nature of its aggressiveness Realizing the futility of his own attempts, the man pulls out a bottle of homemade sangria and passes it to the girls. Home-pickled olives, almost transparently thin slices of jamon and heavily peppered rings of black pudding follow. The Scandinavians suddenly come alive.

Beer and spirits peddlers masterfully navigate through dense crowds of spectators seated on the steps of the steep amphitheater. Festively dressed people in the stands of Madrid's Las Ventas bullring are cheerful and talkative. They are having a fiesta, a national festival. This is corrida.

Odd Question It was Cicero in the 1st century BC who wondered: "...What kind of pleasure is it for an educated man to see either a weak man torn to pieces by a mighty beast or a beautiful beast get pierced with a hunting spear?" Two thousand years later and there is still no answer.

Circus spectacles involving wild animals, which were so popular in ancient Rome, ceased only with the collapse of the Empire. In the 21st century a public fight between a man and a bull, which usually ends with the latter being killed is still a popular spectacle in many countries (besides Spain it is practiced in France, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Ecuador , Peru and China), attracting up to 60 million viewers each year.

In Spain, the cradle of corrida, it has the unofficial status of a national holiday, something like a family picnic.

It’s Sunday evening and a crowd of well-dressed people streams to Las Ventas. Short pants are only allowed for young boys; grown men are banned from baring their legs before the honorable public.

— Is he wearing flip-flops to the bulls?

Translate to him, he should be wearing shoes, or else I will not go with him, demands our Spanish friend, burdened with a task of familiarizing a Russian guest with the national tradition.

Within two blocks from the bullring the area acquires a distinctly unique flavor. Mannequins behind windows are dressed in torero costumes: tight pants made of brocade and satin and short jackets with galloon and rhinestones.

Special equipment stores (with swords, javelins, notorious "red rags” etc.) alternate with sewing workshops where ready-made costumes are tailored to the figure, and the standard pink cloaks and capes are decorated to the taste of the customer.

The unity of these lavish and dusty storefronts (professionals have long been buying everything online) is disrupted by a stand-alone shop of a well-known European cosmetics brand, which is proud of the fact that its natural products are not tested on animals. This cosmetic company is an active participant in the campaign for banning corrida and seeks to contribute to the fight against the tradition

it considers a "barbarous vestige”.

For instance, it sells a scrub soap of intense red color under the slogan “Wash off the national shame”.

One cent fromevery piece sold, worth 2,5 Euro, goes to the campaign against bullfighting.

Old men in suits, arm in arm with their well-groomed wives or elegant daughters, pass by indifferently. In their free hands they carry small pads to be able to sit conveniently on LasVentas’ concrete steps. The forces in this war are not equal: according to recent researches only 26,7 % of Spaniards are interested in bullfights, while more than 70 % of the population are either against it or feel indifferent. p. 141

In comparison, in 1971 the ratio was 55% to 43%, which unequivocally proves that the number of "bloody spectacle" followers is steadily decreasing. At the same time the protest movement demanding that bullfights be banned has grown dramatically in recent years.

It’s threatening. Spain’s territorial integrity among other things.

Bulls Against Donkeys The entire 2013 winter session at the Cortes Generales (Spanish Parliament, Ed.) was marked by intense discussions concerning bullfights — unemployment and recession had to give way to something more important.

The Spanish lawmakers have not been sleeping well since the parliament of the autonomous region of Catalonia introduced the ban on corrida three years ago with 65 votes in favor and 55 against. Some propose a moratorium on the ban, others demand recognizing corrida as an intangible cultural heritage of Spain — whatever it takes to evade a decision by the stubborn Catalans.

The main argument of the Catalan government — protecting animals from cruel treatment — in the current political situation gets an additional subplot. The Catalans could just as well be saying: look at those Spanish fiends, we feel ashamed of them! And we — no, we will not hurt bulls. Spaniards predictably took offence, considering the initiative yet another blow from the Catalan nationalists in their quest to renounce everything Spanish, or even better — Spain in general.

The 180,000 Catalans who signed the petition to ban corrida, the initial impetus of the ban, naturally had no intention to spite the Spanish or add fuel to the fire of radical separatists.

Most of them probably acted out of compassion for the unfortunate hoofed mammal. As a result, the initiative aggravated a long-standing conflict between the Catalan independence movement and the federal government,

seeking to preserve the integrity of Spain.

The mighty black bull, which thanks to a certain cognac brand became a symbol of everything Spanish, seems to have lost to the hardworking and sturdy Catalan donkey, which has recently turned into an unofficial emblem of Catalonia.

The Catalan example of a successful battle with the center has inspired other disaffected regions. "The Parade of Sovereignties" continued with the radical Basques: the mayor of San Sebastian (the most popular tourist destination in the Basque Country and the European Capital of Culture for 2016) banned the traditional bullfights during local festivals this summer.

An angered Spanish parliamentarian responded by saying: "They pity bulls, but it’s ok to kill civilians", referring to the mayor’s ties with a leftist coalition "Bild" which some believe is a political wing of the armed group ETA. Galician nationalists jumped on the bandwagon and also signed a petition to ban tauromachia.

It is notable that when in 1991 the autonomous government of another Spanish region, the Canary Islands, passed a law banning bullfights, no one batted an eye. Apparently, the Canary Islands never really wanted to be separate. In fact, they never really had bulls there either, only goats and sheep.

Catalonia is different. Bullfights were practiced there as early as the 14th century when Spain was not even a country. In Barcelona alone in the early 20th century there were three bullrings, while dozens of stationary and mobile arenas were spread across the province.

All the stationary arenas have since been transformed into concert and circus halls. Catalan fans of corrida travel to nearby France, which adopted the tradition from Spain.

On the contrary, local bullfights practiced in the four southern French regions (Aquitaine, Midi-Pyrenees Languedoc-Roussillon and Provence)

were recognized as part of the country’s cultural heritage in 2011.

What’s the Price?

In November 2013 the Spanish Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new law protecting corrida (144 voted in favor, 26 against, 54 abstained).

It provided unprecedented state support to all kinds of tauromachia and associated parties on the Iberian Peninsula.

One of main arguments in favor of corrida was that its existence has prevented this unique breed of bulls from going extinct. Fighting bull breeders are particularly ardent in their support of this argument — they own 1,268 cattle farms, which supply animals to 17,000 annual events in the country (about 2,000 of which are corrida programs) for a price ranging between 18,000 — 100,000 Euro per creature.

Indeed, the modern games and spectacles involving bulls originate from one particular feature: the Iberian Peninsula is a natural habitat for a direct descendant of the wild urus, the Iberian bull (bos taurus ibericus). The domesticated urus, the modern cow,is an essentially peaceful animal unable to survive in the wild without human help, but its Spanish relative managed to preserve its fiery temper and frightening appearance, which gave rise to the phenomenon of bullfighting.

The Iberian bull has survived to this day thanks to the selection employed

by Spanish ranchers, who have been carefully preserving the bulls’ fighting qualities and artificially creating the conditions for their reproduction.

As a result, species of this breed attack without the intention of obtaining food and do not shy away from danger.

Precisely because of their natural aggressiveness (red color has absolutely nothing to do with it) the bulls attack the torero in the arena. This is p. 143

V

UNIVERSUM Expedition

FIGURES 8,5% of the Spanish attended bullfights in 2011, only 2,6% went to the opera The annual profit in the corrida industry totals up to 2,5 billion Euro Economists estimated that the Catalan government will have to pay approximately 400 million Euro in damages to market participants from the ban on bullfighting, which means that the new law will cost every resident in the area 57 Euro Despite the fact that 60% of Spaniards do not consider themselves bullfighting fans, 57% disagree with the decision of Catalonia to ban bullfighting in their territory.

540,000 hectares of Mediterranean forest is used as pastures for Iberian bulls Breeders of fighting bulls supply nearly 40,000 animals to festivals throughout Spain On average 10,000 fighting bulls die in 3,300 arenas in Spain per year In 2010, 1,320 bullfights were held in Spain during the season (May to October), which is 8.5% less than in 2009, and 40% less than in 2007 Argentina banned bullfights in the late 19thcentury; Cuba in 1947

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essentially their only value since their meat is not suitable for cooking; it’s too tough.

For the business not to perish once and for all breeders need subsidies. After all it is quite expensive to breed halfsavage giants weighing almost half a ton, which incidentally do not stand in stalls, but graze freely in fertile valleys. So far money has been available — the procorrida lobby in the Spanish government has considerable weight. But "green" parties threaten to find justice: Members of the European Parliament recently demanded a suspension on all payments of agricultural subsidies to Spain on the suspicion that European money is being used to support unprofitable farms for breeding fighting bulls.

It’s a stalemate. On the one hand, Spanish agriculture cannot take such a blow. On the other, the fate of 200,000 people involved in the economy’s “the bull sector”, should the ban be imposed, looks uncertain. The already vast army of the unemployed, counting six million people at the moment, will be joined by bullfighters and their assistants, agents, arena owners, as well as those who sew costumes for performances, train horses and bar owners with the only remarkable specialty — meat (from different parts of the body) of the bull killed in a bullfight.

A Matter of Life and Death In 2006 the Spanish Ministry of the Environment tried to reconcile the parties involved in the tauromachia conflict by proposing that the bull not be killed publicly as is the case in Portugal.

The idea was criticized by opposition as a palliative, while defenders of corrida declared it the greatest folly. The whole corrida industry reflects this old Spanish tradition, the essence of which is that a bullfight is a deadly duel between a human and an animal.

Opponents of bullfighting are skeptical about the likelihood of a torero’s

death in the arena, referring to the advances of modern medicine. However, more than fifty matadors have been killed since the end of the 18th century when professional corrida was established. Almost half of them have died in the 20th century. Colombian bullfighter Pepe Caceres is the last casualty to date.

He died in 1987.

Yet this is where they draw their inspiration — constantly walking on the edge. The best contemporary torero Jose Tomas, who has had more than two dozen serious injuries from bull horns during his career, once said: "I do not go into the arena to die, but if I do die, I prefer death in the bullring rather than in a car accident."

The outcome described and preferred

by Jose Tomas is completely impossible, unless you kill the bull first. That is when the matador de toros (literally — "the one who kills the bull") plunges a special sword into the animal’s withers. To inflict this mortal stab, he should place himself between the horns and that’s when the bull can deal its own deathly blow.

A real torero is not the one who waves his cloak, but the one who risks his life to kill the bull, and does it correctly (from the first attempt) and beautifully. In a word, skillfully.

This aspect has allowed Spanish officials to classify corrida as an "art form " and draft the aforementioned law for the protection of bullfighting, pronouncing it an undeniable cultural heritage of Spain. The legislative act obliges authorities to protect and maintain tauromachia throughout the country, which includes Catalonia, and thus many expect that the fighting bulls will be back there soon. At the same time, the Spanish government is seeking recognition for corrida from UNESCO. The new season will show whether the displaced defenders of bullfighting have managed to win back their former positions and whether their opponents can effectively oppose the government policy. One thing is clear, the fights will continue — both in and out of the arena.

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