The dress of the Aragonese peasantry is peculiar and picturesque. The men, as a rule, wear no hats, but have instead a coloured handkerchief wound round the head, leaving the top bare. Their knee-breeches are slashed down the sides and tied by strings below the knee. The waistcoats are worn open. Round the waist they wind a wide sash, in the folds of which pipes, tobacco, money, and provisions are carried as safely as in a pocket. Their feet are shod with sandals, and they universally carry a blanket, which is thrown in a graceful manner over their shoulders.
Bull-fighting.
A BULL-FIGHT is underlined for an early visit in the note-book of every visitor to Spain. He goes prepared to be disgusted, and he comes away to denounce it as a revolting and demoralising exhibition. He even plumes himself upon his moral and human superiority over the Spaniard, because the spectacle proves too strong for his untutored stomach. The inference is as gratuitous as it is illogical. In point of fact, the effect of the spectacle upon the spectator is not so much a matter of sensibility as custom. The Spaniard grows up to the sport as our Elizabethan ancestors grew to bull-baiting—even as the present generation of Englishman grows to pugilism. To the Spaniard, the cruelty of the craft of tauromachy does not appeal; the spectacle inflames his blood, and stirs not a chord of compassion in his nature. Yet he can be intensely sympathetic, gentle, and tender-hearted; but these softer qualities of character are not touched by the sight of animal suffering. In the first place, the bull is his enemy by heredited tendency. He cannot forbear to hurl insulting epithets at him when he chances to pass him on a journey. He witnesses his end with the thrill of satisfaction which a soldier feels in the death of a treacherous and implacable foe. The Englishman cannot share, or even realise this sentiment—it would be strange if he could. His leading feeling is curiosity, and a nervous apprehensive tension which only magnifies the horror and repulsion of the sport. With the Spaniard it is entirely different. Long habit has familiarised him with the bloody details, and his experienced eyes follow each trick and turn of the contest with the enthusiasm of an athlete watching an athletic display. Every detail of skill and dexterity and nerve exhibited by the fighters, and every clever move made by the bull is greeted with critical applause. Cruelty there must be, but courage in a high degree is a factor in the contest—danger gives to the contest a dignity which is absent from pheasant shooting, and which formed no excuse for the vogue to which bear-baiting and cock-fighting once attained in this country.
THE PROCESSION.
It may be thought that I am trying to champion an institution which is regarded with aversion by all classes of English people, but such is not my intention. My object is to look at it from the Spanish point of view, and endeavour to see if there is not some plausible explanation of its popularity as a national amusement. But when all is said and done, there still exist two objections to the sport which cannot be explained away. The first is the almost inexplicable indifference which a Spanish audience shows for the torture that is inflicted upon the horses that take part in the corrida: the other is the attendance of the gentler sex. It must, however, be noted that a large proportion—certainly the majority of Spanish ladies—are opposed to the sport, and with the rest it is the manly courage and address of the performers that fascinates them. But the fact remains that women are seen in large numbers in the amphitheatre, as 300 years ago good Queen Bess was not ashamed to be a spectator at many an exhibition of bear-baiting. English sentiments in matters of sport have undergone a great change since the Elizabethan era, but Spain is notoriously the most conservative country in Europe.
However, enough has been said of the theoretical side of bull-fighting; let us accompany the seething populace to the Plaza de Toros, and witness the sport for ourselves. The streets of Madrid are crowded with people who are all moving in the same direction. April to October is the regular bull-fighting season, but the Spaniard finds the lightest excuse a sufficient one for indulgence in his favourite pastime during the “close” season. And so, although it is February when I am in Madrid, I am not to forego an experience of a promising corrida.
Although I have seen bull-fights in some of the best rings in Spain, including those of San Sebastian, Valencia, Barcelona, and Madrid, it is more particularly of my experiences at the latter place that I shall write.
During the fashionable months, a boletin de Sombra, or “ticket for the shade,” is a luxury to be prized; but in February, in Madrid, we need all the warmth and glare that the sun can give us. The present Bull Ring, which was built at a cost of £80,000, and opened in 1874, seats 15,000 persons. It stands on a gentle elevation in a broad stretch of bare yellow land, where it raises its brick-coloured walls—the only land-mark in the barren, treeless, desolate expanse between the city and the solemn distant mountains. Around the various entrances countless human beings cluster like bees, and the Plaza is alive with men and horses, mules with tinkling bells, soldiers, police, picadors, and fruit-sellers. What strikes one most curiously about this concourse of human beings, both outside the bull-ring and within the huge amphitheatre, which rises tier above tier from the brown sand till it is almost lost in the vast expanse of blue above, is its single-mindedness, its patience, and the entire absence of horseplay. To a Spaniard this is not curious, but to the English spectator some familiar characteristic of a crowd appears to be absent.
