Four Months Afoot in Spain

by Harry Alverson Franck

The Spanish espada is almost invariably "game" to the last. The sixth bull of this Sunday's tournament was, as often happens, the most ferocious. He killed six horses, wounded two picadores, tossed a chulo as high as a one-story house and, at the first pass of Vasquez, the matador, knocked him down and gored him in the neck. A coward, one fancies, would have lost no time in withdrawing. Vasquez, on the contrary, crawled to his feet and swung half round the circle that all might see he was unafraid, though blood was streaming down his bespangled breast. The alguaciles between the barriers commanded him to retire, but it was to be noted that not one of them showed the least hint of entering the ring to enforce the order. The diestro advanced upon the defiant brute, unfurled his red muleta, poised his sword--and swooned flat on the sand. The bull walked slowly to him, sniffed at his motionless form, and with an expression almost human of disdain, turned and trotted away.

"Palmas al toro!" bawled a boisterous fellow at my elbow, and the vast circle burst out in a thunder of hand-clapping and cries of "Bravo, toro!" while the wounded espada still lay senseless in the center of the ring.

He was carried off by his cuadrilla, and the sobresaliente, which is to say the "jumper-over," or substitute, marched as boldly into the ring as if accidents were unknown. Once begun a córrida knows no intermission, even though a man is killed. The newcomer took steady aim and drove the three-foot sword to the very hilt between the heaving shoulders; then nonchalantly turned his back and strolled away. The bull did not fall, but wabbled off into the shade to lean up against the tablas as if he had suddenly grown disillusioned and disgusted with life, and the spectators, no longer to be restrained, swarmed head-long into the arena. I pushed toward the animal with the rest and just as I paused a few feet from him he dropped suddenly dead, his blood-smeared horns rattling down along the barrier.

On rare occasions the matador, disobeying the unwritten law that the animal must be despatched by a thrust down through the body, places the point of his sword just behind the horns and with the slightest of thrusts kills the bull so suddenly that his fall sounds like the thump of a barrel dropped from a height. Then does the spectator, the unseasoned at least, experience an indefinable depression as if this striking of a great brute dead by a mere prick in the back of the neck were a warning of how frail after all is the hold of the most robust on life.

As we poured out of the plaza, I halted in the long curving chamber beneath the tribunes. Twenty-two horses, gaunt, mutilated things, lay tumbled pellmell together in a vast heap. Brawny men in sleeveless shirts were pawing them over. Whenever they brought to light a mane or tail they slashed off the hair and stuffed it into sacks; when they dragged forth a hoof the shoe was quickly added to the heap of old iron in a corner. The bulls were treated with far more deference. Each lay in his own space, and the group gathered about him wore the respectful mien of soldiers viewing the last remains of some formidable fallen enemy. On my heels arrived the jingling mules with the last victim. Two butchers skinned, quartered, and loaded this into a wagon from the central markets in exactly eleven minutes, the vehicle rattled away, and the week's córrida was over.

The Spanish torero is all but idolized by the rank and file, being in this respect vastly above our professional ball players. There is little society except the purely bluestocking to which he has not the entrée; wherever and whenever he appears he is sure to be surrounded or followed by admiring crowds. The famous, the Bombita family, for example, which has given four renowned matadores to the ring--and one to each of my Sevillian córridas--Machaquito of Córdoba, and a half-dozen others of highest rank are distinctly more popular and honored than the king. Nor is this popularity, however clouded by a bad thrust, transient or fleeting. Pepete, who departed this life with exceeding suddenness back in the sixties because a bull bounded after him over the tablas and nailed him to the inner barrier, is to this day almost a national hero.

Of course every red-blooded Spanish boy dreams of becoming a bullfighter and would not think of being unfamiliar with the features, history, peculiarities, and batting av--I mean number of cogidas or wounds of the principal fighters. Rare the boy who does not carry about his person a pack of portraits of matadores such as are given away with cigarettes. On the playground no other game at all rivals "torero" in popularity. There is something distinctly redolent of the baseball diamond in the dialogues one is sure to hear several times on the way home after a córrida. A boy whom fate or the despotism of the family woodpile has deprived of the joys of the afternoon, greets his inhuman father outside the gates with a shout of, "Hóla! Papa! Qué tal los toros?--How goes it with the bulls--what is the score?" To which father, anxious now to regain his popularity, answers jovially, "Bueno, chiquillo! Tres cogidas y dos al hospital.--Fine, son! Three wounded and two in the hospital."

Having thus trod the very boards of the last act of "Carmen" and passed a splendid setting for the third in my tramp through the Sierra de Ronda, I decided to celebrate the otherwise unglorious Fourth by visiting the scene of the third. The great government Fábrica de Tabacos of Seville is one of the most massive buildings in Spain, and furnishes well-nigh half the cigarettes and cigars smoked in Andalusia. I passed through the outer offices and crossed the vast patio without interference. When I attempted to enter the factory itself, however, an official barred the way. I asked why permission was denied and with a wink he answered:

"Sh! Hace calor. It is hot, and las cigarreras are not dressed to receive visitors. Come in the autumn and I shall make it a pleasure to show you through the fabrica."

"But surely," I protested, "there are men among the employees who have admittance to the workrooms even in summer?"