Poor Folk in Spain

by Jan Gordon; Cora Gordon

"Now," I thought, "this terrible bullfight, about which so much has been written, so much discussed, has indeed begun."

The bullfights of our imagination are spectacles of sun and colour—of madness stained with cruelty; the cruelty perhaps partly condoned by the fierceness of the bull, by a sort of wild frenzy of sport which seems in some part to excuse the murderous instinct of man.

The bull, a coloured rosette nailed to its shoulder, reached the centre of the ring, and then, for me, half the anticipated interest of the fight vanished. We had expected a wild and furious gallop around the arena; a bull lusting to kill or be killed; mad charges at the toreros, who would elude it with quick baffling passes of the cloaks, wild dashes at the unfortunate horses, the riders of which would at least make some pretence of manœuvering before the furious bull was allowed to fling horse and rider into the air. But no! The bull slowed up, halted and looked to this side and that. It was obviously perplexed. One could almost imagine a crease of puzzlement between its eyes. What was all this; where the sierras of its youth; into what strange place had it come? And now began a taunting of the unwilling bull. The toreros flapped their faded cloaks at it, but whenever the bull was tempted to charge the man ran for safety and crammed himself through one of the bolt-holes in the palisade—once a torero scampering for life reached an opening at the same instant as a companion. For a moment there was a flurry, but both men contrived to push through before the bull was able to reach them. The first impression of the fight was of a certain power and some magnificence on the part of the bull, and of degradation on the part of the toreros—one thought of the shorn Sampson taunted by the Philistines. In this contest the men seemed somehow ignoble in comparison with the animals. The next act of the drama made this feeling no better. The picador was led out on his blindfolded and skeleton-like steed by a little man in a red shirt, who from behind the horse's head held out, like a policeman regulating the traffic, a protesting hand at the bull, as if to imply that the animal was not to charge till he was ready to bolt. For some while the bull did not take the invitation, though whenever he appeared likely to do so the small man dropped the reins and ran for the paling, from which, however, he took care never to be very far away. The picador himself is not in great danger, for his trousers are armour plated.

By this time the audience was shouting out: "No quiere!"[9] but at last the bull charged, the picador thrust his lance, and the bull with a great thrust of its head overturned both horse and man. Immediately the bull was surrounded by the toreros who with flapping cloaks distracted its attention. Man and horse were lifted up again.

Large numbers of Spaniards do not like bullfighting, but a great many Spaniards who do not in principle object to bullfighting do object to the horse-slaughter. One, cutting to the roots of the truth, said it was "not æsthetic." He was right. There should be a strong sense of the æsthetic in sport—it is a thing more subtle than mere "fair play," and when this sense of the æsthetic is ignored the sport becomes brutality. This horse-slaughter more than oversteps the line of the æsthetic, so for us did the bolt-holes provided for the toreros. For us bullfighting would begin to be a serious sport if the men and the bull stood on the same conditions.

One picador, who by means of his lance kept the bull off from his horse, received a round of well-earned applause. The bugle sounded once more and the picadors were led out of the ring. There followed another rather dull interval of cloak-flapping. One of the matadors, however, gave an exhibition of passes which made the bull charge repeatedly within a foot or so of the man's body, during which the torero did not move his feet. When the bull, baffled and panting with exhaustion at his fruitless tosses, paused, the torero went upon one knee before the animal. The spectators shrieked applause and flung their hats into the ring. But this exhibition was very different from the usual cloak-flapping followed by a scamper for the bolt-hole: nor, indeed, was it shown often.