Spain and El Toro...

After my two week absence, I'm finally back with a new blog entry. In accordance with the comment to the last entry (which I apparently made after falling asleep), my main objective today is to make you, the reader, feel short and otherwise inferior to me. The good news is that after this big vacation, I have lots of material to meet this objective...you tiny indolent bastard.

Well, Spain was a blast, and probably the most interesting thing we saw was a bullfight in Madrid. My take on it is that if you get past the fact that the killing of a bull is turned into a mass spectacle, its pretty damn cool to watch. Each bullfight is pretty much the same format and in one "show" there are 3 different matadors (with helpers) who each fight two bulls. There are basically three acts in a bullfight:

Act I: The Horse Guy Stabs the Bull

The matador and his helpers do some of the signature cape work at this point, but because the bull is at full strength they keep running behind these wooden barriers. To combat this problem they get this guy on a horse with armor to stab the bull in the neck like so:

(Note: Apparently in the early part of the last century the horses didn't wear armor...they lost like 10 horses a night back then)

Act II: Quick Guys with Decorated Sticks Stab the Bull

I think these guys had the most dangerous job description: just run up the bull stab him with these sticks and then run a away before you get killed. They moved so fast they even came up blurry in this picture -


Act III: The Matador Finishes the Bull

At this point the bull is pretty tired, albeit a little annoyed. The matador finally takes the stage alone with this signature red cape, and does several of the famous Ole passes:

When the bull is really tired, the matador goes for the kill with his sword like so:



That's the bullfight in nutshell. Although the standard format for the bullfighting did get reptitive, it was alwasy exciting when the risky matador would get knocked down or his outfit torn:


Overall, a very cool experience. The rest of Spain will have to wait until the next entry...