The International Writers Magazine: Spain

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Bullfighters • Brent Robillard "Nobody lives life all the way up but the bullfighter." – Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises I wasn’t sure what to expect when I arrived at Las Ventas. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and yet Spaniards thronged by the thousands outside the Plaza de Toros de Madrid in anticipation of the day’s bullfights.

Under normal circumstances, los corridas are a Sunday affair. But this was the 2 de Mayo – the anniversary of Madrid’s 1808 uprising against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the same uprising immortalized by Francisco de Goya’s horrific painting in the Prado.

In spite of Hemingway’s assertions in no less than three books and numerous short stories, I experienced a certain degree of trepidation at the thought of watching bulls die. And yet I was drawn with equal fascination by the idea of the bullfighter, the torero.

Three of Spain’s best were set to perform – Pepin Liria, Luis Miguel Encabo, and the young madrileno Fernando Robleno.

Brass bands, mounted guards, and ceremonial horse-drawn coach parades proceeded the entrance of these men. In the lobby, hawkers leased leather-bound cushions for a euro. Concessionaires moved through stands crying "whiskey...whiskey coca." And the spectators prattled on with their neighbours, basking in the early evening glow of a spring sunshine, content with the dying hours of a day off work.
I was seated only nine rows up from the plaza floor, ensconced on my cushion when the matadors made their entrance in colourful brocaded finery and hot pink capes. With them rode the equally gaudy picadores atop armoured and blind-folded mounts.

All of this fanfare was but foreplay to the releasing of the first bull. Panting and wet it entered the ring like a train off its tracks, five hundred kilograms of dark rippling muscle, shaking its great horned head. The product of a dozen generations of breeding, the toro brava is fearless and awesome.

A small group of matadors drew its attention by waving their capes or calling out "Hey!" In the early stages of the engagement, the men were cautious and did not venture far from the protective corrida walls. But eventually, one or two of the secondary bullfighters confronted the beast with the intent of having it pass beneath their outstretched capes. The crowd cheered for each successful deception, and jeered with a series of hisses and boos at the less skillful who mis-stepped and were forced to run or seek refuge.
It was the picadores who drew first blood. From horseback, they absorbed the bull’s hot-headed charge, stopping it only at the last moment with the end of a lance. Wounded and angry, the animal renewed its attempts to gore its aggressors.

Here the bandrilleros, with colourful bandrillas, displayed their bravado by leaping over the bull’s horns and embedding the sticks in its broad back. Only after six such darts had been attempted, did the torero take over. Using a smaller red cape and a sword he led the bull about the ring in a series of passes, leaning in over the horns and eliciting the familiar "Ole!" for the more dangerous manoeuvers. His goal was to mesmerize and to tire the animal to the point where he could feasibly drive the sword in over the horns and through the animal’s back – a process called estocada.

But even after working the bull to this point, success and a clean kill are far from assured. On that day only Encabo was able. Robleno required a second attempt with each of his bulls, and the great Pepin Liria was picked up and tossed, to the horror of the crowd. He did not return.

It is not, however, the mere mechanics of these encounters that matter to true aficionados. Bullfighting is a ritual. A dare. A challenge. And that afternoon, in spite of my abhorrence to the blood and the torture, I gleaned some small understanding of this.

Robleno, if not necessarily the best of the three, captured the imagination of his hometown crowd. On his knees at he centre of the ring he awaited the first of his bulls. The dark mass passed within inches of his head. The young bullfighter leaned, leapt, danced, and scrambled away from the possibility of death again and again. He taunted and cajoled the beast that moments earlier nearly killed his compatriot. He turned his back on the animal. Strutted and sneered. At times, he was brilliant. At others, sloppy and crude. But he was never afraid.

Like the Pedro Romero of Hemingway’s imagining, he provided us with a glimpse of what is to be young and alive. And at the same time he demonstrated how thin the line is between that and death.
I left the corrida that day with mixed emotions. A sure sign that I had learned something, even if I was not quite sure what.
© Leo Brent Robillard April 2007
Athens, Ontario
lbrobillard@ripnet.com
 
Watch for Leaving Wyoming and Houndini's Shadow wherever good books are sold, or check out www.leobrentrobillard.com for more information.

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