Bullfighting Is Dead! Long Live the Bullfight!

Animal Cushions By 5 o’clock a mob toting slim, white plastic seat cushionshad jammed onto the cement benches of the arena. I was there, likeeveryone else, to see José Tomás, and found myselfsandwiched between an elderly, rheumy-eyed Valencian in a porkpiehat and a bullfighting announcer for Spanish television on abusman’s holiday from Madrid who was working a thick stogie.The smells of wet clay, manure and sand gave way to after-shave andcigar smoke. José Tomás Román Martín — fans call him byhis double-barreled first name, José Tomás, or justTomás — is a mystical figure in Spain. Quixotic, prone topublic squabbling with bullfighting’s notoriously sleazypromoters and rarely given to speaking to the media, he keepslargely apart from his fellow matadors and fights much moreinfrequently than they do. His remoteness, in one respect, speaksto bullfighting’s disengagement with a growing segment ofSpain, though his artistry and grace, along with his fearlessness(it shocks other matadors), make him a figure of widespreadfascination. The contradiction seems to encapsulate something deepin the Spanish psyche. The announcement of his appearance in Valencia caused a scrambleacross the country for tickets, and old Spain, the Spain that stillloves bullfighting, turned out in full. When Mariano Rajoy, thehead of Spain’s conservative Popular Party, who had just lostthe election to the Socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero , entered the arena, he received a thunderous ovation, somethingthat didn’t much happen to him out on the campaign trail.“He will yet be the ruin of Zapatero!” murmured ared-faced man, to no one in particular. I spottedTomás’s father a few seats over — short,gray-haired, bespectacled, in crew-neck sweater and slacks, staringanxiously into space. Everyone now stood, expectant. Then a brassband struck up; the matadors, after first crossing themselves,paraded into the ring behind white horses; and the crowd finallysettled down to wait for José Tomás. AS SPAIN GOES, so goes toreo, or bullfighting. That’s the oldadage. During the 1940s, Manolete was a matador of stoic gravity,reflecting the rueful mood of a country coming out of bloody civilwar under a dictatorship. During the 1960s, the mop-topped ElCordobés, a hot-dog and a rule breaker in the ring,personified the opening up of the nation after years of isolation.In the ’90s, Espartaco was called a technocrat for atechnocratic era. This sort of metaphor is glib, but there isnonetheless something to the notion that you can read Spain throughbullfighting. Today, along with José Tomás, a variety of other giftedmatadors have emerged — among them Enrique Ponce, El Juli,Cayetano Rivera Ordó?ez, Morante de la Puebla, JuanBautista, Miguel ángel Perera — at precisely a momentwhen the country apparently cares less than ever about what theydo. It’s also revealing of Spain’s curious dividebetween indifference and fascination that several of the moreflamboyant and handsome toreros (bullfighters) occupy the gossippages the way Spanish soccer stars do. But first things first. Aficionados will rightly tell you thattoreo is not a sport; in Spanish newspapers, it is never featuredon the sports pages. Sport implies a fair fight between willingopponents. Except in the unusual case that a bull is spared forhaving shown exceptional bravery in the ring, all the bulls die.Even in Portugal, where bulls aren’t killed in the ring, theyare killed afterward, a hypocrisy that spares the spectator but notthe animal. Every lidia — an individual bullfight between abull and a matador — is a ritual orchestrated to injure andthen exhaust the animal so that it can be more easily killed.Whatever that is (and opponents call it torture), it’s notsporting.