Anyone who goes to see the Altamira cave paintings in northern Spain will note the presence of a figure that looks tranquil in some poses and aggressive in others. These images depict—dating back to some 1,500 years ago—the ancestors of the protagonists of bullfighting.

 

According to some historians, the Roman conquerors brought their circus celebrations to Spain 23 centuries ago. These public spectacles quite often could be cruel. The genesis of bullfights can be traced back to these events, which immediately became hugely popular.

 

In the 11th century, the epic poem of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (Mio Cid) recounts a famous episode in which the hero, enemy of the invading Arabs, speared a bull from his horse. Seven centuries later, the painter Francisco de Goya depicted this scene in one of his drawings.

 

The poetry of the Siglo de Oro—the Spanish Golden Age that spans the 16th and 17th centuries—frequently makes reference to kings who confronted bulls, and celebrations that were only complete if they were accompanied by the threat of angry bulls. 

But one thing is the sport of killing bulls, which can be compared to fishing or hunting, and quite another thing is tauromaquia, the art of taking on a bull that weighs a half a ton or so with only a small piece of cloth (the cape and the muleta, the stick that the red cloth hangs from) and an anachronistic sword called estoque. These are the bullfighter’s scanty tools, as well as the help of a lancer on horseback (picador) and banderilleros, who test the bull for ferocity and diminish its strength by stabbing a mound of muscle on the animal’s neck. The bullfighter must make the bull respond to the orders of the piece of cloth, to have it run at a specified speed and bow its head to facilitate its death by sword, all before half an hour has gone by.

 

Spanish bullfighting fans do not permit this spectacle to be called a sport; for them, it is an art. It is as if one measured the beauty of a painting by the size of the biceps of the artist or a dancer’s talent by the ability to stand on tiptoe. Indeed, fans like to compare bullfighting to ballet. For them, the blood in a bullfight is only an inevitable accident. What is at stake in this game is more than just blood: it is life and death.

 

 

For centuries, bullfighting was a form of combat in which a horseback rider attacked a bull with spears. But, the story goes, at the beginning of the 18th century, a man by the name of Francisco Romero got off his horse, took up a cape and a sword and confronted the bull, face-to-face, body-to-body, inch-by-inch in a battle to the death and in clearly disadvantageous conditions. Romero was a young carpenter from Ronda, the legendary Spanish city where Ernest Hemingway wrote novels and Rainer Maria Rilke poetry. Orson Welles is buried there. And it was there that the Romero family established bullfighting as it is known today.

 

From then until now—for almost 300 years—bulls have evolved a lot more than bullfighters. Everywhere, even in Switzerland, there are bulls that charge if provoked. But the bull used for bullfights is different. It is the product of dozens of generations in which the crossbreeding of races and breeds has produced a hefty animal with sharp horns and irrepressible fierceness that charges at human beings because the instinct has now been genetically inscribed. Bulls nowadays know no cowardice; they become more and more aggressive the more they are hurt and they keep on attacking until the last moment of their lives. 

These specimens are not sold at an ordinary cattle market. “The bull used for bullfights,” says the historian Federico Carlos Sáinz de Robles, “is an artificial zoological type, created exclusively for the fiesta.” Bulls for bullfighting are raised in only a few countries—Spain, France, Portugal and a few Latin American countries. In other spots on the planet, one can find temperamental bulls (how about the the irascible bucks of North American rodeos?). But not fierce bulls. Thus the crucial paradox that surrounds the debate about whether to ban bullfights or tolerate them: if fierce bulls were banned from fighting to protect them from death by sword-thrusting, this race of bulls would disappear.

 

 

The bulls are the product of a slow and careful selection of lineages, but the fiesta in which they confront the bullfighters is clearly part of popular culture. Unlike many sports that attract crowds, it was not born in a palace garden nor in club meetings. It was born in the grassroots, in the poverty of peasant festivities and patron saint celebrations. The bulls have lived in the Spanish soul from even before Spain existed. They are integrated in its language; they are a unique symbol and awaken a curious and ancient passion.

 

In many ways, the bullfights represent a religious metaphor that, like the Christian mass, demands a central sacrifice, consecrated priests, some ceremonial garments, some secular rites, the offering of a victim and an atmosphere shrouded by death.

 

But, unlike in most religions, the priest puts his life at risk in the ritual of sacrifice. Juan José de Bonifaz, the historian who keeps the most meticulous count of bullfighting casualties, talks of “hundreds of deaths.” Between 1771 and 1991, about 500 bullfighters have been gored to death. That is, one every semester. Two centuries ago, there were more victims, but penicillin—celebrated with a monument in Madrid’s celebrated bullfight ring Plaza de Las Ventas—has prevented casualties that could have
spiralled easily into the thousands.

 

Nevertheless, many famous bullfighters have lost their lives in the rings. Among them are several of the art’s founders and a significant number of modern bullfighters. Among the dead figure Pepe Hillo, Pepete, Espartero, Gallito, Joselito, Paquirri and the most famous of all: Manuel Rodríguez Sánchez, Manolete. When he was mortally wounded in the small Spanish city of Linares in 1947, there was international consternation. It was as if Muhammad Ali had died from a right hook in the boxing ring. Manolete was 30 years old.

 

Unlike many other animals who unavoidably must die in the service of humankind, the bullfighting bull, if it is fierce enough, is pardoned its life and returns to the countryside as a stud bull. Not bad…

 

 

The “national fiesta,” as bullfights are called in Spain, travelled to its Spanish colonies along with the viceroys, soldiers, wine and ham. During several centuries, bullfights were staged in almost all the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America. Argentina and Uruguay, famous for their cattle, also had bullfight rings, and some bullfighters met death in Montevideo.

Now only Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru host bullfights. In Europe, in addition to Spain, there’s France and—in a more sporting than artistic manner, Portugal.

 

In the case of Colombia—or at least of Bogotá—one wonders for how long. Newly elected mayor Gustavo Petro announced on January 13, 2012, that he would begin negotiations with Bogotá’s bullfighting entity to put a stop to bullfights, which are a “spectacle of death.”

 

For about 20 to 30 years now, bullfighting has faced two great enemies: the high price of the spectacle and the opposition of increasingly aggressive anti-bullfighting groups—many of them animal rights groups. Two distinct Spains have begun to emerge: the bullfighting Spain, mostly Andalucía, Valencia and Madrid—where the bullfighting fiesta has been declared “cultural patrimony”—and the anti-bullfighting Spain, led by Catalonia, where bullfighting was prohibited this year.

 

With fiesta or without fiesta, the black and corpulent bull will keep on being Spain’s millenial shadow. As it happens, billboards are prohibited on Spanish highways—except for one featuring a defiant bull. After the flag, it is the best-known symbol, in a land where the king is the most enthusiastic bullfighting fan.