La corrida

Before I dive into this post, I just need a moment of silence for the fact that I only have SIXTEEN DAYS left in Spain.











Vale. I always think Noche de Hogar can never get any better here in Spain, what with the Prado, the Reina Sofia, Flamenco classes, row boats, and Magnum ice cream, but I was wrong. This week we went to a corrida de toros, a real Spanish bull fight! I remember learning about bull fights for the first time, at least in any sort of detail, my Freshman year of high school. Fourteen-year-old Kelly would NEVER have imagined twenty-one-year-old Kelly ACTUALLY attending one. Never. And yet there we were, standing outside the stadium/arena/ball park. It did feel oddly like a baseball game when we first got there. If soccer is their football (rather, fútbol is their football), then bull fights would totally be their baseball. Although...don't they have baseball in Spain...? Baseball is more like their soccer. Whatever. I don't do sports. But I do apparently do bull fights! And it really was such a great thing to see. As bull fights go, it wasn't a very good one apparently. One of the toreros was only 19 years old, and none of them had very much experience. But it was ridiculous how huge and fast those bulls were and how close they got to the fighters! Okay I gotta start from the beginning.

The way the fighting arena is set up, you can buy tickets in the sol or the sombra, sun or shade. We got the cheapest tickets we could (16 euros) and of course were in the sol. The sombra seats were over twice as expensive. It was an interesting conflict, bc with the sun beaming in our faces I needed my sunglasses, but with my sunglasses I couldn't see the blood. Soooo I didn't wear my sunglasses. I did, however, use my sa-weet Spanish fan that I bought for 3 euros in Córdoba as a semi-visor. So it wasn't too bad. It was pretty hot tho, man alive. Anyway, we walk into the arena, assuming we'd be in the nosey-nosebleed section, but we were only about halfway up from the bottom! It was amazing! We really did end up with great seats. Also, the arena is a lot smaller than anticipated. I wasn't exactly expecting baseball stadium size, but at least bigger than what it was. There was a big old tarp in the middle of the dirt ring, and I cannot even begin to describe how excited I was when they pulled that away!!! There were guys with brooms out at one point and I wondered if they came out and danced to YMCA at the seventh inning stretch. They didn't after all. But they did clean up a lot of bull blood mud.

Each corrida consists of three fighters, each taking on two bulls a piece. A fight could last anywhere from 20-30 minutes, so the whole thing was about two and a half hours...maybe closer to two. When the bull is first released, there are three or four fighter guys with pink capey things to antagonize the bull. After he's sufficiently irritated, two guys on horses come out. I don't know what it is about those horses, but those bulls do NOT like them. The bull will charge at the horse and just SLAM into it. Luckily, the horse is heavily armored and blindfolded, so the horse just takes it like a man. As the bull slams into the horse, nearly lifting it off the ground and tipping it (but unfortunately never actually felling a horse...lame), the rider stabs the bull in the neck/spine area with a long spear thing. Then the bull keep butting his head into the underside of the horse, getting blood alllll over the armor. Okay, not alllll over. A good fighter minimizes the blood as much as possible, so in general it really isn't terribly graphic. Pues. Then, the pink cape fighters come and lure the bull away from the horse so they can exit the ring. After some more teasing from the pink guys, the reall torero comes out. He has the smaller red cape and the gorgeous pants and packet. Seriously. These costumes were amazing. The goal for the torero is to keep the bull's attention as long as he can. THe more times he can get the bull to run around him chasing the red cape, the better. It was like a dance, these toreros are weirdly flexible. After some fancy footwork, the torero whips out a sword, gets the bull to charge, and has to embed the sword into the bull in one swift motion, minimizing both the blood and the time of death. Knowing that, we really didn't see a very good fight. No one got the sword in on the first try that I can remember, and the bulls all definitely took awhile to die. Maybe not the first one...they all run together. But!!! The second torero was gettin panicky, so to get it over with he just stabbed kinda willy-nilly and ended up stabbing the bull through the lungs. Apparently, when a bull is stabbed in the lungs, blood just poooours out of his mouth like a fountain. I won't go into detail, but let's just say, I didn't realize bulls had soooooo much blood in them. Blerg. He did the same thing when he fought in the second half too!! They carried away the bloody mud/dirt/sand stuff in baskets. Baskets of blood mud. Okay, maybe too much detail. Ugh. I still shudder just thinking of it, let alone typing about it. ::shudder::

All in all, it was SUCH a cool experience! I probably don't need to go ever again, but it was definitely an experience I'll remember for a long time:)