Corrida de Toros

Mkay team, here's how bullfights in Salamanca go, as told by a few of the 100+ photos I took. And a video. I may have overdone it slightly. Be warned, I am talking about them actually killing a bull, so if that's not your thing, maybe don't read this.

 So first, we walked up to the Plaza de Toros, which apparently is kinda like cathedrals in that every major city tends to have one. It's basically an old-style stadium. 

Ta da! Apparently this is also the kind of thing that people tend to dress up for. That goes on the list of memos Corinne didn't get. Oops. At least I'm not generally a sloppy dresser? At least not while I've been living here.

Then all of the toreros come out. There were three of them today, they all fought two bulls each.

The toreros walk to the opposite end of the plaza to say hello to el presidente, accompanied by their bandarilleros (helpers) and moscas del espada (the guys who give them their swords). And the picadores are there, more about them later, but they're the guys on the horses in the back. And if you look closely, you can kind of tell there's three lines of men walking towards the other end of the plaza, all led by the toreros.

These are the uniforms that the banderilleros wear. Originally we figured they were toreros in training, but it turns out that they're the guys who didn't quite make the grade to get "certified" as a torero, so they're forever doomed to just be the guys that dance around with pink capes. They help distract the bull before the torero comes out and keep the bull from goring the torero between swords & such.

Anyway, then they finally release the bull, and the banderilleros get him to run around for a little while and burn off some energy. They wave their cool pink capes and then go hide behind the little walls placed around the plaza, and the bull tries to get at them  basically through the wall.

After a few minutes, the picadores come out. These are the guys on the horses. There are two of them, and they have longer spears, but the spears have a "stopper" on them that'll keep the spear from going more than a few inches into the bull.

The horses are blindfolded and covered in pads because the bull usually runs headlong into the horse when it notices the horse. There must be something solid to protect the horse too, because there's usually this loud crack like the bull ran into a wall when it runs into the picador.

They do this to wound & weaken the bull before the torero comes out. Because the he doesn't use a cape or anything at the beginning, it's just him and the bull.

At this point, the torero has those fancy sticks that have two hooks on the end of them. And the idea is that all six of them are going to end up in the bull's back. They do this by managing to get the bull to come at them, then doing this very quick almost ballet-like jump while stabbing the hooks in. It was amazing the first time I saw it, it wasn't at all what I expected. Even though they're, y'know, stabbing this animal, there is an art to it.

Sometimes they miss and the hooks end up in the side of the bull, or they're not in far enough and they fall out while the bull is running around. One of the toreros had an eyepatch (a result of a definite loss at a different bullfight…) and completely missed the bull once, probably because his depth perception is all off. But kudos to him for getting back into the ring after getting gored in the face...

After the six sticks are in the bull's back (look for the blue & white above) they bring out the famous red cape, as well as a sword. It looks like something you'd take fencing lessons with, not your stereotypical sword.

This is when the fun stuff happens. Sometimes the bull isn't as responsive so they can't get them to do anything crazy. But the cape is fun because they get the bull to literally run circles around them. Our friend with the eyepatch literally ran backwards around the circle with his hand on the bull's horns. We now understand why he lost an eye.

Some of the bulls that came out weren't as interesting during this "dance", and sometimes the toreros didn't put on a good enough show. But this is the part of it, I think, that people find so interesting, because it is literally this man by himself in the ring with this gigantic bull. The smallest one was 490 kilo (1080 lbs), but most of them were more like 530 kilo (1168 lbs). That's huge, in case you were wondering. They look smaller in the photos, but they are large scary animals.

At some point, which I can't quite determine how they determine this point, they stop hiding the sword underneath the cape and raise it to the bull. There's still a little bit of a dance in some cases, if the bull isn't responding like the torero wants him to. But then the torero stabs the bull in the back. Sometimes the bull goes down right away, in which case, as long as the presidente approved of the "dance" section, they will get a point, or some kind of positive feedback. I'm still not sure how they determine a winner, but I know if the presidente puts a white handkerchief on the railing, it's a good thing. If he doesn't, the rest of the crowd will stand up and wave handkerchiefs at him in hopes that he'll change his mind.

On some occasions, like the one in the photo above, the bull doesn't go down right away. Right when the sword goes in, the helpers come out and run the bull until it goes down. In this case, the bull wouldn't go down for a long time. They chased it to the other side of the ring before it gave up and just stood there. Then Paquirri (that's the torero's name) had to pul the sword halfway out to make Despierto (the bull) bleed more. That was a little less pleasant.

After the bull goes down comes the part that I stopped watching after the first bull. The squeamish are advised to skip this paragraph. One of the bandarilleros has a knife in his pocket, about the size of a pocket knife I think. He uses that knife to cut the nerves in the bull's neck, just to make sure he's not suffering. And the bull twitches when it happens. That's why I stopped watching it.

Anyway, they make sure everything's said and done, and then they bring out horses and pull the bull out of the ring by his horns.

And that, my friends, is a bullfight! This is one of the longest posts I think I've ever written… But it really was so interesting to go see, I'm glad I went. I wouldn't be opposed to going to another one, but I'm not sure I'd want to spend the money on it. I think it would be interesting to go to one in a bigger city, because the guy who got our group the tickets and came to the bullfight with us said that everybody approves of everything and always wants the presidente to give out the white handkerchief. In a bigger stadium, it's more difficult to get the crowd's approval, so the dances might be a little riskier. Definitely worth going to if you find yourself in Spain though, I'm very glad that I understand it a lot better now.

Los toreros y sus bandarilleros