The Plaza de Toros
"The finest fighting bulls belong to herds that have their own stud-book and their own devisa in the form of a rosette that the doomed animal carries with it into…
Location: Plaza del Triunfo, Seville, Spain
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
"The Plaza de Toros," from Home Life in Spain by Samuel Levy Bensusan, 1910.
Sixteen years or more have passed since the writer, then little more than a boy, travelled from Lisbon to Madrid in company with a cuadrilla that had distinguished itself in the Campo Pequeño, near Lisbon, to the accompaniment of the frenzied enthusiasm of the Portuguese. Reverte and Bombita were the heroes of the hour, and their treatment of the toros embolados had been as daring as it had been skilful. Nor had there been wanting a loud demand for at least one combat a outrance. Needless to say the Portuguese authorities refused to respond, and the writer had decided to seek in the Plaza del Triunfo the full expression of the corrida.
The two matadors held something akin to a reception at half a dozen of the stations at which the train stopped between the frontier station and the capital, but after all they did not exercise their skill in Madrid where the honours were divided between the great Espartero, then in the last year of his life, and D. Luis Mazzantini, lawyer, gentleman, and diestro, who left the law for the bull-ring and has since left the bull-ring for the Council Chamber. A few weeks later the writer journeyed down to the south to see Guerrita in the great bull-ring of Seville, and travelled out to some of the bull-farms where the more historic herds are raised. In the country and in the cafe of the Emperadores on the Sierpes at Seville, he learned something of the theory and practice of bull-fighting from the closely shaved, sinewy aspirants to honour, who sat through their hour of ease smoking cigarettes and telling how fields are won, their splendid coletas, as their pig-tails are called, carefully twisted under broad-brimmed hats.
Tastes change; to-day the writer's desire to attend a bullfight has been replaced by a still stronger desire to avoid one at any cost. If there was any pleasure in days of old that could atone for the sight of horses running round the arena and treading out their entrails, it has gone for good. But the splendid colour, the barbaric sounds, the glittering crowd, the ornate uniforms and the blinding light of a Spanish bull-ring in the hours of action will hold no small measure of fascination for all time, and inasmuch as bullfighting is at once a science and the national pastime of Spain, it cannot be overlooked and calls for certain explanation in detail.
The finest fighting bulls belong to herds that have their own stud-book and their own devisa in the form of a rosette that the doomed animal carries with it into the ring. The best farms are in the Utrera district where water is plentiful and the pastures are rich. There the young bulls are carefully tended by ganaderos who watch over them night and day, guiding and controlling them from horseback with the aid of long poles.
When the bulls are a year old they are tested, being attacked in turn by a horseman; those that turn tail and run away change their status and become in due time the property of the butcher. Those that show fight and are "well armed" are named and entered in the stud-book. Plucky bulls that suffer from some physical defect which would prove a bar to their admittance to the first-class arenas of Madrid, Seville, Barcelona, and other cities, meet their fate while young at the inexpert hands of second-class matadors in some corrida de novillos. Their better-equipped companions pass a full three years on the farm in charge of the ganadero whom they come to regard as companion, friend, and master, and surrounded by belled bullocks in whose company they learn to travel at their ease.
When at last they are brought in for some great corrida they make their way to the arena by night, the tame bullocks, their life-long companions, surrounding them, their ganadero in attendance. They are corraled in some spacious meadow not far from the city of their destination, and the supply of corn that has been given to them in such liberal measure for some weeks prior to their departure is well maintained.
On the night before the fight they are driven along the road to the arena in the small hours, and every point of vantage on either side is crowded with spectators, while a great company of afficionados follows behind. Once within the prison walls each bull is driven into its condemned cell and left without food or water for the fifteen hours that must elapse before the gates of the toril open, the devisa is thrust into its shoulder, and the bull furious with anger and with thirst, conscious of its enormous strength and eager for vengeance against mankind, rushes out into the light to see across the yellow sand, capadores and picadores awaiting the attack which ten thousand spectators or more are assembled to witness.
In the theory of bull-fighting, the bull is always the aggressor, in practice he is known to sulk and sometimes to require the cruel stimulus of the banderillos de fuego. Should the hideous noise and his own burnt skin leave him still unwilling to attack his tormentors, he is promptly lamed by the aid of the media luna and stabbed by the puntillero, while the excited crowd curses the Government and the Pope, and yells for the blood of the administration. This happens but seldom.
The matador in charge of the cuadrilla responsible for the bull in the arena decides most of the questions that arise during the combat, but the judge who sits high up in the arena with trumpeters by his side has power to limit or extend the divisions into which the combat is divided. It is for him to say when the bull has killed a sufficient number of horses and has reached the point of exhaustion at which the banderilleros may take up their work with safety; it is for him to decide when the matador's turn is reached, and the divisions in the combat are announced to the public by the shrill notes of the trumpeters stationed under the judge's box. By the time the matador has received from his attendant an espada and muleta (sword and small scarlet cloak) and has asked permission to kill the bull "in fashion that will confer honour upon the city," the arena is strewn with dead and dying horses, the bull's shoulders are pierced with lances and his horns are stained with blood to the head.
The contest between man and beast is followed with keenest attention and deepest silence; the diestro manoeuvres to bring the bull into position in which his forelegs will be close together; if they are spread out at all there will be no free passage for the sword as it passes between the shoulders into the lungs. If the stroke be a successful one and the bull falls slowly to his knees, the air is rent with shouts, the matador walks off triumphant, while flowers, cigars, hats, and even billets-doux are flung to him from every side, and the puntillero, coming from behind the bull, puts an end to its agony with one swift thrust behind the head. Should several strokes miss, the matador is greeted with howls of derision; the trumpeters sound a warning; he must try again, and should he fail several times, he may even suffer the disgrace of seeing another matador summoned to complete his work.
As soon as the bull is dead, a gaily decked team of mules is driven into the arena, the carcase is dragged off to be cut up in some neighbouring shambles from which the flesh, almost black and quite unfit for food, is sold to the lower orders of the populace. The mules return for the dead horses; the red or blue coated attendants carry their sand baskets to and fro to cover up the purple patches plainly to be seen on the floor of the arena. The second cuadrilla replaces the first; the trumpet sounds again, the gates of the toril are drawn back, and another splendid animal rushes to meet its doom.
Bull-fighting brings about a heavy drain upon the Spanish exchequer, for in a comparatively poor country like Spain many men at the head of the profession draw incomes running into five figures. In the days of his greatest achievements Rafael Guerra (Guerrita), whose father was a butcher in the matadero of Cordoba, earned an annual income of a million pesetas. Don Luis Mazzantini was said to earn three-quarters of this amount, and when the Spanish diestros crossed the Pyrenees to give the people of Nimes, Dax, Aries, and Bayonne a taste of their quality, one of them, Reverte, if I am not mistaken, lighted his cigarette with a thousand-franc note, presumably to show that art and not profit was the object of his excursion.
The bull-fighter must be a man gifted with fine physique, splendid nerve, sound judgment and complete use of all his faculties. He may receive his earlier training in the cuadrilla of some second or third-rate matador and fight his way through the ranks unaided, or he may go to one of the escuelas de tauromaquia where great fighters now retired from active work labour among a rising generation as Royal Academicians in this country work at the Academy School.
The path to Parnassus is a very steep one; there are many falls and bruises. The young bull-fighter must learn in the first place to wield the plum-coloured cloak of the capador, and when he has acquired sufficient agility to enable him to keep the most savage bull at bay he will be promoted to the use of the banderillas. When he is an expert with them he may persuade some administration to allow him to form his own cuadrilla and kill novillos, and, should he succeed, one engagement follows another until the great day in his life when he receives the alternativa and is admitted to the ranks of first-class matadors.
On this occasion some leading diestro draws the bull into position for him and then hands him espada and muleta that he may complete the work; thereafter he may take his cuadrilla to the leading cities of Spain and kill the three- and four-year-old bulls. Just as a great opera singer who has received the plaudits of the audience at La Scala or San Carlo di Napoli travels across the Atlantic, so the great matador is retained to visit the capitals of South America and Mexico, where he performs his orifice in return for enormous fees. Women bullfighters are not unknown in Spain, though they are seldom entrusted with old bulls; there is a school for women bullfighters in Barcelona.
A few years ago toreadors who died in the ring passed to the world beyond without the rites of the Church, but nowadays there is a chapel attached to the bull-ring where the pious matador may commit his safety to the keeping of the Virgin. A priest remains in attendance to administer the last sacrament to any one of the fraternity who fails to escape from the enemy. It often happens that one of the lesser lights of the bull-ring is very badly mauled and the courage with which one and all rush to his assistance is remarkable. Now and again a wound is fatal, generally because blood poisoning sets in.
Few great diestros can say that they have never been caught by the bull's horn though most of them have escaped with little injury. Espartero who in his day(that is to say in the early nineties of last century)was the greatest matador of Spain, met his death facing the first bull in a corrida at Madrid. The bull was one of the famous Miura herd known on account of their prowess as the "herd of death," and all Spain went into mourning for the dead matador. The last appearance in the bull-ring of a famous fighter is one that will never be forgotten by those who witness it. Standing room is at a premium, every seat has been sold weeks before the great day; his last fight fought, the great torero cuts off his cherished pigtail and lives in glory until he is translated to Paradise. His presence in the arena as a spectator is always the occasion for a display of frenzied enthusiasm.
The arena is divided into sides, a shady side (sombra) and the sunny side (sol). To the sunny side the working classes and students gather in their thousands. They understand the value of every stroke and are prompt to scream applause or howl disgust; their technical knowledge may compare with that of the people who go regularly to the gallery of our national opera house. They arm themselves with pigskins full of wine, sandwiches made by cutting a roll in half and inserting a slice of greasy sausage, malodorous with garlic, and they enjoy themselves as though their life were one long holiday. The girls wear flowers in their hair and fight the sun with fans; the men trust to their sombreros; the consumption of cigarettes is enormous.
The sunny side where it is unreserved fills as soon as the arena is opened; the shady side is seldom completely occupied until a few moments before the national anthem announces the arrival of the President. The roads between the city and the arena are impassable. Every vehicle that can be pressed into service is engaged at a high price for the afternoon; the square in front of the Plaza is densely packed: motor-cars, carriages, carts, bicycles, are to be numbered by the hundreds, and gallant cavaliers on splendid horses find a passage through the crowd in order to exhibit their horsemanship and greet their friends. Even little children, who have not yet entered their teens, are taken to the Plaza de Toros, where they learn early to acquire a taste for, or complete indifference to, a spectacle that, for all its barbaric splendour, has many disgusting elements.
Occasionally some spice of variety is introduced into the arena. When the writer was last in Madrid, he saw during his brief visit to the Plaza de Toros a celebrated man, Don Tancredo, who stood on a pedestal in the middle of the arena, dressed entirely in white. When the bull was released from the toril and had taken a preliminary canter around the arena he saw this motionless figure and ran up to investigate. He sniffed eagerly and seemed for a moment to be uncertain. D. Tancredo remained motionless as marble; the movement of a limb, a deep breath, would have been the signal for his hideous death, but the most savage bull does not make war on statues, and a moment later toro was chasing the toreros around the arena while the statue, suddenly animated, was making a bee-line for the barrier amid a tumult of applause that made the bull turn round and bellow defiance to his audience. Contests between a bull and a lion, or a bull and a tiger are not unknown, but need not be described.
There are many other aspects of the bull-ring: the fights in which the aristocrats of Spain replace the ordinary matador; others in which the fighting is done by members of some trading association who are celebrating their feteday. But many of these are associated with the Spanish fair which is one of the great national institutions and has been discussed in another place. Sufficient has been said to present a rough outline of the country's most popular pastime, to indicate its fascination and its more repellent aspect. The future of bull-fighting in Spain is uncertain, for though the public taste remains as it has been since Pan y los Toros was the most popular cry in the Iberian Peninsula, it is an open secret that King Alfonso's consort has set her face against it and it is losing its hold upon the educated classes.
Moreover, and this is a very important point, the breed of bulls is not what it used to be. The fighting quality of some of the best herds is deteriorating, while a general improvement in the financial outlook is making the Spaniard more attentive to business than he used to be and less indifferent to the waste of time and money involved in the pursuit of bull-fighting. Years may pass before a great change is noticeable, but there are many who believe that the most prosperous days of the arena have gone never to return. For no small part of the cruelty to animals that is undoubtedly a national failing in Spain, the Plaza de Toros must be held directly responsible.
Bensusan, Samuel Levy. Home Life in Spain. MacMillan, 1910.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
