One of the three Matadors with his bull

Another snapshot from my bullfight

A slightly staged photo about the reactions some may have been feeling at watching a bullfight for the first time.

This bull was boo-ed by the crowd and these steers were sent in to get the bull out.

Once the bull is killed he's paraded out like this.

A shot with me and the fight in the background... you can even see the red cape.

After the bullfight. Standing in front of the ring.

Here it is as promised. Photos from the bullfight. A couple of other things I remember about this experience is that earlier in the week I was speaking to a local who was tutoring my classmates and I in Spanish. We were all talking about the bullfight and how excited we were to get to experience this complete difference in culture. You see for the most part we didn't really think about bullfights as animal cruelty we were too caught up in the fact that we were getting to watch the fights in person. But when I started talking to the tutor he said that he didn't really care for the fights because he didn't think that the bulls deserved to be treated with such violence. It was after this that I said something that offended him. I referred to bullfighting as "a sport." He immediately corrected me. Telling me that no matter if I thought it was animal cruelty or not there is no one in Spain that would refer to it as a sport. It was something different. Somthing more.

Yet another surprising thing about bullfights was how much goes into it. The bull is first released and then with the pink cape and at least three different men all first tire the bull out then following that a man comes out on a highly padded horse and he gets two chances to weaken the bull's neck. This part was always quite on the scary side. The bull even drew up some blood on the horse and literally lifted him off of his feet. It was then that the man on the horse used a rather extended pole and reaches for a specific area of the bull's neck. Following this part of the fight comes the men who I believe are called Picadores. During this part there are three younger men and each of them has two sticks of about arm length and they are very sharp on the end. Each of the men charges the bull with the sticks with the intention of further weakening the bulls neck. By the end of this stage the bull should have six sharp sticks flopping around still attached to the body. Then comes the Matador. He comes and does a varying series of moves with the bull and after a differing amount of time he switches the fake sword with a real one and makes his move towards the bull. Ideally the bull will fall over dead within fifteen steps of the entrance of the sword. If the bull does not fall it reflects poorly on the Matador and requires another attempt at the kill. During my specific fight there were almost all bad kills that were quite brutal towards the bull. Once the bull is finally dead he is hooked up to what appears to be a gladiator carrige from back in the day and he is dragged in a circle and paraded out of the ring. This part was also a little bothersome to whitness. After this come some sweepers and they quickly sweep out the ring so that it's not covered in blood for the next bull and Matador. The killing of each bull and the performance of each Matador is critically judged and can be expected to by very highly evaluated in the paper the following day. If a bullfighter and his team does well enough he is given an ear or two of the bull that was so perfectly executed and even taken out the big door or gate of the bull ring.