Tuesday, 2 August 2011
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'Antitaurinos' in Lima
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With a family man killed by a tormented bull goaded to madness
at a fiesta near Valencia last week, perhaps it is time for Spain to wake up
and smell the blood.
When I was a feature writer on an ex-pat rag in Spain in 2007, I was disgusted when our editor gave over the centre spread to a colleague for a flatulent article in defence of bull fighting. John Davies, the then ‘sports’ writer, expressed the sneering ‘regret’ that squeamish Brits were missing out on the full Spanish experience if they failed to embrace it as part of the ‘culture’.
Somewhat karmically, the paper went bust two weeks later.
Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero’s recent woeful decision to give Bull Fighting official status as an ‘artistic discipline and cultural product’ may have come as a shock but not really that much of a surprise. With the bull fighting ban now enforced in Catalunya, and having first-hand knowledge of Spanish politics having lived in the country myself, one has to suspect this had rather more to do with point scoring against the Catalans than any real interest in an outdated and controversial bloodsport. As bullrings close down, and television coverage of corridas gets pulled due to falling viewing figures, feeble defence of this vicious nonsense has become almost a cultural relic in itself. Yet out the arguments still trot - like the crudely stitched up horses of the Picadors, but with far less nobility. I have read incredulously of ‘brave bulls’ earning ‘glorious’ deaths, and wondered how it is possible in this day and age for anyone using such ridiculously anthropomorphic language to expect their argument be taken seriously in any sort of rational debate.
Bravery and/or cowardice are human traits; the preposterous ‘transference’ demonstrated by attributing such qualities to animals should surely be greeted with derision, not given column room; yet my former colleague earnestly claimed in his 2007 article that “fighting bulls are born on a strict pedigree of ‘proven courage’ for six years before they go into the ring. Any sign of ‘cowardice’ in that six years and they will be dispatched to the slaughterhouse. The prospect before them is a place on the butcher’s block or a hot-blooded death in the Plaza de Toros.”
Gosh.
So what does this actually mean? That in demonstrating either ‘courage’ or ‘cowardice’ (at least in the swivel-eyed opinion of the humans who control their lives) they somehow earn the right to choose their own fate? How frightfully decent. However, one has to ask just how, exactly, this generous ‘deal’ is conveyed to these creatures? And how may they be seen either to consent or not? Via contract? And how might that be worded, we wonder? “Choose one: a) run away from the homicidal maniac brandishing a sharp instrument trying to hurt you, or b) charge at him and earn the right to be stabbed to death in front of a cheering crowd...”
Assuming our ‘brave’ bull plumps for option B, he then enters into six years of ‘training’, during which time he is made to believe he is playing some sort of game and so gets used to the flapping cape and running around a ring...er...thing. At the end of this, he is packed into a truck and taken to the arena, where the game turns decidedly sour and he is rewarded with a confusing and distressing death. Commencing with metal lances being plunged (and twisted) between his shoulder-blades by the mounted Picadors to weaken him as he enters the ring, the ‘game’ continues with three or four banderillas being thrust into his already profusely bleeding back, until, dazed and staggering, he is finally put out of his misery with a sword or dagger, severing his spinal cord. It is thus that it would appear bovine ‘bravery’ is established – i.e., by how long agonised, confused and deranged animals can keep on charging.
This would also seem to have a bearing on how potent the bull’s gonads are going to be when they are chopped off and served up for the matador’s dinner, the notion being that eating the testicles of a strong animal will confer certain macho powers on the raving delusional sitting with the plate in front of them.
Last time I looked in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of sadism was still ‘a form of perversion marked by a love of cruelty’. How else can one describe the practise of goading and tormenting a living, sentient creature to its death? I totally dispute that it’s any kind of a fair fight. The bull is knobbled as soon as he enters the ring by not only the methods outlined above, but bulls have also been found to have had vaseline rubbed in their eyes to blur their vision. Real level playing field that. What bravery. What entertainment. Qué ‘especta-culo’ (look it up).
I had to laugh when I read of the pro-bullfighting lobby in Spain jeering at horrified Brits by saying ‘The English come to the corrida to cry for the bull, then go home and beat their children.’ With marches in the streets against the ever mushrooming problem of domestic violence in Spain, that would seem rather like the pot calling the kettle black. Just as I do not believe that in order to love England one has to embrace foxhunting (still illegal by the way - despite the sycophantic coverage given to Boxing Day meets by sympathetic rags), neither will I accept that one must swallow savagery and ritualised bloodshed in order to fully appreciate Spain. In fact, I frankly wonder at the sort of English, and other foreign nationals who choose to make their homes there who are apparently so desperate to be seen as assimilated they believe they have to suck-up to it.
I find it depressing that to so many, any expression of concern or sympathy for the pain and suffering of animals is cause for derision. The legendary King Arthur is supposed to have said that ‘violence is not strength, and compassion is not weakness’.
Myth or reality, the sentiment is irrefutable.
© Emma Blake 2011
When I was a feature writer on an ex-pat rag in Spain in 2007, I was disgusted when our editor gave over the centre spread to a colleague for a flatulent article in defence of bull fighting. John Davies, the then ‘sports’ writer, expressed the sneering ‘regret’ that squeamish Brits were missing out on the full Spanish experience if they failed to embrace it as part of the ‘culture’.
Somewhat karmically, the paper went bust two weeks later.
Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero’s recent woeful decision to give Bull Fighting official status as an ‘artistic discipline and cultural product’ may have come as a shock but not really that much of a surprise. With the bull fighting ban now enforced in Catalunya, and having first-hand knowledge of Spanish politics having lived in the country myself, one has to suspect this had rather more to do with point scoring against the Catalans than any real interest in an outdated and controversial bloodsport. As bullrings close down, and television coverage of corridas gets pulled due to falling viewing figures, feeble defence of this vicious nonsense has become almost a cultural relic in itself. Yet out the arguments still trot - like the crudely stitched up horses of the Picadors, but with far less nobility. I have read incredulously of ‘brave bulls’ earning ‘glorious’ deaths, and wondered how it is possible in this day and age for anyone using such ridiculously anthropomorphic language to expect their argument be taken seriously in any sort of rational debate.
Bravery and/or cowardice are human traits; the preposterous ‘transference’ demonstrated by attributing such qualities to animals should surely be greeted with derision, not given column room; yet my former colleague earnestly claimed in his 2007 article that “fighting bulls are born on a strict pedigree of ‘proven courage’ for six years before they go into the ring. Any sign of ‘cowardice’ in that six years and they will be dispatched to the slaughterhouse. The prospect before them is a place on the butcher’s block or a hot-blooded death in the Plaza de Toros.”
Gosh.
So what does this actually mean? That in demonstrating either ‘courage’ or ‘cowardice’ (at least in the swivel-eyed opinion of the humans who control their lives) they somehow earn the right to choose their own fate? How frightfully decent. However, one has to ask just how, exactly, this generous ‘deal’ is conveyed to these creatures? And how may they be seen either to consent or not? Via contract? And how might that be worded, we wonder? “Choose one: a) run away from the homicidal maniac brandishing a sharp instrument trying to hurt you, or b) charge at him and earn the right to be stabbed to death in front of a cheering crowd...”
Assuming our ‘brave’ bull plumps for option B, he then enters into six years of ‘training’, during which time he is made to believe he is playing some sort of game and so gets used to the flapping cape and running around a ring...er...thing. At the end of this, he is packed into a truck and taken to the arena, where the game turns decidedly sour and he is rewarded with a confusing and distressing death. Commencing with metal lances being plunged (and twisted) between his shoulder-blades by the mounted Picadors to weaken him as he enters the ring, the ‘game’ continues with three or four banderillas being thrust into his already profusely bleeding back, until, dazed and staggering, he is finally put out of his misery with a sword or dagger, severing his spinal cord. It is thus that it would appear bovine ‘bravery’ is established – i.e., by how long agonised, confused and deranged animals can keep on charging.
This would also seem to have a bearing on how potent the bull’s gonads are going to be when they are chopped off and served up for the matador’s dinner, the notion being that eating the testicles of a strong animal will confer certain macho powers on the raving delusional sitting with the plate in front of them.
Last time I looked in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definition of sadism was still ‘a form of perversion marked by a love of cruelty’. How else can one describe the practise of goading and tormenting a living, sentient creature to its death? I totally dispute that it’s any kind of a fair fight. The bull is knobbled as soon as he enters the ring by not only the methods outlined above, but bulls have also been found to have had vaseline rubbed in their eyes to blur their vision. Real level playing field that. What bravery. What entertainment. Qué ‘especta-culo’ (look it up).
I had to laugh when I read of the pro-bullfighting lobby in Spain jeering at horrified Brits by saying ‘The English come to the corrida to cry for the bull, then go home and beat their children.’ With marches in the streets against the ever mushrooming problem of domestic violence in Spain, that would seem rather like the pot calling the kettle black. Just as I do not believe that in order to love England one has to embrace foxhunting (still illegal by the way - despite the sycophantic coverage given to Boxing Day meets by sympathetic rags), neither will I accept that one must swallow savagery and ritualised bloodshed in order to fully appreciate Spain. In fact, I frankly wonder at the sort of English, and other foreign nationals who choose to make their homes there who are apparently so desperate to be seen as assimilated they believe they have to suck-up to it.
I find it depressing that to so many, any expression of concern or sympathy for the pain and suffering of animals is cause for derision. The legendary King Arthur is supposed to have said that ‘violence is not strength, and compassion is not weakness’.
Myth or reality, the sentiment is irrefutable.
© Emma Blake 2011
