(Warning: the first three photos don’t contain any images of animal cruelty. You may want to quickly scroll past the others and just read the content if you are triggered by this. They’re not overly graphic. I felt it was important to include them to give the full impact of the experience.)
I’d like to preface this whole thing with: I’m not a dumb girl, but I was ignorant to exactly what a bullfight entails.
Let me explain.
When I visited Spain, my first and last stop was Madrid. I stayed near Plaza de Toros de las Ventas and was struck by its architecture from the outside. Throughout my two weeks of hopping around the country, I added and checked things off the list of to-dos and go-sees. One that sort of lingered was seeing a bullfight. It’s one of those things you’re “supposed” to do in Spain because it’s part of their culture, right?
So when I finally returned back to Madrid, I thought, “well, there’s a bullfight tonight, so I could at least walk over and see what all the fuss is about.”
I bought the cheapest seat I could find, waited outside the door until the current fight was over, and entered to climb the steepest stairs on the uppermost level. I climbed over people and dodged hands until I got to my seat and got ready to see what all the fuss was about.
It started out rather innocently enough: there were a few matadors who came out and tried to wear the bull down, making him run around and chase them. But then they began throwing things at the bull and at first, I didn’t realize what it was. And when I did, I was horrified. How had I gone my entire life hearing about bullfights.. without knowing that they stabbed and killed a bull?
I watched with tears building in my eyes as these men repeatedly threw some kind of enormous decorative needle-like swords, while the crowd around me cheered each time one stuck the bull. Then the main matador came out after the bull was sufficiently exhausted and injured, and taunted him some more while stabbing him with a sword and a knife. I was disgusted. I was more than disgusted. I can’t even put into words exactly what I felt. I was sad. I was mad. I was angry at the matador. I was angry at the people around me. I was angry at myself.
I try not to practice ethnocentrism when I travel; this is part of Spain’s culture and who am I to judge it based on my own culture? But here I was, doing just that–judging. And this time, I didn’t feel too bad about it. I spoke to some Spaniards afterward who expressed their hatred of bullfighting and desire to ban it.
You’re not allowed to leave until a fight is over (i.e., until the bull is injured enough that it’s down, can be killed, and can be dragged out of the ring). So I continued to sit there and watch this horror unfold until the bull was dead, and then I hurriedly ran down the stairs and left, still feeling sick and angry with myself for contributing to the existence of bullfighting.
When I got home from Spain and called my mom to tell her about the awful experience, her reaction was, “well, Megan, what did you think bullfighting was?”
Good question. I never really thought that deeply about it. In my mind, it was just a matador holding up a red cloth, running around until the bull got tired and fell down, and that was the end.
(Now I realize what an ignorant asshole I was about it, and have promised myself to research things more thoroughly before agreeing to do them just because they’re part of a culture. Much like I’ve refused to ride certain types of animals in various countries because they just aren’t built to carry humans.)
You may all be much more informed than I was about bullfighting, but just in case you weren’t, I wanted to share this experience. I went. Now you don’t have to.
Have you ever walked into an experience completely blind where it turned out to be a disaster?
