Dispatch from Madrid

By Liam Satre-Meloy

I recently went to my first bullfight in the Plaza de Toros Monumental de Las Ventas in Madrid, a venue that features only the upper echelons of Spanish matadors, and caters specifically to Madrid's pretentious bullfighting aficionados.

The atmosphere is grandiose: russet Mudéjar (Mudajjan) architecture encircles a broad sandy ring surrounded by 377 rows of concrete benches, all tightly packed with whooping Spaniards. The anticipation of the inevitable bloodletting is almost palpable.

The bull is set upon by three banderillas dressed in royal-looking garb, each holding two meter-long barbed spears, which they attempt to lodge into the bull's thick neck muscle. The bull is provoked into charging a padded horse ridden by a picador carrying a 10-foot lance, which he drives into the bull's neck.

Now the matador enters the arena and performs the faena -- the well-known process of inciting the enraged bull to charge his cape in a series of passes, which he gracefully sidesteps, just beyond the reach of the bull's pointed horns. After seven or so minutes, the matador draws a 4-foot saber from his hip and, as the bull passes under his outstretched arm holding the cape, he plunges the sword to its hilt in the bull's neck. The bull immediately crashes to the ground, its spinal cord severed.

Commenting on bullfighting in "Death in the Afternoon," Ernest Hemingway wrote, "Anything capable of arousing passion in its favor will surely raise as much passion against it." While sitting on one of those stone benches for two hours, watching the methodic yet graceful execution of five robust bulls, I felt a collision of both kinds of passions: exhilaration butted heads with disgust, fascination with loathing.

There's something indescribably thrilling about watching a man -- composed gracefully while in a position of such vulnerability -- stop a 2-ton mass of sinew and muscle in its tracks with a sword. But on the other hand, I spent the entire afternoon with my mouth hanging agape at such unabashed animal cruelty.

While the horses that carry the picadors are padded, most of these horses' lives are cut short by broken ribs and internal hemorrhaging. Moreover, by the time the matador actually steps into the ring, most bulls are weak and stumbling, their hides sleek with blood; snot and saliva fall from their noses and mouths. It doesn't seem quite fair.

I'm not sure how I feel about the crowd's pleasure, or my own thrill, at this ritualized slaughter. Perhaps ambivalence is the point. Hemingway offers this wise suggestion: "Whoever reads this can only truly make such a judgment when he, or she, has seen the things that are spoken of and knows truly what their reactions to them would be." Book a ticket to Spain, attend a bullfight and react and judge for yourself.