Festival of St Isidore

Las Ventas is the bullfighting ring in Madrid and it is one of the largest and most famous in the world. The Festival of St Isidore runs from late May into early June and is the highlight of the Madrid bullfighting season. The survival of bullfighting in Spain, Portugal and South America is an extraordinary social and cultural phenomenon. On the final day of the St Isidore Festival (which I attended) the 25,000 seat Las Ventas was sold out.

A classic Corrida will see six bulls dispatched, two each by three toreros. Each individual bull fight is divided into four distinct phases. In the first the bull is released into the ring and the Torero's assistants will attract its attention to different parts of the ring by making passes with large fluorescent pink capes. The torero himself will then emerge and make some genuine close passes, using the same large pink cape: if he does well he might garner a few shouts of 'ole' from the crowd. At a signal from the trumpet the picadors then enter the ring. These men are on horseback and armed with long lances. It is then the job of the torero and his assistants to lead the bull to the picador so that the picador can spear the bull behind its head, causing blood to flow. Another blast from the trumpet is the signal for the picadors to leave and the third phase then starts. This is the work of the banderilleros who run at the bull and place pairs of brightly coloured rods with sharp hooks on their ends into the bull's neck. The banderilleros have to be nifty on their feet to get in close enough to do this and then run off before the bull catches them. The final phase is performed by the torero, working on his own. He is now equipped with the famous red cape, held stiff by a wooden rod and ornamental sword. His task is to work as close as he can to the bull, making it follow the red cape and thus pass and repass around him. For the final stages, the ornamental sword is changed for a sharp, slightly curved weapon. The torero uses the red cape to draw the bull's head down and then puts the sword in just behind the bull's head. Done properly, the sword plunges in to its hilt and the bull dies quickly and cleanly.

My visit to Las Ventas was something of a disappointment. I had hoped to see some really top toreros (who can be quite thrilling to watch for their skill and courage as they 'work' the bull) but it was not to be. The best of the three was Manuel Jesus "El Cid", who showed real skill in his work with the cape. He could not manage a clean kill in either of his fights however. He received the only 'curtain call' of the evening. Miguel Abellan showed a taste for the flamboyant by meeting his second bull in the centre of the ring on his knees. The weakest torero of the evening was Miguel Angel Perera. He repeatedly got his red cape tangled up in the bull's horns, but worse was to befall him. In trying to kill his first bull he missed the target badly and caused some terrible haemorrhage, so the bull starting vomiting blood. The crowd disliked this enormously and waves of booing and whistling resulted. He was even booed as he left the ring at the end of the Corrida.

A disappinting evening but not quite enough to put me off this extraordinary activity, objectively disgusting, yet also sometimes wonderfully thrilling.

Highlights of "El Cid"'s evening can be seen here:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixyBsElydJQ