Bullfighting
Based on Wikipedia: Bullfighting
Death in the Afternoon
In the summer of 1926, a young man named Juan Belmonte stood so close to a charging bull that spectators could not see daylight between his body and the animal's horns. The bull weighed nearly half a ton and its horns could disembowel a horse. Belmonte did not move. He let the animal's horns pass within centimeters of his chest, again and again, in a kind of suicidal ballet that would redefine bullfighting forever.
Belmonte was gored dozens of times during his career. He didn't care. He had discovered something that audiences found irresistible: the proximity of death made beautiful.
Ernest Hemingway watched Belmonte fight. He wrote an entire book about bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon, trying to capture what he saw in those Spanish arenas. For Hemingway, bullfighting was not a sport but an art form, perhaps the only art form where the artist's life was genuinely at stake. The connection between writer and matador was no accident—both dealt in the careful arrangement of elements around an approaching moment of truth.
What Bullfighting Actually Is
Bullfighting is a ritualized contest between a human and a bull, usually ending with the bull's death. The word "contest" is somewhat misleading—this is not a fair fight in any sporting sense. The bull will almost certainly die. The question is how, and whether something transcendent happens in the process.
There are several forms of bullfighting practiced around the world, but the best known is the Spanish corrida de toros, literally "coursing of bulls." In a traditional corrida, three matadors each fight two bulls over the course of an afternoon. Each bull is between four and six years old, weighs at least 460 kilograms (about a thousand pounds), and has been specifically bred for aggression.
These are not ordinary cattle. The Spanish Fighting Bull is raised free-range with minimal human contact, preserving its wild instincts. When it enters the ring, it has never seen a man on foot before. It does not know what a cape is. Everything that happens is genuinely dangerous for everyone involved.
The Three Acts
A Spanish bullfight follows a structure as rigid as a sonnet. There are three tercios, or thirds, each announced by a bugle call. The drama builds through these acts toward the final confrontation.
In the first tercio, called the tercio de varas or "lancing third," the matador and his assistants test the bull with large magenta and gold capes. They're reading the animal—which horn does it favor? Does it hook to the left or right? Is it brave or cowardly? These observations will determine strategy for the rest of the fight.
Then a picador enters on horseback, carrying a lance. The horse wears heavy padded armor because until 1930, when protection became mandatory, bulls routinely killed more horses than the matadors killed bulls. The picador's job is to stab the bull's neck muscles, weakening them so the animal will lower its head. This sounds cruel, and it is. It also serves a practical purpose: a bull that keeps its head high cannot be killed safely with a sword.
The second tercio brings the banderilleros, assistants who plant pairs of barbed sticks called banderillas into the bull's shoulders. These wounds anger and invigorate the animal, snapping it out of the exhausted state induced by attacking the armored horse. The bull becomes focused, dangerous again.
The final tercio is called the tercio de muerte—the third of death. The matador enters alone, carrying a small red cape called the muleta and a sword.
Why the Cape Is Red
Here we should dispel a famous myth. Bulls are not enraged by the color red. They are functionally colorblind to it. What provokes a bull to charge is movement—the flutter of the cape, the sweep of fabric through air.
So why red? The traditional explanation is practical: it hides bloodstains. The muleta becomes soaked during the final tercio, and a red cloth conceals this better than any other color. But the tradition is now so entrenched that it has become purely ceremonial, a fixed element in the ritual's visual vocabulary.
With the muleta, the matador performs a series of passes called a faena. This is where artistry enters. A clumsy matador simply tries to tire the bull for the kill. A great matador creates something else—linked passes that form a kind of dangerous dance, bringing the horns so close to his body that audiences gasp. Belmonte's innovation was to eliminate the distance between man and animal entirely, transforming the faena into something genuinely terrifying to watch.
The Moment of Truth
The faena ends with what Spanish speakers call the momento de la verdad—the moment of truth. The matador must drive his sword between the bull's shoulder blades, aiming for the heart or aorta. To do this, he must reach over the horns, exposing his entire body to the animal at the moment of greatest danger.
This is the kill, and everything leads to it. If the matador places his sword correctly, the bull dies almost instantly. If he misses, he must try again, and again, losing whatever artistic credit he has accumulated. Sometimes a secondary weapon called a descabello is required—a heavy dagger blade on a steel rod, thrust between the cervical vertebrae to sever the spinal cord.
If the matador performs brilliantly, the crowd waves white handkerchiefs to petition the president of the event for a trophy. A good performance earns one of the bull's ears. An exceptional performance earns both ears. In some rural rings, the tail is also awarded.
Very rarely, something extraordinary happens. If a bull fights with exceptional bravery—and its breeder agrees to take it back—the president may grant an indulto, a pardon. The bull leaves the ring alive and returns to its ranch to spend the rest of its life as a stud. This happens perhaps a few times a year across all of Spain.
Ancient Origins
Humans have been ritually confronting bulls for at least five thousand years. The earliest recorded bullfight may appear in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest surviving work of literature, composed in ancient Mesopotamia around 2100 BCE. In the epic, Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu face the Bull of Heaven, a divine creature sent by the goddess Ishtar to destroy them:
"The Bull seemed indestructible, for hours they fought, till Gilgamesh dancing in front of the Bull, lured it with his tunic and bright weapons, and Enkidu thrust his sword, deep into the Bull's neck, and killed it."
The parallels to modern bullfighting are striking. Gilgamesh uses his clothing as a lure, much as a matador uses his cape. Enkidu delivers the killing blow from the side. The bull is both monstrous adversary and sacred creature whose death carries cosmic significance.
On the island of Crete, the Minoan civilization practiced bull-leaping, a sport in which athletes would grasp a charging bull's horns and vault over its body. Frescoes from the palace at Knossos, dating to around 1500 BCE, show this activity in vivid detail. Whether bull-leaping was sport, religious ritual, or both remains debated, but the imagery suggests a culture deeply engaged with the danger and majesty of bulls.
The ancient Persians practiced bull sacrifice as a central religious act. In the Zoroastrian tradition and later in the Roman mystery cult of Mithras, the killing of a sacred bull (called tauroctony) represented cosmic forces—the triumph of order over chaos, light over darkness. Roman soldiers spread Mithraic worship throughout the empire, and mithraea, underground temples featuring images of Mithras slaying the bull, have been found from Britain to Syria.
From Horseback to Foot
The Romans staged elaborate spectacles in which humans fought animals, called venationes. Whether bullfighting specifically came to Spain through Rome is debated, but by the medieval period, it had become established as a noble pursuit. Knights on horseback would fight bulls in public squares to celebrate religious festivals and royal weddings. The bull was released into a closed arena, and a single mounted fighter armed with a lance would attempt to kill it.
This was aristocratic entertainment. Only the wealthy could afford to train horses for such dangerous work. According to chronicles of the time, Charlemagne enjoyed bullfighting. So did Alfonso X of Castile, known as "the Wise." The most celebrated Spanish bullfighter of the medieval period was El Cid, the legendary warrior who became a national hero. In 1128, when Alfonso VII of León married Berengaria of Barcelona, bullfighting was among the celebrations.
The transformation from horseback to foot fighting occurred gradually. Around 1726, a man named Francisco Romero from the town of Ronda is credited with establishing the basic elements of fighting bulls on foot—the use of the muleta in the final stage, the sword thrust between the shoulders. This innovation had profound social implications. Mounted bullfighting required wealth and noble status. A man on foot needed only courage.
Suddenly, commoners could become stars. The sport's center of gravity shifted from aristocratic display to popular entertainment. This change prompted the construction of dedicated bullrings—initially square, like military parade grounds, then circular to prevent the action from getting trapped in corners. The oldest surviving bullrings, in Seville and Ronda, date from the eighteenth century. The largest, the Plaza México in Mexico City, seats 41,000 people.
The Suit of Lights
Walk into a bullring today and you'll see a procession of men dressed in what looks like eighteenth-century costume. The matadors wear trajes de luces, "suits of lights," embroidered with gold thread that catches the afternoon sun. Their assistants, the banderilleros, wear similar suits embroidered in silver. The picadors on horseback carry lances. A band plays. The entire spectacle has the quality of a ritual frozen in time.
This is deliberate. Bullfighting costume is based on the dress of seventeenth-century Andalusian gentlemen. The corrida preserves not just a fighting style but an entire aesthetic world. When Hemingway wrote about bullfighting in the 1930s, he was watching something that would have been recognizable to audiences two hundred years earlier.
Each matador arrives with a cuadrilla, an entourage of six assistants: two mounted picadors, three banderilleros on foot, and a mozo de espadas who cares for the swords. The matador is also called a torero (bullfighter) or diestro (literally "right-hander," since most sword thrusts are delivered with the right hand). In Spanish, the term matador de toros—"killer of bulls"—is used only when distinction is necessary. Everyone understands what a matador does.
Portuguese Variations
Not all bullfighting ends in death. In Portugal, where bullfighting is also legal and popular, a distinctive tradition has developed in which the bull is not killed in the ring.
Portuguese bullfighting features cavaleiros, mounted fighters who demonstrate extraordinary horsemanship while planting barbed darts called ferros into the bull's shoulders. The horses in Portuguese bullfighting are specially trained Lusitano stallions, considered among the finest riding horses in the world. The cavaleiro's skill lies in maneuvering his mount close enough to strike while avoiding the bull's horns.
The climax of a Portuguese bullfight is the pega, in which a group of eight men called forcados confront the bull on foot without weapons or capes. The lead forcado challenges the bull to charge directly at him, then attempts to grab it by the horns and hold on while his companions pile on to stop the animal. It looks suicidal. Injuries are common. The forcados wear no protective equipment.
After the pega, the bull leaves the ring alive. It will be killed later, away from the audience, but the death is not part of the spectacle. Portuguese sensibilities differ from Spanish ones on this point—the violence is real but somewhat concealed.
Bloodless Bullfighting
In parts of northern Spain—Navarre, La Rioja, Valencia—a different tradition called recortes has experienced a revival. In recortes, the bull is not injured at all. No blood is drawn. The performers wear ordinary street clothes rather than elaborate costumes, and they use no capes or weapons.
Instead, they dodge. Teams of men perform acrobatics around charging bulls, competing for points awarded by judges. They vault over bulls, spin away from horns at the last moment, perform handstands and backflips in the path of a charge. The skill lies entirely in athleticism and timing.
The painter Francisco de Goya, working in the early nineteenth century, made etchings of similar events. The tradition predates the formal corrida and represents an older, more chaotic relationship between humans and bulls—one based on escaping rather than killing.
At the end of a recortes performance, the bull returns to its pen unharmed. It may fight again.
The Running of the Bulls
The most famous event associated with bullfighting involves no fighting at all. The encierro, or running of the bulls, is a morning sprint through town streets ahead of a small group of bulls being moved to the bullring for that afternoon's corrida.
The running of the bulls in Pamplona, during the July festival of San Fermín, became internationally famous after Hemingway wrote about it in The Sun Also Rises. The course is about 850 meters through narrow streets, and the run lasts only a few minutes. But those minutes compress extraordinary danger into a small space. Bulls weigh half a ton and run faster than humans. Falls are common. Gorings happen every year. People die, though not as often as you might expect—usually a few fatalities per decade.
What draws people to run? Hemingway thought it was the same impulse that drew people to watch bullfighting: the desire to be close to death, to feel genuinely alive by feeling genuinely at risk. The encierro strips away the artistry and costume of the corrida and leaves only the raw equation of humans versus animals, with serious consequences for miscalculation.
Fire and Night
In parts of eastern Spain, particularly the Valencian Community and southern Catalonia, a stranger tradition persists. The toro embolado, or "bull with balls," is a nighttime event in which flammable material is attached to a bull's horns and set alight. The bull is then released into the streets.
Participants must dodge both the animal and the flames. The spectacle is strange and unsettling—a creature transformed into something demonic, its horns trailing fire through dark streets. The event is associated with local festivals and has ancient roots that are difficult to trace precisely.
Critics argue this is straightforwardly cruel to the animal. Defenders argue it is traditional and that bulls are not harmed by brief exposure to flames. The debate mirrors larger arguments about bullfighting itself.
The Case Against
Modern opposition to bullfighting centers on animal welfare. The bull suffers. This is not disputed. The lance wounds to its neck, the barbed banderillas in its shoulders, the repeated sword thrusts if the matador fails to kill cleanly—all cause pain. The animal dies a violent death for human entertainment.
Defenders of bullfighting offer several responses. They point out that the Spanish Fighting Bull lives a better life than most cattle—years of free-range existence rather than feedlots and industrial slaughter. They argue that the bull's death has meaning within a ritual context, unlike the anonymous deaths of millions of animals in slaughterhouses. They claim bullfighting preserves something valuable about human confrontation with nature and mortality.
The argument has legal dimensions. In Spain, bullfighting is classified as cultural heritage, not sport. This distinction matters because cultural activities receive different regulatory treatment than sporting events. In Catalonia, the regional government banned bullfighting in 2010, only to have Spain's Constitutional Court strike down the ban in 2016 as an infringement on national cultural heritage.
Public opinion has shifted. Polls show declining support for bullfighting among younger Spaniards. Attendance has dropped. Several towns have declared themselves anti-bullfighting. Colombia, which has a bullfighting tradition dating to Spanish colonial rule, is phasing out the practice entirely, with a complete ban taking effect in 2027.
Where Bullfighting Survives
Despite declining popularity, bullfighting remains legal in much of the Spanish-speaking world. Spain, Portugal, parts of southern France, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia (until 2027) all permit some form of bullfighting. The Philippines, a former Spanish colony, retains the practice in some areas.
In most other countries, bullfighting is illegal. The European Union has debated continent-wide bans but defers to member states on cultural matters. Animal welfare organizations continue to campaign against the practice wherever it exists.
The economics are complicated. Bullfighting supports significant employment—breeders, trainers, ring operators, costume makers, ticket sellers. The Spanish Fighting Bull is bred specifically for the ring; without bullfighting, the breed might disappear entirely. Towns that host major fiestas depend on the economic activity they generate.
Against this, critics note that public subsidies support much bullfighting, and that the industry might not survive purely on ticket sales. The question of whether taxpayers should fund activities many find morally objectionable is politically charged.
Art or Cruelty?
Hemingway believed bullfighting was a tragic art form, comparable to painting or literature. The matador created something—a series of passes, a faena, a moment of truth—that could not be replicated or preserved. It existed only in that afternoon, in that ring, and then it was gone. The bull's death gave the art its weight. Without genuine danger, the passes would be mere gymnastics.
This argument has attracted serious artists and intellectuals for centuries. Goya painted bullfighting. Picasso was obsessed with it. García Lorca wrote about it. The corrida appears in the work of countless Spanish artists as a symbol of something essential in the national character—the willingness to confront death directly, to aestheticize what terrifies.
Critics respond that calling something art does not excuse cruelty. Ritual sacrifice was once art too. So was gladiatorial combat. Civilizations outgrow practices that cause unnecessary suffering, regardless of their aesthetic qualities.
The debate may never be resolved because it rests on values that cannot be reconciled. If you believe animal suffering matters morally, bullfighting is indefensible. If you believe certain forms of human expression justify costs that would otherwise be unacceptable, bullfighting has a claim on our attention.
What is undeniable is that for centuries, humans have found something compelling in the sight of a person facing a dangerous animal. The impulse is very old, possibly as old as our species. Whether it should survive into the future is a question each generation must answer for itself.
Belmonte's Legacy
Juan Belmonte retired from bullfighting in 1936. He had redefined the art, brought it closer to death than anyone thought possible, and survived when lesser matadors would have been killed. His style—standing motionless while the bull charged past—became the standard against which all subsequent matadors were measured.
Belmonte lived until 1962, when he died by suicide at age seventy. His death was as deliberate as his fighting had been. He left no note explaining why, but those who knew him said he had always lived on intimate terms with death. The bullring had taught him not to fear it.
Hemingway, who admired Belmonte enormously, died the same way a year earlier. Both men had spent their lives circling the same question: what does it mean to face death honestly? The bullring offered one answer. Whether it was the right answer—whether any art justifies that cost—remains an open question, as contested now as it was when the first matador stepped into the ring three centuries ago.