If you want to have a taste of what it is watching a "Corrida de toros" from an objective and foreigner point of view, I'd recommend you the reading of "Death in the afternoon"-Muerte en la tarde-, by Hemingway. I didn't realize it was so bloody until I read it at age 12.
Of course we Spanish are kind of used to cruelty with animals. We've SEEN it in every "fiesta" of every small town. They don't use those brave bulls there: they have "vaquillas" (young cows, about 1 and a half years old) which are much easier to kill, and if they happen to be braver than usual and they don't die after they're done torturing the poor beast, they can always kill them with a gun. When you compare that with the real bullfighting, where the beast has been a wild animal all its life, and it's adorned as it is, with all the traditions that surrround it and the legends of all the bullfighters who found their death in the bullring, it is a different thing: it's a fight between equals. Although I don't enjoy them, I respect them as they are: the reminiscence of a profound male culture.
Young people don't usually go to Corridas de toros. They have other ways of having fun-going to discos, chatting in the parks-. Maybe the South of Spain is more fervent about them.
Here in Leon there's a bullring which is used for music concerts and as an ice rink during winter. It's also used for bullfights when the season comes. I've never been there when there are bullfights, only for concerts and ice-skating. It's not my idea of having fun to pay money to see how the bullfighter kills the bull or how he gets killed by it.
And it's a topic to think we ALL like it or support it-there's much disagreement about it.
I'd like to know what other people think. Are there corridas de toros in Brazil, Beatriz? I've heard there are in Center and South America (but not in Argentina, I think).
Saludos, Nuria.
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