Colorful mules

Photograph by Muhammed Muheisen, AP Images
 

January 2012

Spain- At the Feria del Caballo festival in Jerez de la Frontera, an assistant to a rejoneador, or horseback bullfighter, stands in the arena wings with mules used to remove felled bulls. The mules are festooned in traditional Spanish colors.

Las Ventas

artwork by Pierre Amoudry

Cartel de Zaragoza, 2011

 

 

Picador en Sevilla

Annual Cave Creek bull run to expand to 2 days

(by Philip Haldiman azcentral.com 7-12-13)

Adrenaline junkies descended on Pamplona, Spain, for this week’s age-old tradition of running with the bulls, but the Valley’s own version of the romp is making a run of its own, with plans to expand the event this year.

Heading into its third year in Cave Creek, Running With The Bulls USA has become a staple event in the northeast Valley, and event officials say it stands to be more of a draw this year.

Promoter Phil Immordino has announced that the event, scheduled for October, will expand to two days, nearly double the runs and more than double the cash prizes.

“We’re serious about making this an extreme sport,” he said.

But town officials remain concerned about the potential dangers of the event.

Last year, the event ran over one day with seven runs, and a $1,000 cash prize for the top runner. This year, it’s scheduled to run over two days with six runs each day and a $500 cash prize for the top runner in each race.

Immordino said a $5,000 grand prize will be given out, for a total of more than $10,000 in cash prizes this year, encouraging participants to run as close to the bulls for as long as they can.

He’s also brought on a public-relations firm to improve marketing, in particular social media, which wasn’t aggressively used in the past. He’s hoping this, along with increased prize money, will lead to a bigger turnout.

“In light of the mud runs, the Spartan races and all the other extreme sports out there, we’re looking to expand our opportunity, and also capitalize on social media, maximizing Facebook, YouTube and Twitter,” he said.

Immordino, a Phoenix native, is no stranger to spearheading these high-risk events. This will be the sixth Americanized running of the bulls he has promoted — in 1998 and ’99 in Mesquite, Nev., and in 2002 at Rawhide, when it was located in Scottsdale.

He said the same safety precautions that were used last year will be used again this year — a wide, quarter-mile track, rodeo clowns and escape exits every 100 feet.

The bull runs will take place on 7 acres owned by Cave Creek resident Collin “T.C.” Thorstenson in the town’s commercial core.

For the two years Cave Creek has played host to the bull run, the event has drawn ire from animal-rights activists and others concerned about safety, attracting national media because of the controversy.

The first year, the town rescinded a special-event permit because of insurance and safety concerns. Town officials said that because the bull run is on private property, the promoter can still hold the event, but because the permit was rescinded, making it an unsanctioned town event, Cave Creek is not liable for claims that may happen during the runnings.

Mayor Vincent Francia said he’s had concerns since the beginning.

Last year, two people were sent to the hospital and at least six others suffered minor injuries after “bigger and badder” bulls were brought in for the second event. Immordino said runners at the first event in Cave Creek complained of “wimpy” bulls.

“The first year, they were your grandfather’s calves posing as bulls,” Francia said. “Then during the second year, they brought in the big bulls.”

Francia said he doesn’t want to deprive a subculture of thrill seekers, but says that at the same time, he has to make sure the town is protected, while respecting people’s private-property rights.
Francia says he holds his breath every year when the bulls are released from the starting gates.

“When we do the event, we get swamped with e-mails from all over the world,” he said. “I get the extreme-sports stuff. I do. But this is taking place in Cave Creek. We’re not Spain. At what point do you say, ‘Whoops’? Does it take someone to get hurt or for someone to die?”

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http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/20130708annual-cave-creek-bull-run-expand-days.html

Plaza de Toros Zaragoza

Bullfight films



 I'm always on the lookout for anything bullfight related when it comes to movies, documentaries, etc.

 

Sadly there is not much out there, at least here in the US.

 

But anything I do find I will post it here in this section for everyone to see and check out on their own if they so wish.

Bullfights? Your club or mine?

(by Warren St John nytimes.com 12-11-05)

Here's something you don't see every day: 33 mostly middle-age New Yorkers sitting around a television set in a Midtown restaurant, watching a bullfight.

The setting, on a recent Thursday night, was a Spanish restaurant in Manhattan where the New York City Club Taurino - an organization of bullfighting enthusiasts - holds its monthly meetings. On the television: a videotape of a 1982 bullfight known to aficionados as the Corrida of the Century because it featured six especially ornery and energetic bulls and some of Spain's most revered matadors, including Luis Francisco Esplá.

Over tapas and a steady flow of wine, the group of women and men sat rapt for around 20 minutes, the silence punctuated occasionally by oohs and aahs, until Esplá pulled out the killing sword. The matador arched his back, tucked in his chin and narrowed his eyes ominously, staring down the blood-soaked beast before him.

"Complete psychological domination," said Lore Monnig, the club's president.

A moment later Esplá reached over the bull's horns and plunged the sword between its shoulder blades. The sword went in only halfway to the hilt, and the bull spun around angrily.

A few moments later it dropped to its knees, stood up and dropped again. For someone who had never seen a bullfight, the death of the bull was jarring.

"Let's applaud!" Ms. Monnig said. The group clapped. New York, it's safe to say, is not a bullfighting town. Even so, there is not one but two clubs in the city for bullfighting fans, with a total of about 240 members. They are part of a national network of such clubs, called peñas taurinas, and if the Thursday night gathering was any indication, the New York bullfighting scene is improbably vibrant.

The New York clubs meet once a month - usually at a Spanish restaurant or at a member's home - to eat, drink, watch videos and DVD's of bullfights, and occasionally to listen to speeches from matadors. Members see one another on bullfighting tours of Spain or Mexico and while running with the bulls in Pamplona. A few brave or simply foolish members are amateur bullfighters, called aficionados prácticos, who actually kill bulls themselves.

The clubs aren't underground exactly, but fearing animal rights protesters, they don't disclose to the public where they meet, and they don't recruit. (I agreed not to reveal the name of the restaurant where the club meets as a condition of attending a meeting.)

"We're not proselytizing," Ms. Monnig said. "I'm not trying to persuade anybody that they should have this passion too. I just hope they don't think I'm crazy."

As perhaps befits groups organized around the appreciation of mortal combat, the two New York City bullfighting clubs are themselves locked in a battle, one that seems unlikely to resolve itself soon, if ever. For nearly 40 years there was one bullfighting club in town, the Club Taurino of New York. But three years ago some members thought the club was becoming too social at its meetings, losing its focus on bullfighting. The rules they instituted prompted a chunk of its members, led by Ms. Monnig, to secede and form the New York City Club Taurino, which while bullfighting-obsessed, is nonetheless very social.

"Our club is more for purists," said Kevin Gordon, 51, a portrait painter and the president of the older club. "We do a lot of programs that explain the subtleties of the bullfight. The main thrust of our club is bullfighting."

There are a few points every bullfighting aficionado is quick to make to newcomers. The first is that they find the word bullfight objectionable, and prefer instead the Spanish word toreo to describe the standoff between man and bull.

"There is such a thing as a bull fight," Ms. Monnig said. "It's two bulls fighting in a field." The word bullfighting, she said, is "loaded and it doesn't describe what happens. You're not fighting a bull, you're trying to dominate it."

Another point: a club meeting is not the place to discuss the moral issues surrounding bullfighting. Robert Weldon, 33, a Spanish teacher at a public school in Manhattan, said that debate trails bullfighting enthusiasts everywhere they go, and a bullfighting club meeting is one place where they can talk about the technical aspects of the toreo.

"You don't want to get into the arguments - it's silly," Mr. Weldon said, before wearily stating the stock rejoinders: fighting bulls live more than twice as long as beef cattle; they are pampered until fighting day; the meat is always consumed; and seeing a bull die gives one a better appreciation of what it means to eat beef.

"In the modern world the bovine destiny is the plate," said Mr. Weldon, an aficionado práctico who has killed three bulls.

"It's not fair, and it's not supposed to be fair," he said. "It's not a sport, it's an art because the bull dies."

So what type of person joins a bullfighting club? The crowd at the Spanish restaurant included doctors, lawyers, writers and scientists. There were fluent Spanish speakers and few who knew a few clumsy but useful phrases: "Más vino, por favor."

Marta Sánchez-Carbayo, a cancer researcher in Manhattan who is from Spain, said she came to the meetings because they reminded her of home.

"It's like if you're in Madrid and you met people who know everything about the rodeo, or Walt Disney," she said. "They are Spain lovers."

Timothy Baum, a Manhattan art dealer who specializes in surrealism, said he was introduced to the New York City bullfighting scene by an aficionado in Spain who knew about the clubs.

"I initially got into it because I was devoted to Hemingway," Mr. Baum said. "A lot of people read, and it stays fiction, but for me it all comes alive. Only a few members understand the bullfight really really well, and they instantly form a bond."

Mark Finguerra, 37, a screenwriter from Brooklyn, said he became interested in bullfighting while researching a screenplay he was writing about Sidney Franklin, a bullfighter from Brooklyn who warranted a mention in Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon." The movie was never made, but Mr. Finguerra became obsessed. He plans to kill his first bull in Mexico in January.

Mr. Weldon, the teacher, described himself as an accidental bullfighting fan. Before he killed his first bull , Mr. Weldon said, "I'd never killed a mammal."

On a trip to Spain in 1998 he attended an afternoon of bullfights in Madrid and became a fan. King Juan Carlos was in the front row, Mr. Weldon said, and the country's three best matadors were in the ring that day.

"It blew me away," he said. "There is something incredibly powerful about a man trying to stand as still as possible and to dominate and control a wild animal that's trying to kill him, and at the same moment creates incredibly subtle, beautiful, delicate artistic images."

Mr. Weldon went back the next year for four months and attended 40 bullfights. He has since attended another 120.

Ms. Monnig, who became obsessed with bullfighting after attending a toreo as a student visiting Spain, said she had been to 500 to 600 bullfights. Not everyone in her life understands.

"My best friend from Italy thinks it the most grotesque thing she's ever heard of," Ms. Monnig said.
Whatever social stigmas that may arise from being a member of a bullfighting club in New York, they can be much worse for aficionados prácticos, who must practice their moves in the city's public spaces. Practice, Mr. Weldon said, is vital because much of bullfighting is counterintuitive. For example, if a bull passes too close, the instinct is to lean back. But since a bull follows the motion of the cape, leaning back might inadvertently draw the bull into one's body.

Mr. Weldon and Mr. Finguerra practice in front of a mirror at a gym and in city parks, with one man holding a pair of horns and charging at the other. They get their share of strange looks.

"People aren't confrontational," Mr. Finguerra said. "They just say, 'Are you bullfighting?' "

Mr. Finguerra, who sheepishly admitted that neighborhood kids sometimes taunted him with cries of "Olé!" but nonetheless said he was "coming out of the bullfighting closet."

"You do look a little ridiculous," he said.

Mr. Finguerra has been in the ring with smaller bulls at a bullfighting camp, and said that the act of staring down even a small bull made him appreciate the real thing, which he described as terrifying.

"You hold the cape out and he looks right at you," Mr. Finguerra said. "And you think, 'He's not buying it.' "

Rejoneador Leonardo Hernandez

Feria de Santiago, Santander Spain, 2012

Cave Creek Arizona

Banderillas

banderillas. The barbed sticks used in the second tercio of the corrida. The sticks are 29 1/2" long (including barb) and the barb itself is 2 1/2" long. [exept for banderillas cortas as we can see in this picture] Among the many slang terms for banderillas are garapullos, palos, and palitroques. - Barnaby Conrad's Encyclopedia of Bullfighting

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http://www.mundotoro.com/noticia/los-jovenes-piden-paso/103428

http://www.mundotoro.com/auxiliar/galerias2013/lisboa-19-09-13/index.html

Running with the Bulls—on a Virginia Racetrack

A watered-down version of the classic Spanish tradition comes to the U.S., but can it offer comparable thrills?

(by Svati Kirsten Narula theatlantic.com 8-29-13)

For some, life just isn’t complete without partaking in a beer-soaked rodeo and food fight modeled after a centuries-old Spanish tradition. And so on August 24, the inaugural Great Bull Run thundered into central Virginia, the first of nine such events that will take place in cities nationwide between now and next summer. The franchise aims to bring a taste of Pamplona, Spain’s famous San Fermin Festival to the United States, on the premise that being chased through a crowd by a herd of livestock is just so thrilling that it ought to be commercialized, made accessible, bottled, and sold to anyone over the age of eighteen who can sign a waiver.

The guy behind all this is 34-year-old Rob Dickens, a North Carolina native who started the Rugged Maniac race series – obstacle-course adventures much like the well-known Tough Mudder events -- in Boston three years ago.  Last summer, Dickens and his business partner Brad Scudder wanted to travel to Spain for San Fermin, but logistics proved too tricky – “You need about $3,000 a person for your flights and your trains and a week’s worth of hotel rooms in Pamplona during the busiest time of the year, and then you’ve gotta be able to get away from work for seven, eight, nine days… which for a lot of the people here in the U.S. is pretty difficult,” he said. “Being event organizers, we started joking around about bringing it here to the U.S., and at some point it morphed from a joke into reality.”

Dickens actually isn’t the first to try this. Phil Immordino, from Phoenix, Arizona, hosted three bull runs in the Southwest in 1998, 1999, and 2002. Those efforts were foiled by mishaps and Immordino struggled to turn a profit. In 2011, he tried again; now the Running of the Bulls USA is going on its third year in Cave Creek, Arizona. Runners compete for cash prizes, and the event is backed up by a handful of million-dollar insurance policies.

As for the Great Bull Run, Dickens declined to disclose the specific details of his race’s insurance coverage but did say that getting insurance was “probably the biggest challenge” he and Scudder faced in the event planning process. “It took us a lot of knocking on doors, probably trying 30 different companies before we found one who did want to insure us,” said Dickens. “But I think that after our first few events, when [they] see that people are not dying [and] are not getting very seriously injured, then other insurance companies will come knocking on our door trying to give us a better rate.”

People are drawn to the Great Bull Run because they want to take risks, but no one wants to actually suffer the potential consequences posed therein, so Dickens had better keep those risks tightly controlled.

 “The biggest worry is that somebody would get seriously injured, or killed,” he said, stating the obvious. “That’s the worst thing that could possibly happen – that, or a bull getting seriously injured or dying,” he added—a heartening note for animal lovers.

He said he’s confident that neither of those things will happen. Only 15 people have died running with the bulls in Pamplona in the past 102 years, after all, and that’s with certain elements of danger that won’t be found at any of Dickens’s events. Instead of city streets walled in by buildings, the Virginia Great Bull Run is set at a drag racing strip, “where we create a track enclosed by cattle fencing,” Dickens said, “which people can climb up on and hop over if they want to. There are also nooks along the way where people can sidestep an incoming bull if they have to. You don’t have those in Pamplona.”

“I imagine people will get tossed around,” he admitted. “People will get hurt. Bruises, scrapes, maybe a broken bone or two, but I don’t expect people to get seriously injured. I don’t expect people to die.” Ultimately, this is the “same thing as skydiving or driving a racecar or bungee-jumping,” he said. You know that there’s a risk there, but you don’t care. You want to do it anyway.”

The Great Bull Run website is pretty snazzy, peppered with dramatic photographs from Pamplona – to be swapped out once images from the new events come through – and promises of fun. “Face the adrenaline rush of a lifetime”; “It’s not as dangerous as you think”; it’s a “massive festival” and an “epic day of fun!” The rhetoric on display, upon closer inspection, approaches that persuasive trifecta of appeals to emotion, logic, and even ethics: a combination of cheesy marketing slogans, no-nonsense facts, unapologetic respect for the value of cheap thrills, and details about the bulls' humane care and home on an "open-air ranch."

As of Friday, August 23, the website showed that nearly four thousand individuals had registered to run with the bulls in Virginia, sight unseen.

Petersburg, Virginia is 131 miles from Washington, D.C., 23 miles south of Richmond. On Saturday morning I drove past Cracker Barrel after Cracker Barrel, Civil War landmark after Civil War landmark, with my 14-year-old brother in the passenger seat watching Derek Thompson’s economic explainer videos on his iPhone and occasionally griping about the distance we were traveling.

Around 11:30 a.m. and approximately two miles from our destination, we stopped at a gas station for water and snacks. Inside, the two cashiers behind the counter, both girls about my age, craned their necks to watch a video on a customer’s cell phone. The man had just run with the bulls, and he told the girls that it was “crazy.” The girls relayed his other comments after he’d left: “He said he wouldn’t do it again,” and “he said that you can feel the hooves thundering on the ground beneath you.”

“We’ve heard other people placing bets on how many people are going to die today,” they told us. On our way back to the car we met two guys dressed in red and blue skintight bodysuits – available at morphsuits.com, in case anyone’s wondering -- practically jumping up and down with energy. They looked barely over 18, the minimum age required to run with the bulls, but that was clearly what they had just done.

“Biggest adrenaline rush ever,” shouted the guy in the red suit. His friend in blue nodded. “It was like riding twenty or thirty rollercoasters at once!”

Five minutes later we joined a long line of cars waiting to enter the Virginia Motorsports Park. Across the road, a group of protestors—perhaps 30 to 50—stood silent and holding signs, advocating for the welfare of the bulls.

According to Dickens, the job of the bulls that day was relatively easy and safe (for them), and not one that went against what they were bred for. These were rodeo bulls, accustomed to traveling around the country to perform, brought to Virginia by their handlers and accompanied by veterinarians -- making the whole affair not so different from horse racing.

Dickens said it’s not good for bulls to run on pavement, and that that’s why he spent $30,000 to lay down dirt on top of the drag strip at the Virginia Motorsports Complex. “We will spend probably another $30,000 to take it back up again after the event is over,” he said. “And the only reason we did that is to protect the bulls’ legs. We’re not spending $60,000 for the benefit of the runners; it’s solely for the bulls.”

In Pamplona, in addition to running on slick cobblestone streets, the bulls must navigate – or attempt to navigate -- a course with sharp turns, where “they slam into the walls, and each other, and they get injured,” said Dickens. “We don’t want any of that happening, so all of our courses are either straightaways or gentle ovals like horse racing tracks. … After each and every run, the bulls will be inspected by veterinarians to make sure that they’re all safe and sound and fit to run again later in the day.”

The quarter-mile dragstrip was flanked by bleachers, only one side of which was full of spectators, who weren’t allowed on the other side. Seven times that day, groups of up to 500 people at a time would file onto the strip, wave red bandanas and run with the bulls amid roaring cheers.

The scene behind the bleachers was similar to that of a county fair – fried food, hot dogs, popcorn, overpriced lemonade, branded merchandise (shirts that said “I came. I saw. I ran.”). And plenty of beer. There was also a stage off to the side for a band, two mechanical bulls, two inflatable jousting bounces, and a tent advertising the Halloween event at Virginia Motorsports Park: a zombie run.

Every so often a voice would boom from a loudspeaker with exclamations including “Just like in Pamplona!” and “History in the making today!” or “If you want to run again after your first time, it’s only thirty dollars! Thirty dollars to run with the bulls a second time!”

In Pamplona, the running of the bulls is a week-long affair, during which the running isn't even the main attraction. The central tradition of the festival has always been the bullfight, featuring matadors with their swords and, in the famous words of Ernest Hemingway, “violent death... pride... and true enjoyment of killing.” Running with the bulls through the city’s cobblestone streets began as a way of getting the animals from their corrals to the bullfighting arena – even though it evolved into its own tradition, it was never a standalone recreational activity.

We don’t tend to embrace live performances of violent death as art here in the U.S., and on this Saturday in Virginia, the lack of a bullfight at the end of the run didn’t seem to strip the activity of its meaning. One doubts whether most participants thought much about the “meaning” of their activities that day, anyway.

 Spotted filing onto the track for the 1 p.m. bull run: one man in a poncho, another in a bright red suit, one man in boxers patterned with American flags, four guys wearing green “Keep Calm and Chive On” tee shirts, two guys wearing skimpy Speedos and Superman shields, a crew of young men and women sporting University of Virginia lacrosse pinnies, the two female hosts of the television show Fit to be Wild, and countless people with GoPro cameras strapped to their heads and chests. Almost everyone wore at least one piece of red clothing in addition to the red bandana they all received from event staff as they passed through the fence onto the track.

As the runners mugged for the cameras and situated themselves along the fence, the voice on the loudspeaker blared: “If you feel like you’re not up to it, because there IS a serious risk of injury, hop out! There’s no shame in being sane!”

“Don’t sit on the fence. Remember once you exit there is NO getting back in. If you need to exit and a BULL happens to be coming for your BUTT, you may jump the fence! You are encouraged [to do so], as this is your only way out once the bulls begin to run. If you happen to fall, cover your head and lay on the ground and let them pass, ladies and gentlemen. If any staff member should give you additional instructions, make sure you follow them to the letter, and let’s have a fun bull run, y’all!
The crowd cheered, and the “Bull Honorific” began.

“Go ahead, take those special bandanas, fold ‘em in half! Hold ‘em up high!” said the announcer. “Ladies and gentlemen, once again, the Bull Honorific! Say it with me…”

Announcer: Here we are
Crowd: Here we are

Announcer: The courageous few

Crowd: The courageous few

Announcer: To TEST ourselves

Crowd: To test ourselves

Announcer: And HONOR the Bull!

Crowd: And honor the bull!

Announcer: From those that run

Crowd: From those that run

Announcer: To those who fall

Crowd: To those who fall

Announcer: We HONOR the BULL

Crowd: We honor the bull

Announcer: And SALUTE you ALLLLLLLL!

The classic music from the western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” played in the background as Allen delivered further instructions. The countdown neared.
       
 “All right, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get even more psyched up! When I say bull, you say run!”

“BULL!” – “Run!”

“BULL!” – “Run!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to RUN?! I can’t hear you -- are you ready to run?! Count it down backwards with me: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, RUNNNNNNNN!”

The bulls were released, and the crowd cheered.

“Here they come! This is the speed we were looking for, ladies and gentlemen, towards the crowd! Here they come! Oh my, they look like they’re targeting people! Look at them go, ladies and gentlemen, spreading out across the track with all the runners! Go go go!”

People weren’t dying left and right, but some were bailing left and right – rushing to the sides of the track, clinging to the fences and hopping over as fast as they were able to while the rest ran alongside, in front, and behind the bulls. It was all over in less than a minute.

“And that’s grabbing life by the horns, y’all!”

In between runs, the bulls rested in shaded corrals. They looked healthy. They had water. “We’re not using Spanish fighting bulls in our runs,” Dickens had said. “In Spain they release six steers and six Spanish fighting bulls in each run. But here, they’re just neutered bulls that are not very aggressive at all. Spanish Fighting Bulls, on the other hand, have been bred to be absolutely insane. Rodeo bulls are not as insane as Spanish fighting bulls are, but they are still aggressive.”

The bulls had come from Kentucky with the Lone Star Rodeo Company, where they live on an 800-acre farm when they’re not traveling and performing, according to Dickens. I ended up talking to Preston Fowlkes, Jr., whose father started Lone Star Rodeo in Texas in 1949. He said the bulls can run up to 25 miles per hour. I said that the runs I had seen so far looked pretty tame. “Well, I’ll tell you what, young lady,” he said. “Why don’t you go out there and run with them and see what you think.” Fair enough. With that, my brother and I went to get lunch.

Meanwhile, other participants rushed to buy goggles and before heading over to a fenced-in blacktop area where a crowd was forming: the Tomato Royale was about to start.

This was the less-touted, but arguably more fun, portion of the Great Bull Run. The Tomato Royale is a food fight in the fashion of Spain’s La Tomatina festival, which, in Spain, has nothing to do with the running of the bulls.

For about an hour the bulls got a break, as a couple thousand people pulverized tomatoes and I ate a falafel sandwich. When the fruit-throwers emerged from their event, each looked like he or she had bathed in salsa, and the air smelled putrid (for optimal splattering, Dickens said they made sure the 150,000 tomatoes were overripe).

Participants were giddy, though. 20-year-old Abhishek Battacharya said his four-hour drive from the Baltimore, Maryland area that morning was worth it “just for that one hour over there” with the tomatoes. Participating in something like this, Battacharya said, “you feel like you’re alive.”

A drenched couple asked me to take their picture in front of a Dinwiddie County ambulance, parked next to the (quiet, barely-utilized) first aid tent -- Deborah Goeller and Rick Dukehart. Last weekend, they said, they had been watching their 25-year-old son compete in a horse barrel racing event when someone cracked a joke about bullfighting, reminding them of the Great Bull Run; they checked the website and were easily convinced to make the seven-hour drive here from their home in Pittsburgh. “Skydiving, parasailing, rockclimbing, you name it,” said Dukehart, the family does it all.

Rick ran with the bulls. Deborah just did the tomato fight, which Rick said was more fun anyway. “People were slipping and sliding. You definitely needed the goggles.” They’re going to follow the Great Bull Run to Houston in December. “There’s like ten more across the country. I’m going to be definitely looking at the calendar and figuring out [which ones I can get to],” said Rick.

It was at this point in the afternoon when I decided to take Preston Fowlkes’s challenge and abandon the original plan of an observation-only reporting trip. I got myself a wristband for the 3 p.m. bull run, the last of the day.

The three-page waiver for this event, which Rob Dickens wrote himself (in another life, he was a Wall Street lawyer), is pretty thorough. There are all the warnings one would expect: “inherent risks” of a litany of injuries and, of course, death; the standout phrase “THE EVENT IS A HAZARDOUS ACTIVITY THAT PRESENTS A SERIOUS PHYSICAL AND MENTAL DANGER TO PARTICIPANTS AND SPECTATORS.” Sign the waiver and you release the Great Bull Run from any and all liability – you’re not allowed to sue the company, and neither is your brother or your best friend or your second cousin who lives in Canada.

Soon enough I found myself on the dirt track holding a red bandana over my head and chanting “We honor the bull.” A few minutes later, the herd came out of the corral. I was standing further down the track, so it took a while for them to get to me. As soon as the crowd started running, I started running, looking back periodically and trying not to fall from the many shoves and elbows that other runners were throwing.

I ran close to the fence as the bulls came by, kept moving, successfully stayed out of the way. About 100 meters from the end of the run, I saw a person splayed out on the ground – either unconscious or playing dead --  as bulls and people ran over and around him. At the end of the track, I chose not to jump the fence and instead watched the last bulls come through, getting face-to-face with them as they slowed, turned and went into their corral. “Man, I honestly don’t think that person is alive,” said a young man next to me. “Oh my God, did you see that?” Someone else muttered something about “the first casualty of the day.”  We jogged back onto the track, where a crowd was forming around the fallen runner.

Before I had time to contemplate the distastefulness of joining the circle to gawk at the injured man, cheers and applause erupted to greet the collective realization that he was going to be okay. Heart beating a bit faster than usual, I sprinted away to find my brother.

“I wish I could have run,” he said wistfully as we walked to the car.

“You didn’t miss anything,” I replied, thinking back in wonder to the young man who’d compared this to riding twenty rollercoasters at once.

“Still,” he said. “Now you can tell people that you did this.”

“Yeah, I guess bragging rights are cool.”

We returned home, and the bulls returned to their open-air ranch in Kentucky, to be hauled out again in October when the Great Bull Run gallops on to Georgia.

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http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/running-with-the-bulls-on-a-virginia-racetrack/279180/#comments

Toros en los corrales de Virginia

Running of the bulls, Petersburg Virginia

I know, the purists out there are probably shaking their heads in disgust, but this is the best we are going to get in America. We are lucky we can even get this with the political correctness and animal welfare activism that is rampant in our country.

So if bloodless bullfights and somewhat tamer encierros is what we have to work with I say lets be thankful and enjoy it as much as possible. As for my area it looks like I will have a chance to run with the bulls in July of 2014. You can bet I will be there and ready for turn "run in the horns."



a warning to all



Viva San Fermin!



La furia comienza



Stampede!



Not too many "running in the horns" yet



One guy tries and gets leveled



This runner does a little better



This guy is about to get nailed

Un toro bravo en el campo

The big bullfights

Here is a list of the biggest bullfight ferias of the year. There are so many ferias both big and small it can be hard to keep track of them all. These are the bigger ones throughout the year beginning with Mexico City which for the most part kicks off the year.

Mexico City - February 5th- Feria del Aniversario

Valencia - mid March- Festival de Las Fallas

Sevilla - April - Feria de Abril

Madrid - May - Feria de San Isidro

Alicante - late June - Feria de Las Hogueras de San Juan

Pamplona - early July - Feria de San Fermin

Bilbao - early August - Semana Grande

Malaga - mid August - Feria de Agosto

Salamanca - mid September - Feria de la Virgen de la Vega

Sevilla - late September - Feria de San Miguel

Zaragoza - early October - Feria del Pilar

Madrid - mid October - Feria del Otono

Lima Peru - mid November - Feria del Señor de Los Milagros

Feria del Caballo, Jerez de la Frontera

The Feria del Caballo is an exciting event that takes place every year at the González Hontoria Park in the world famous sherry producing town of Jerez de la Frontera. Dating back over 500 years when it started as a livestock fair, thousands of people from all over the world now come to witness the remarkable display of horsemanship during this wonderful spectacle.

www.lucasfoxstyle.com

Bulls in the Murcia corrals

Bulls from the Benjumea ranch, Sept 16th

Cripple Creek, Colorado bullfight, August 1895



Wild West magazine, October 1992

 



Bulls in the Madrid corrals

A bull from the Juan Pedro Domecq ranch, May 16th, 2013



A bull from the Juan Manuel Criado ranch, June 6th



Another Juan Manuel Criado bull, June 6th



A novillo from the Buenavista ranch, July 21st



A bull from the Montalvo ranch, August 15th

Un toro de Concha y Sierra en el campo



 

Beautiful bull on one of the oldest bull ranches in Spain.

Francisco Rivera en Ronda, Septiembre de 2012



 

La Goyesca es una de las citas más importantes del calendario taurino y fue creada por Cayetano Ordóñez en 1954 con motivo del segundo centenario de la muerte del maestro Pedro Romero, que alumbró el toreo a pie en la plaza de toros rondeña.

Antonio Ferrera

 

Born February 19th, 1978 in Bunyola (Islas Baleares.)

 

Took alternativa in Olivenza (Badajoz) on March 2nd, 1997.

Sebastian Castella

 

Barcelona, 2011



Madrid - Las Ventas

 

www.spainattractions.es

 

Officially called Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas del Espiritu Santo, Madrid bullring is one of Spain’s most renowned landmarks and the third largest bullfight arena in the world after Mexico City’s Plaza de Toros and Plaza de Toros Monumental de Valencia in Venezuela. It is situated on Calle de Alcala 237 in the district of Salamanca (east of Madrid).

Designed by Spanish architect José Espeliú and inaugurated in 1931, the beautiful Neo-Mudejar edifice has a sitting capacity of 25,000 and a huge arena with a diameter of 60 meters. In addition to its historical importance , the prestigious site embodies a true architectural marvel beautifully decorated with horseshoe archways and ceramic tiles depicting the coats of arms of all Spanish provinces.

Las Ventas can be visited every day, except the public holidays, but the best periods to experience bullfighting in Madrid are during San Isidro Fair between May and June, or throughout the official season which lasts from the end of March to October.

Throughout the year, Madrid bullring plays host to a series of proceedings including concerts, as well as cultural, sport and entertainment events. Nowadays, Las Ventas is undergoing a renovation with the erection of a rooftop aimed to transform the building into a year round venue.

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Torero desde nino

Bullfight melee renews animal-cruelty debate

California's exemption for Portuguese tradition is questioned by some

(nbcnews.com 7-27-09)

Thornton, California - It was supposed to be a "bloodless bullfight," a dangerous dance between a pirouetting matador and a enraged bull that would not end in death.
   
But this time-honored Portuguese tradition capping a religious festival was anything but bloodless.
As the matador raised a short festooned spear to stick to the bull's neck, an animal welfare investigator charged into the ring, suspecting that the banderilla's Velcro tip concealed an illegal steel barb that would pierce the animal's hide.

Spectators chased down the intruder, and a bloody melee ensued, sending a San Joaquin County Sheriff's deputy to the hospital and two men to jail.

The episode in May reignited a battle that has endured for several decades between the bullfight aficionados and animal welfare advocates who contend the ritual is animal cruelty masquerading as religious theater.

"The Portuguese people wonder why these animal-rights activists can come in and disrupt a legal event without any consequences whatsoever," said Frank Sousa, director of the Center for Portuguese Studies University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. "They feel their culture is disrespected. How is it any different from a rodeo?"

Exemption created in 1957

When California lawmakers banned to-the-death bullfights in 1957, they created an exemption for Portuguese-style bloodless fights if they are part of religious celebrations, the only exemption in the U.S.

Since then, 20 times every summer across California's Central Valley, gaily attired matadors on horseback run bulls to exhaustion and taunt them with red capes. In the fight finale, teams of men known as "suicide squads" stop the charging bull in its tracks, then grab the tail and ski around the arena.

Animal-welfare advocates say there is nothing religious about a bullfight and they are lobbying for laws to at least require veterinarians on the scene.

"When it gets to the point where they create these bullfights, pretend they're religious, then torture and slaughter the bulls, I have a big problem," said attorney David Casselman of the nonprofit Animal Cruelty Investigators, whose agents are monitoring the fights.

The Portuguese community, which forms the backbone of the state's powerful dairy industry, is girding itself for a public relations fight over an Old World custom falling out of favor in a modern society.

"We need to defend our traditions," said Jose Avila, publisher of the Portuguese Tribune, one of the largest Portuguese-language weekly newspapers in the nation. "I understand that some people do not like bullfighting, the way I do not like boxing, but we accept the difference, right?"

Avila, whose paper covers nearly every fight in the Central Valley, likened the interaction between bull and matador to the artistry of a painting. He said the bulls are treated well and raised "like kings" to prepare for their life's mission: a single trip into the arena.

After the fight, they become ring savvy, unpredictably dangerous and are butchered for food.

Is it really religion?

Whether the bullfights are a religious exercise has been debated since 1981, when then-Attorney General George Deukmejian said the fights would have to be an integral part of a mass, which must take place on consecrated ground, to comply with the law.

"It's just crazy what's going on at these places," said Andrew Stewart, the ACI's animal-welfare investigator who stopped the fight in May.

He had received a complaint that the bloodless bullfights by professional matadors from Spain, Portugal and Mexico were anything but. A week before the Thornton fight, he found 30 barbed banderillas at a bullfight in Los Angeles County, where authorities now are investigating possible misdemeanor violations of animal cruelty laws.

As for the bullfight in Thornton, no animal-cruelty charges have been filed because someone made off with the banderillas before authorities could inspect them, said San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Robert Himelblau.

A spectator accused of assaulting the deputy with a garbage can will have his record cleared if he stays out of trouble for a year.

"At this point, we're just saying it's a bad scene. We're done with it," Himelblau said, nothing that the law gives wide leeway to the religious practices whether that means Appalachian snake-handling or the Santeria practice of animal sacrifices.

The Humane Society of the United States has investigated bloodless bullfights since 1976 and believes they violate state law, but officials say they have had trouble finding a district attorney willing to prosecute.

"We were told by one DA in one case that there was no way he could go up against a priest," said Eric Sakach, the group's senior law enforcement specialist. "In a cultural and sociological context, it's a very interesting story.

"It should make people question how we sometimes treat animals and what excuses we use to treat them badly," he said.

The recent scrutiny of their tradition has caused Portuguese bullfight fans to fear their community is losing its political clout.

"In the old days we used to invite the congressmen, the assemblymen, the mayors, the sheriff, all these people, but for some reason that we cannot understand, we stopped doing that," Avila said. "So for maybe 20 years we did not connect with the political power, and we can see now that is not good."

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http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32173902/ns/us_news-life/t/bullfight-melee-renews-animal-cruelty-debate/

http://www.taringa.net/posts/imagenes/17984031/Charreria.html

Looking for Wedge From Spain, Catalonia Bans Bullfighting

(by Raphael Minder nytimes.com 7-28-10)

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/world/europe/29spain.html?_r=0

 



Lawmakers in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia voted to ban bullfighting on Wednesday, dealing the most significant blow so far to a tradition considered by many Spaniards to be an essential part of their cultural patrimony.

 

In many ways, however, the ban reflected less on the animal rights than on a political debate over Catalan identity and a push by local parties for greater independence from the rest of Spain. With the strong support of separatist parties, the ban passed by a larger margin than expected: 68 to 55, with 9 abstentions. It is to go into effect in 2012.

 

The ban — the first in mainland Spain — comes at a time of decline for bullfighting in real terms, if not in emotional power. Reliant on state subsidies, bullfighting has suffered heavily from forced cuts in public financing. The impact has been particularly felt in smaller towns, where indebted local administrations have had to cancel bullfights, once the focus of annual festivities. The number of such bullfighting fiestas has dropped by almost a third from 2007.

The decline is particularly sharp in Catalonia, home to some of the country’s first bullfighting societies and leading bullfighters. The main city, Barcelona, once operated three bullrings to cater to a fanatic public. Now, there is just one bullring, La Monumental, which attracts as few as 400 season-ticket holders. Madrid’s main, similarly sized bullring draws 19,000.

Still, the ban was hailed as a major victory by animal welfare groups that have long crusaded against what they consider to be a barbaric practice.
 
“This is a historic day for all those who have worked to promote animal rights in a modern society like ours,” said José Ramón Mallén, a representative of Fundación Equanimal, an animal rights organization. “This is not about politics and Catalan identity, but about ethics and showing that it’s simply wrong to enjoy watching an animal getting killed in public.”

The vote came amid intense political bickering in the wake of a contested ruling last month by Spain’s constitutional court on a Catalan autonomy charter, which has been approved by Catalonia’s 5.5 million voters as well as the Spanish Parliament. The court endorsed most of the charter but struck out a legal claim to nationhood, among other points that Catalan separatists demanded.
The vote also came ahead of Catalan regional elections this year. Catalan separatism has been gradually gaining ground since the late 1970s and the end of the Franco dictatorship. The re-establishing of Catalan as an official language is arguably the separatists’ most notable achievement so far.

The Catalan Parliament last month approved a law to have 50 percent of foreign movies dubbed or subtitled in Catalan, despite concerns in Hollywood about higher distribution costs.

One bullfighter, Vicente Barrera, criticized the ban as politically oriented. “Bullfighting is an art, and Catalonia is abandoning for ridiculous political reasons the tradition and culture that makes Spain so special,” he said.

While recognizing that such a ban suited their broader separation goals, some lawmakers also emphasized that animal welfare had developed into a major concern.

“This is not an attack against Spain but evidence that we, Catalans, support and share more advanced values with the rest of Europe,” said Josep Rull, a lawmaker from Convergence and Union, a Catalan party. “We can be proud to have demonstrated today that Catalonia has a more dignified and respectful society that believes in eliminating the torture and suffering of animals.”

However, José Montilla, the head of the regional government, said he voted against the ban and lamented the fact that the issue had been turned into “a thermometer” to measure the state of the relationship between Catalonia and the rest of Spain.

Lawmakers from Spain’s largest center-right group, the Popular Party, led the opposition to the ban, citing political, cultural as well as economic grounds. The party’s leading spokesman and representative in the European Parliament, Jaime Mayor Oreja, said the ban was proof of a separatist “assault” from Catalonia and reflected “the profound national crisis that Spain is enduring.”

In the weeks leading to the Catalonia ban, there was fierce lobbying on both sides, with supporters of bullfighting warning that they would take legal action against any move that would breach basic rights — including the right to work — enshrined in the Spanish Constitution. Some argued that a ban would be akin to prohibiting painting, because bullfighters regularly receive national arts awards and their activities form part of the cultural coverage of newspapers and other media.

Barcelona must now decide what to do with La Monumental, one of the world’s leading bullrings. And the bullfighting sector is expected to try to claim hundreds of millions of dollars to offset losses resulting from the ban — although that figure has been contested by opponents of bullfighting.

The roster of famed Catalonian bullfighters includes Joaquín Bernadóa and Mario Cabré (who also appeared with Ava Gardner in the 1951 film “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman”). 

Unique colors of sand in las plazas

Golden orange sand in Sevilla




The grey sand of Bilbao




Almost white sand in Nimes




Earthy brown in Lima



A chocolate brown in La Mexico

Bulls from the Zalduendo ranch in the Merida corrals

6 toros para Talavante




Domingo 1 de Septiembre, 2013

Juan Bautista in Madrid, May 15th, 2008

muleta. A red flannel cape, usually lined, with a wooden stick for support, supposedly invented by Pedro Romero in the 18th century. No matter how good he may be with cape and banderillas, a torero's fame ultimately depends on his skill with the muleta. - Barnaby Conrad's Encyclopedia of Bullfighting