American Aficionado: Why I Fell in Love with Bullfighting

I am an American, and I fell in love with tauromaquia. It was the last thing I expected when I attended my first bullfight in Pamplona. I was sure I would hate it. After all, it was torturous, humiliating, and served no other purpose than to bolster the bullfighters' egos. Except, it wasn't. I watched as matadors entangled with the bulls in an intricate dance between horns and capes, each an equal partner in their performance before an entranced crowd. Except, they weren't equal. One matador was carried to the infirmary; another suffered a small cornada to his thigh. Neither carried the estoque, and both were at any moment one mistake away from a terrible end. The performance was not in the killing, but the suertes, intimacy, and graceful movements. The performance was the art. The estocada was the skill. One blow was all it should take; undue suffering was not just unpalatable, it was forbidden. The audience applauded the bull which had given its life for our entertainment as it was dragged out of the ring. It was the last thing I expected. It was also the start of my journey to becoming an aficionado americano.

Most Americans recoil at the idea of bullfighting. To witness, support, or even speak knowledgeably about it is to invite accusations of cruelty. I once felt the same. I saw it as a barbaric holdover—a blood sport disguised as culture. Unfortunately for toreo, that American perspective is not only not grounded in historical fact, it is a judgement issued from an unearned place of moral superiority. Americans don't understand the mechanics of the corrida – the faenas, the tercios, the different toreros, the work with the capote. The only thing we know is the bull dies, and for that, the performance is summarily condemned. I was party to this line of thinking. It is the reason I didn't attend a corrida my first time in Pamplona and why I argued vehemently against it for so many years. I took the arrogant position that I knew more than the millions of aficionados, rancheros, toreros, and legislators that came before me without experiencing the corrida for myself. I didn't know that toreo wasn't a sport, but a performance (and, in some people's eyes, an artform). I didn't know that toreo kept the toro de lidia alive. I didn't know the toros de lidia were born and raised under a system which provided them a better living than almost any other cattle in the entire world. I didn't know, but I would learn.

My second corrida was in Madrid a week later. Again, I saw a bull send a matador to the infirmary. Again, I saw the intricate dance. But for the first time, I was amongst true aficionados, not tourists at a fiesta. I listened as men discussed Borja Jiménez’s performance, watched as the crowd cheered for Molina's confirmation. I was mesmerised at the respect for bullfighting traditions. Mesmerised as I was, I never intended to see another bullfight. I was no longer morally opposed, but I was moving on to other cities. But I returned to Spain to watch Borja Jiménez perform his first único espada in Cazalla de la Sierra just a month later. It was there that I got a front-row seat to what happens in the ring. I watched as the matador triumphed over six bulls in a single afternoon. I saw him excited at great performances, frustrated at poor ones, and developed an appreciation for the cuadrilla’s critical role in his success. I also looked into a bull's eyes as it died. For the first time, I connected with an animal as it passed from this life. It was at the same time sobering and sad, respectful and upsetting. But it was an inevitable part of life, an end everyone and everything eventually meets.

The único espada spoke to me. Bullfighting wasn't a torturous spectacle for the crowd's entertainment. It was something deeper, older, and harder to describe. It was a direct confrontation with death, for the bull, for the matador, and for the crowd. Few stare death in the face as it stares back as the bull and the matador, and everyday people avoid death at every turn. It isn't a natural thing to experience on a regular basis, but in bullfighting it is an every night occurrence. Rather than balk or fight with death, toreros and aficionados welcome it not as a macabre spectre but an unfortunate friend we must all endure.

But bullfighting is more than death. It is performative. The work with the muleta is more akin to a flamenco dance than a soccer game, the estocada more a surgeon's scalpel than a gladiator's broadsword. For their part, banderilleros, puntilleros, and picadores can add to or subtract from the overall aesthetic. Striking an arterial bleed, placing a banderilla in the wrong place, or failing to kill the bull with the first coup de grâce change the entire performance as the bull adjusts its behaviour to its new environment. Between the bulls and the matadors, there is a relationship, short-lived as it may be. Sometimes that relationship is contentious, others it is amorous. Rarely, chemistry between the two is so intense that, together, they earn the president's orange pañuelo – the bull's right to live. When that chemistry is lacking or mismatched, matadors and bulls alike experience anger, frustration, and, sometimes, sadness. The bullfight is more than entertainment; it is the personification of the emotions we all feel.

Some argue the bullfight is a relic of the past that we should leave behind as we have become a more civilised society. That Catalonians tried to ban the practice, but ultimately failed in that endeavour. Mexico, too, made the same attempt, yet was met with swift defeat at the hands of the judicial system. But what is Spain without bullfighting? What is Mexico? What makes them different from the rest of Europe or Latin America? Bullfighting is not just tradition—it is identity. Without it, Spain and Mexico lose something elemental, something that sets them apart in a homogenizing world. As controversial as bullfighting may seem, it is imperative in keeping the Spanish identity alive. That was one of the main reasons Catalonia wanted to rid themselves of the bullfight – to rebel against Spanish identity. That identity has lasted hundreds of years as Cuéllar boasts the world's oldest encierro dating back over 800 years, Albacete proudly proclaims the oldest feria taurina at almost 500 years, and the entire Fiesta de San Fermín, one of the largest international festivals in the world, centers around the bullfight and has done so for centuries. Without the feria taurina, what would become of the annual festivals?

And what of the bulls? The toro de lidia is the last remaining descendant of the wild Iberian bull. Without bullfighting, the bull would surely die out. There is simply not a modern tolerance for wild bulls on the Iberian Peninsula. Worse, without the ganaderías raising the bulls, what would happen to the land? There is little doubt: the land would be transferred to clean energy farms or commercial agriculture, destroying nature in pursuit of a "civilised" society. Some would argue that the bulls and ganaderías could shift from bullfighting to ethically-raised meat, but that raises its own moral quandaries as the toro de lidia would no longer live a hormone-free life of six years. In the pursuit of ethically-raised meat, the end of bullfighting would see bulls die long before they would in the ring. Is that really ethical?

Bullfighting itself is wrought with such moral dilemmas. Any aficionado who claims otherwise has never seriously contemplated the corrida. The corrida is a bloodsport where an animal is killed for our entertainment. The corrida is an unfair match of a cuadrilla against a single bull. The corrida is a cultural tradition that stubbornly resists the winds of change. There is suffering in the ring, almost exclusively on the side of the bull. So, what makes bullfighting a moral act as opposed to banning it? My answer is that bullfighting is simply a display of life as we know it. For man and animal alike, life is full of emotion, pain, suffering, triumph, and success. Toreros and aficionados simply confront those realities head on rather than avoid them. In that confrontation, they demand not the absence of pain, but minimising it; not the absence of death, but ensuring it is quick and painless; not the absence of fatal risk, but weighing and embracing it. Our modern world is sanitised and numb to these realities. To most, the bullfight is a reminder of life rather than an escape from it. Those who seek to escape life's realities embrace soccer and theatre, where everything is fantasy, controlled, and ultimately has no impact once the spectacle is over. The bullfight is no such escape. Not for the toreros, not for the aficionados, and not for the bulls. Together, they embrace life for what it is, not what they wish it to be.

That's why I remain an aficionado. Watching the corridas, I have felt intense emotions rarely found elsewhere. I have condemned famous matadors who disrespected the president in Albacete, excitedly demanded the orange pañuelo in Utrera, and felt overwhelming sadness for bulls who suffered a broken bone from an unforeseeable accident in Bilbao. I have shaken hands with toreros who spent time with their fans before and after their performances, something most celebrities would never do, and discussed the finer points of various performances with fellow aficionados both in the tendidos and on social media. I have also learned to respect the bulls. They aren't mere props in play. They are performers in their own right, equally as important as the toreros and twice as deadly. Without them, there would be no bullfight, no confrontation with death, no reflection on the moral questions surrounding our entertainment and farming industries.

To fall in love with tauromaquia was the last thing I expected, but looking beyond the blood, beyond the spectacle, and into its soul, I found something real, enchanting, and deeply human.