On Spanish Bullfighting

¡Torre!

This summer, Sophia and I attended a bullfight at the Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla. This is the only time we’ve seen Spanish bullfighting, and it left quite an impression. I’d like to share some of our thoughts with you.

Man vs Nature

For me, the essential experience of the bullfight is a celebration of man’s dominance over nature (with both the positive and negative aspects that implies), and of grace over power. The bull, of course, symbolizes the violent indifference of nature. The bullfighter symbolically defeats this force, not through force (for man can never be as forceful as nature), but through grace and bravery.

And practitioners must be graceful and brave. Bullfighting appears to be astonishingly dangerous, an image mostly reflected in reality. It is only by the bullfighter’s quick movements and perfect timing that he can avoid being gored.

In the bullring in Seville, one gets the sense of participating in an ancient ritual. Even the stadium shares this sensibility: It is built of ancient materials, and spectators are packed in so close as to be touching on all sides. There are no electronic displays or recorded music. Today’s bullfight is the direct descendant of a sport practiced a thousand years ago, itself clearly descended from Roman gladiator games. In the stadium, this feeling of the historical is palpable. Squeezed in with voices all around of “olé” or “bien”, one can imagine the same shouts in the same place echoing across the generations.

Man vs Himself

Watching a bullfight, one cannot help but be taken by how dangerous the sport appears. Bullfighters on foot regularly come within inches of the bull, and at one point face the bull without any protection (not even a cape). The machismo is palpable and for me, it is hard to imagine summoning the courage that much be required.

Bullfighting’s reputation as a dangerous activity is deserved. Indeed, the danger is essential to bullfighting’s essence (in this sense it is an “extreme sport”). Although it is rare for bullfighters to be killed in the ring, it is not that unusual for them to be gored. Most of the matadors we saw had been gored at least twice previously, one of them (Juan José Padilla) so severely that he was left deaf in one ear, blind in one eye, and paralyzed in the face. He returned to the bullring five months later. Another (El Fandi) was on another occasion severely wounded by a bull but returned to the bullring the same day after 45 minutes in surgery.

Of course, bullfighting differs from other extreme sports in one key way: The bull. The addition of a thinking and feeling adversary makes the danger that much more palpable and the machismo that much more dramatic. It also introduces serious and categorical ethical considerations.

The Ethics of Bullfighting

Bullfighting is violent, bloody, and brutal. As a spectator, we are complicit in the violence. Does bullfighting constitute animal cruelty? Does it have a place in the world today? Did it ever?

My sense is that it is difficult to reconcile a philosophy that labels bullfighting as unethical but allows eating meat. Although fighting bulls meet a violent end, their lives are otherwise better than those of beef cattle: They live years longer, eat a healthier diet, have significantly more space to roam and graze, and receive minimal handling by humans. On balance (and with minimal research), I would say that fighting bulls’ treatment is better than that of beef cattle.

As I claimed earlier, the essence of bullfighting is man’s dominance over nature. And if bullfighting seems unnecessary to us today, I would argue that it is because our species’ dominance over nature is so extensive that to celebrate it seems gauche, even immature. Today in some ways we wish we had less dominance over nature, for example when it comes to anthropogenic climate change or depletion of fisheries. To celebrate man’s dominance over nature when that dominance causes so many problems can seem indifferent to the problems of the world.

Yet we still have one reason to celebrate our dominance, be it overstrong: Our apparent control of the world is fleeting. Bullfighting reminds us of a time when nature did not follow man’s whims, when we could not control the path of great rivers or grow enough food to feed all humans everywhere, let alone change the climate or eradicate species en masse. By connecting us to the past in this way, the ancient sport reminds us of the fragility of our world today. As long as we are one pandemic or nuclear war away from catastrophe, our need for bullfighting may be at least as strong as our need for beef.

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