El Llantro and Bullfight

So our school gave us the opportunity to see an authentic Spanish play it was called El Llantro and was based off of an original poem by the Spanish writer Lorca. Then on Sunday I went to my first bullfight. Since my policy while Iam here is to understand and adopt the Spanish culture I found both to be great and educational experiences.

I have a really horrible flaw of time management and almost missed the play with two of my roommates. We were forced to take a taxi to the theater and arrived just before the doors were shut.

Besides this minor set back I found the play to very interesting and entertaining. As a kid, my mom always took me to the local high school to watch musical/plays. In addition, I worked across the street from the Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa so I received tickets from time to time and my step-brother was in the acting program at Long Beach State. Needless to say I enjoy watching live actors and I have respeect for what they do, because I could never perform in front of large crowds. The play was about a older bullfighter who wanted to get out of his lifelong profession and a young waiter who longed to become a matador. The ineraction between the two main characters was illustrated by flamenco dancing and singing (which worked out well considering my Spanish is hardly mediocre). In the end the older matador was killed by the young waiter on accident while reenacting a bullfight.  Pretty vague description sorry.

Then on Sunday the sun was shining bright and we ventured to see the first major bullfight of the season. Its funny because the areana almost reminded me of an American baseball stadium. People eating peanuts and drinking beer while a live animal gets killed right in front of their eyes.

The way it works is there is a total of six bulls. Men come out and ditract the bull. At first you can tell that the animal is wild and angry but then they stab it a couple of times. Another man comes out on a horse and stabs the bull a couple of more times. Once he is critically injured, the matador emerges (go figure) and puts his javelins into the bulls. By this time he is so badly wounded that the bull follows the matadors red cape. He almost seems to dance with the matador. The animal is stabbed a couple more times until he falls down and is stabbed in the skull, then a rope is tied to his horns.  The other side of the rope is conneted to horses who drag the bull's carcas around the arena for a "victory lap".

At first I was very disturbed about the skewed "bullfight", this wild bull is stabbed so many times that he basically defenseless by the time the matador emerges. The bullfight wansn't really what I thought it was going to be I imagined a wild bull running around and a fair fight: man vs. bull. But the weather was beautiful and it was an experience nontheless. Not to mention I had an amazing falafel by the arena. Food quickly made me forget the horrific scene I had viewed minutes before.

Here's a bullfighter's theme I found on YouTube: