There is one thing that I could not do in Madrid that I have always dreamed of doing, going to a bullfight. Bullfighting season had just ended. I think the week before we arrived.
I didn’t want to go to any bull fight. I wanted to take the train to Zaragoza to see the bull fights there. Where Hemingway saw the bullfights. Hemingway had an obsession with bullfighting. I believe he actually thought of himself as the bull.
“Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.” - Hemmingway
I have had some discussions with people on this. They ask how could you go witness such cruelty? It should be outlawed they say. Maybe so, but if I were a bull who had a choice between the slaughterhouse or the Bull Ring; I would choose the ring. I would demand the Ring. At least in the ring, you have a small chance and even if death is almost certain, you go out fighting. So until they outlaw the slaughterhouse they should keep the bull ring. I think the bulls going to the slaughterhouse would agree.
I know even if a bull kills a madator, he is killed, but if the bull has behaved particularly well during the fight, the bull is "pardoned" and his life is spared. So there is a chance for life, unlike in the slaughterhouse.
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