life in the afternoon

With summer holiday just about to begin, I now know which book to take with me to the beach. This year, it's going to be "Death in the afternoon" by Ernest Hemingway. Not so much for the fun of it, or for an obvious debt in reading it (probably being Hemingway's most "Spanish" of books) but mostly because this book seems like the ideal way to lightly ponder about a long-lasting debate on the future of Spain's bullfighting tradition.

Were he alive today, Hemingway, a passionate bullfighting "aficionado" ever since -the legend says- witnessing the Fiestas de Pamplona back in 1920, would have suffered a blow facing last Tuesday's Catalan Autonomous Parliament's decision to abolish bullfighting in Catalunya. Given the region's historical background and its constant drive for breaking its bonds with anything that is Spanish, it is hard to see perceive this decision completely decoupled from politics. In fact, it would suffice to look at the distribution of votes on the matter to realize a -not so strange- correlation between an assumed sensitivity for animal rights and political views. In all, it was a heavily divided vote, with representatives of the local nationalist parties being strongly in favour of the abolition act, in contrast to those of the moderate ones who maintain stronger links with the Central Government.

In what concerns animal rights I am not sure how big this step is. In total, the bulls killed in arenas worldwide should not be more than a hundred every year, a number that is far inferior to the pigs slaughtered in the same period in the Catalan province alone to supply its sensitive citizens with a great variety of sausages. The obvious argument that bulls suffer an agonizing death in the bullring, whereas animals slaughtered for their flesh are killed "scientifically" does not make me feel a lot better. A great number of animals are still being horrendously tortured during drug and chemical testing and death is probably agonizing no matter the procedure of extermination being followed. I can understand the shock of a sensitive citizen at the sight of a blood-squirting, animal dying in its prime but one has to agree that there is a clear difference between slicing the throat of a baby lamp before putting it on a spit and leading a raging bull in the arena against a group of men, who have been trained throughout their lives into treating the animal with utter respect.

No matter one's opinion on bullfighting, he has to admit that the whole point of it goes far beyond simply killing the bull. As a long-standing tradition, it goes a long way back to ancient ceremonies with a great deal of symbolism embedded so deeply that has become invisible today to short-sighted modernists who choose to see bullfighting as a display of barbarism but find the running-over of animals on the highways an inescapable side-effect of progress. Yes, bullfighting is a remnant of old times, and yes a "corrida" is a hard sight to which I would think twice before submitting my children, but then again, are all things of old destined to be abolished? and to what extent is a dying bull more offensive as a sight than what one can see on TV?

I cannot say I am 100% pro-bullfighting, although I have enjoyed a couple of "corridas", and I am not the passionate fan Hemingway was, even if I appreciate a well-performed "Veronica" and can distinguish a "pase de pecho" from a "pase de desprecio". In all, I see a great deal of hypocrisy in trying to ban an activity that is has its roots in the veneration of an animal and during which animals are treated with extreme respect if not still considered sacred. Those who have never been in a bullfight, or have never read about them (by "Papa" Hemingway or anyone else) may not be aware of the fact that the bull is treated by the crowd with the same respect and admiration as the "torero", that the bullfighter is to be booed and ashamed if the animal is not killed properly (in a way that it suffers less, that is) and that in some -extreme- cases the bull can be "pardoned" by the fighter if the crowd demands it as a reward for its bravery (see for instance the great Jose Tomas pardoning a bull in Barcelona here).

But in the end, we live in a democracy and the decision of a Parliament is to be respected so there is to be no bullfighting in Catalunya as from January 1st 2012. And so the representatives of the people have decided that upon facing a bull instead of grabbing it by the horns, they might as well jump over it. Or even worse, pretend the bull is simply not there...