Life in the Afternoon

The picturesque [meaning rowdy bullfights in little fiesta towns] is for when you are young, or if you are a little drunk so that it will all seem real, or if you never grow up, or if you have a girl with you who has never seen it, or for once in a season, or for those who like it. But if you really want to learn about bullfighting, or if you ever get to feel strongly about it, sooner or later you will have to go to Madrid.

--Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

Ah, Papa, were you to do a Mr. Jordan this season and go to Madrid, how confounded you would be. Last week the annual Fair of San Isidro was at its peak. Yet two of Spam's best matadors were not even there, although that 16-day burst of bullfighting is the World Series, Davis Cup competition and The Ashes of cricket all folded into one. El Cordobes and Palomo Linares had defied Los Siete Grandes, the seven biggest ring owner-agents, who henceforth intend to control the sport by setting fees and scheduling matadors. For that, the pair had been banished, cast out to fight before the drunks and girls and the never-grow-ups in picturesque third-class towns.

It was just as well, perhaps. San Isidro was such a bust that scalpers outside the Plaza Monumental were hustling one another. Could you comprehend, Papa, that this Chartres of the taurine religion was filled only once in 16 days, and then only because three top matadors were crowded together in undignified fashion on the program? Other days, sprinkles of faithful filled the arena instead, with strident three-syllable screams of "Novillero!" (Novice) hurled at inept performers. Or, in ultimate insult, they turned their backs on the orange sand to wave their tickets in rage at the corrida president.

Crisis, of course, is as elemental to bullfighting as the cape and sword. Fifty years ago, Spaniards swore that Belmonte was commercializing the fights by breeding his own bulls and using an agent to arrange appearances at the then prime price of $3,300 an afternoon. The bull was no longer the central figure of the confrontation; the cult of the matador had been born. Once, such disputations raged in the comfortable surroundings of a packed arena. Crowds this year have been skimpy everywhere since the season opened in Castellon de la Plana. They have been rebellious too. In Seville, the civil governor canceled a corrida because the bulls demonstrated "a shameless lack of liveliness."

The inevitable, you see, Papa, has finally overtaken the fiesta nacional. You and Sidney Franklin and the other gringos were always so mesmerized by the mystique of blood and sand that you ignored what Spaniards understood: above all else, bullfighting is box office. For a time in Spain's new and vigorous consumer society, the box office was busier than ever. With 20 million foreign tourists a year and television beaming corridas to as many as 15 million more people (instead of the mere 23,663 that can shoehorn into the Plaza Monumental), the bullfights have become a $25 million-a-year jackpot. In order to get a share of the pot, everyone concentrated on providing more fights. But a consumer society, like a matador's sword, is double-edged. More fights meant poorer fights. Aficionados hooted at the new bulls as so many genuflecting mules, praying calves or Hermanas de la Caridad (Sisters of Charity).

Catering to Ignorance. How could there be enough good bulls to go around? Spain now has 312 bullrings, some in areas like the Costa Brava and Costa del Sol, which were never part of the sport until tourists appeared. Last year 3,660 bulls were sold to corridas at prices of up to $1,000. To satisfy this demand, breeders fattened bulls in pens on fishmeal and soybean extract instead of allowing leisurely grazing. This process builds fat, not muscle, and animals so topheavy that they stumble and fall before they are weakened with picas and banderillas and finally sword-slain in those moments of truth that are these days less true. Some bulls have even been sent out under the legal fighting age of four years. Last week, by government decree, breeders began to record every birth in an official register meant to end this practice.

The apoderados, or impresarios, led by Plaza Monumental's Livinio Stuyck, scarcely care. "Cheap cigar smoke has been replaced by the scent of perfume," complains one critic. Women drawn by television occupy more and more corrida seats; so do camera-lugging tourists. Neither group complains about increases in ticket prices of as much as 80%. Neither knows the difference between the "comfortable" Galache breed of bulls they see and the brave but seldom-seen breeds like Pablo Romeros, Tulio Vazquez and the legendary Miuras, who have killed seven matadors in modern times, including Manolete.

Time for Reevaluation. Under such circumstances, the matadors have lost their pride, and their skills have grown dull. A few, like Linares before his banishment, may still be offered $7,000 for one fight. Most of Spain's 193 active matadors, however, have grumblingly accepted 25% fee cuts in return for comfortable bulls and a guaranteed minimum number of appearances. At the same time, they have reduced the ritual you loved so much to a modicum of spasmodic passes. The capes that once came alive in flashing veronicas across the sunlight are seldom used today.

It has become so bad that even the tourists and the women have begun to catch on. Alarmed by the falling attendance, Minister of Tourism Manuel Fraga Iribarne is calling for "a re-evaluation to retrieve bullfighting from crisis." Without some drastic changes soon, Spain's most famous spectacle may eventually disappear. You said as much yourself 37 years ago, Papa: "There are two things that are necessary for a country to love bullfights. One is that the bulls must be raised in that country and the other that the people must have an interest in death." You never foresaw a new and prospering Spain that would be more interested in life.

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