La Corrida de Toros

On Saturday I got to experience a very unique part of Spanish culture: a Corrida de Toros.  A corrida is what most people picture when they think of a bullfight, though there are actually many types of bullfights in Spain.  I was pretty apprehensive about the corrida; a lot of people in my program were strongly opposed to going, and I was anticipating a lot of gore.  We’d read about corridas in class, so I knew roughly what to expect.  In each corrida, there are 3 matadors and 6 bulls.  The matador has (I think) 20 minutes to kill the bull, and this time is divided into three tercios.  In the first tercio, a picador—a member of the torero's team on horseback—jabs the bull with a pica, a lance, to test its bravery and diminish its power.  Next, the banderilleros have to stab the bull with banderillas, short poker-type things.  Throughout these two tercios, the matador’s team is relatively unprotected.  They run around, luring the bull closer, and then they have to run behind protective walls at the edge of the plaza when the bull charges.  In the last tercio, the matador faces the bull with his muleta, a red cape that he uses to attract the bull.  He wows the crowd by drawing the bull closer and closer, and at the end he has to kill it as cleanly as possible.  Anyway, all this sounded pretty bloody, but I was trying to keep an open mind and not pre-judge the corrida. 

The corrida was potentially the least boring two and a half hours of my life.  The crowd is extremely focused on what’s going on—obviously—and though I’m not a sports fan, it felt like the attention level was probably similar to that of some championship game.  Except that, whereas someone who doesn’t know anything about football can be completely bored during an important game, that’s not the case when there’s a massive bull charging around a plaza.  Another interesting difference is that instead of judging athletes based on points missed or earned or good or bad plays, in a corrida, the crowd is judging the matador and the bull based on their bravery and fierceness.  The crowd is upset when the bull is made to suffer more than it should rather than when a point is missed.  Maybe this doesn’t make a difference, but it was interesting to me. 

I think one of the key things I learned through going to the corrida and then discussing it in class on Monday is how easy it is to misunderstand what’s going on.  After seeing the bullfight, I was more opposed to this type of spectacle than I was going in.  The bull is, apparently, stabbed repeatedly throughout the fight--first by the picador and the banderilleros, and finally by the matador--and it seemed to me that it was suffering a lot.  Furthermore, it looks like the horse is getting really hurt—when the picador tried to poke the bull, sometimes the bull would stab at the horse with its horns, apparently getting in under the horse’s protective armor.  One of the arguments in favor of bullfighting is that these toros bravos live long, dignified lives in exchange for a few minutes of suffering—a way better deal than the animals who are raised and killed for food.  I still felt pretty uncomfortable with the violence, though, and I could see why so many people oppose bullfights.  Then in class yesterday my professor talked a lot about corridas, and I realized that I hadn’t understood a lot of what was going on.  The horse, for instance, is completely protected—to an uninformed spectator it looks like it is getting injured, but it is actually in very little danger.  The banderilleros had been the most disturbing to me, since it seems like they’re just tormenting the bull, but actually they stab the animal in a part of its back where there’s about 8 inches of fat.  This serves to weaken the bull (by bloodletting, I think, though sometimes I’m not 100% sure what my professor is saying), but it doesn’t cause it a lot of pain.  Furthermore, if they didn’t do this, it would be harder for the matador to kill the bull, making it suffer more.  Finally, bullfights are highly regulated so that the bull suffers as little as possible, and the corrida is overseen by a president who can intervene and command the matador to kill the animal quickly if it is suffering too much. 

I went in to this bullfight with very little knowledge, and I came to uninformed conclusions.  I’m still not sure whether I support the corridas, but if I’m going to get upset over animals rights, I should definitely start with factory farms, since they make bullfights seem humane by comparison.  Since these bulls suffer less and are treated better than the animals we eat every day without thinking, it seems like the most upsetting aspect of a bullfight isn’t the killing but rather the fact that this killing happens out in the open for entertainment.  I can see how this would be disturbing, but it’s not like the crowd has come to laugh at the animal—it’s given a lot of respect.  And it seems to me far better to kill an animal out in the open, where people have to actually think about what’s going on, than to slaughter it out of sight.  

Sorry, guys—I guess I ended up just processing la corrida, so this post wasn't very informative.  In other news, this weekend I also slept too little, lost my voice, prepared for exams, and visited the Alhambra.   

Abrazos!

Flamenco, Mezquita, y Fiesta

I haven’t updated this in awhile, in part because I’ve been busy and in part because, when I sit down to write, I feel like I can’t describe certain experiences in a way that would really communicate how cool they were.  This past weekend was full of those experiences, but here it goes anyway.  


Friday night a group of girls from my program and I went on a hunt for a flamenco bar.  We had heard there was a show at some place called El Sur de Granada (I think), but we didn’t have a very good grasp on where this was.  Which was okay, because getting lost in Granada is kind of like getting lost in Powells City of Books—you always stumble across something awesome.  Friday night, for instance, as we were wandering in the general direction of the flamenco bar, we heard music and followed the sound to an outdoor concert by an orchestra next to a massive cathedral.  I’ve come across outdoor concerts before, but in Newberg they’re hardly ever in the shadow of a 16^th century cathedral.  

We listened to the music for awhile, and then continued hunting for the flamenco bar.  We got semi-lost in a kind of sketchy area, but it was sketchy in a good way, with narrow streets and windy alleys that made their way uphill to the Albayzín.  The flamenco show ended up being in the basement of a little bar.  It was small and cramped, with less than 50 people easily filling the room.  There were one dancer and three musicians—a drummer, a guitar player, and a singer/clapper—and somehow I ended up enjoying this little show more than the impressive espectáculo that we saw at the Alhambra.  I think seeing the dancer up close really made it.  She was this beautiful, tiny little person, but when she was dancing she seemed to grow a foot.  I don’t know much about flamenco so I’m going to sound like an idiot if anyone who actually knows something reads this, but it involves a lot of pounding and clapping and stomping which is so much better up close.  The dancers’ feet make a rhythm with the clapper and the drummer, and it’s just really intense (like I said, I’ve given up trying to describe this effectively).  Since I’ve been here, I’ve been amazed many times by Spain: it’s everything I hoped it would be but told myself not to expect.  Anyway, sitting in the basement of this bar drinking vino tinto, listening to mournful flamenco songs, and feeling the floor shake was sort of the epitome of Spain surpassing my expectations.  

On Saturday we went to Córdoba, which was also pretty incredible.  During our free time, a couple friends and I explored the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, a fortress built in the 14^th century under Alfonso XI where the Reyes Católicos lived for awhile.  

Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos

Alcázar and its gardens

In the afternoon, we got to tour the Mezquita Catedral de Córdoba.  The Mezquita is beautiful; it dates back to the 8^th century I think, though it wasn’t finished until much later, and it was originally a mosque.  It was turned into a Christian church after Córdoba was captured during the Reconquista, and in the 16^th century a cathedral was built right in the middle of the building.  Finally, after the Mezquita, we headed to a recreation of an Arabic bath house where we soaked in pools and everyone got a full body massage. 

Unfortunately, most of my pictures from the Mezquita didn't
turn out because it was darkish, but you should google image it!

I was pretty exhausted Saturday night and thought about going to bed early, but instead I ended up going out and getting back around 5:30 in the morning, like a true Spaniard.  

Salobreña

Yesterday a bunch of people from my program took a bus to Salobreña, one of Spain’s whitewashed coastal towns.  Sorry, Pacific, but the Mediterranean has you owned!  For swimming, at least.  It’s warm, the waves are gentle, and it’s super salty so it was really easy to swim and float.  It was by far the most pleasant water I’ve ever swum in. 

Salobreña

The town of Salobreña was beautiful.  Much of it is built on the side of a hill, and at the highest point there’s this Moorish castle built in the 10^th century!  Kimberly and I both really wanted to check it out, so wandered around for awhile trying to figure out how to take a bus up the hill.  Eventually, we ran into a British couple who told us that you have to walk since the streets at the top of the hill are too narrow for driving, so we set off in search of the castle on foot.  The way there was gorgeous!  The streets were incredibly narrow and labyrinthine, and the houses were all white and beautiful, with mosaic tile pathways, lots of flowers, and awesome views of the Mediterranean, the city, and the surrounding country.  It didn’t feel like we were walking through a city—maybe a painting or a movie set.  It was just so beautiful that it didn’t seem like real people could actually live there.

 

Pretty much all of the castle that we got to see.  Still, it was definitely worth the walk!

We eventually made it to the castle, but unfortunately it was closed for the afternoon siesta.  This was really disappointing, so we explored around for awhile in an attempt to at least see more of the ruins from the outside.  After climbing up on top of a roof and unfortunately running into the person who lived in the house down below, we decided to save the castle for another time. 

I'm going to put some more pictures on facebook, but they really don't do the scenery justice.  Anyway, I miss you all! 

MUERTE POR CASTELLANO

One of my most important goals for my time here is to improve my Spanish, so I’m really glad that I’m having plenty of opportunities to speak the language.  That said, communicating only in Spanish is exhausting!  It was mostly just fun at first, when I was meeting the other people from my program.  Now that we’re past basic introductions and are having actual conversations, it’s pretty tough!  Forming a sentence in the conditional perfect after a long day of classes sometimes seems almost impossible, especially since most of us are still suffering from jetlag.  I almost feel like I might have to get a bit worse before I get better.  Holding a conversation at a normal-ish pace while speaking only in grammatically sound sentences seems far beyond my reach at this point, so I’m starting to get really, really sloppy.  On the bright-ish side, I’ve talked to several people who are having similar experiences, so at least it’s not just me.  And, fortunately, I have 80 hours of Intensivo to look forward to in the next month, so that will help me improve my grammar.