Death in the Afternoon

In Madrid, it was with full enthusiasm that I bought tickets to a bullfight. After all, I came abroad to learn about Spanish culture, and what’s more Spanish than a bullfight? I’d read enough Hemingway to find the stone ring and the matadors’ colorful costumes—in short, the whole experience—dazzling and awe-inspiring. (Sentences such as, “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” can’t but make one want to participate in, or at least observe, said sport.) I was ready for death in the afternoon.

Yes, I knew that the bull dies. However, I told myself, being born a bull in today’s world is bad news regardless. In the United States, many bulls are raised as beef cattle. Such bulls are usually born on cow-calf operations. At six to 10 months, they are weaned, and after about a year they’re sold to a cattle feeder or stoker/backgrounder who then prepares them for the feedlot (gives them grain, etc.). At a feedlot, the bulls live in pens and receive hormones and more grain. Once a bull is 18 to 22 months old, it is taken to a slaughterhouse and killed. (USDA beef is graded according to two criteria, one of which is age of the cattle. According to the website “The BBQ Report,” “Beef is best in flavor and texture when cattle is between 18 and 24 months old,” which accounts for why most cattle are slaughtered at this age.) Most slaughters are two-step. First, the bull receives a bolt of electricity or a metal rod to the forehead, which stuns it into unconsciousness. Next, its throat is cut, at which point it dies of exsanguination. It’s not exactly a pretty process, but if—like me—you really like hamburgers, the reality of the process is just something that you have to swallow.

In some ways, bullfighting bulls have it better. “Brand-name” bull ranches have sometimes been in the family for generations, and breeders take great pride in raising strong, fierce bulls . The animals range free in pastures until they are grown. Since bulls to be fought by beginners are supposed to be at least three years old, and those fought by full matadors at least four, “grown” means at least a full year longer in Spain than it does in the U.S. During the bullfight itself, which usually lasts about 15 minutes, the bull is lanced, barbed, and eventually stabbed between the shoulder blades. Usually the kills are quick and clean. The first one that I saw was not; the bull vomited blood for a good five minutes before dying. Once dead, the bull is slaughtered and eaten.

I couldn’t help, walking out of the fight, thinking about PETA and other such animal rights groups that declare bullfighting “cruelty towards animals” and asking myself: Do I agree with them? And I realized that the answer is no. I don’t know who could really say whether two years in a feedlot and a quick metal rod to the head is better, overall, than three years running free and 20 minutes of pain. Neither, however, do I agree with Hemingway; during the corrida that I attended (a corrida includes six individual fights), I saw very little of art and honor, but a lot of slaughter.

It was with disappointment in myself and in homo sapiens in general that I walked out of the bullfighting ring. What in human nature makes us want to turn death into sport? Death is, as we all know, a part of life. But it’s one that would ideally be met with acceptance and reverence—and there’s something carnival-like about the atmosphere of a bullfight that comes across stronger than any reverence the matador may feel toward the bull.

At the end of the day, I may sit down and eat a hamburger, but as I take that first bite I say a quiet “thank you” to the bull that died to feed me. I never livestream footage from a slaughterhouse, and from here on out, I won’t be watching any more bullfights either. Death is an omnipresent enough force as it is: Why glorify or dwell on it more than necessary? When it comes to Spanish culture, I’d say, Spaniards and toursists alike should stick with flamenco, sherry, and tapas—that is, we should revel in life.

Justine R. Lescroart ’09 is an English and American literature and language concentrator in Quincy House, and is currently studying abroad in Granada, Spain. Her column appears on alternate Wednesdays.