The crowd of thousands shifted uncomfortably when one novillero took too long to kill his first bull. Exhausted, the hulk was barely on its feet at the end, a wide belt of blood shining on its back. Surrounded by pink capes, its breath came in heaves, its black belly bouncing with effort. After repeated attempts with the sword, the junior bullfighter finished it with a dagger in the neck.

When the bulls died that day, most died fast. A punch with the dagger or an expertly placed estoque sword in the finale acted like a mallet to the forehead — the giant, muscle-bound animals buckled into golden sand, then were dragged out by a team of mules. But when this one refused to die, everyone seemed unsure if they should look away.

After graduating from journalism school, my now-wife and I had a three-week No Man’s Land between academia and the rest of our lives. We filled that time with a 5,000-mile road trip, and over the course of three weeks, we interviewed people around the country about their personal versions of the American Dream. As we aged through and out of our twenties over the following years, we held onto the idea of traveling together to keep our version of that Dream alive. Spain was the first European destination in pursuit of that mandate.

The choice was a mix of perceived temperature, culinary variety, and Hemingway-induced romance — we were fueled by visions of eating, drinking, and writing our way through ancient streets brightened by a Spanish sun. So we went, and a wine-soaked lunch led to us shuffling into the bullring, seeking an extension of that Hemingway experience. I more or less knew the mechanics of a bullfight, I thought. Growing up in the country, I’d seen animals hunted, struggle, and die. I didn’t expect to be unsettled by whatever happened in the ring.

The event took place at the Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza in Seville on the holy day of Corpus Christi. Earlier, a parade of soldiers, children in choir robes, and giant floats jostled through crowded cobblestone while cathedral bells swung clanging on their gudgeons. Everyone lining the streets threw rosemary into the procession path, crushed by footfalls until an aromatic scent filled the alleyways and plazas. As the cool of the morning evaporated under the rising sun, that same crowd filed into the concrete grandstands of the bullring. The price for a seat in the sun was about $20.

"Growing up in the country, I’d seen animals hunted, struggle, and die. I didn’t expect to be unsettled by whatever happened in the ring."

Climbing through the Plaza de Toros is like visiting a national landmark in the States — towering marble columns, giant studded doors, a sense of historic weight. A representative from seemingly every stratum of Seville society was there: children snacking on jamón and manchego, old men with cigar-stained fingers debating the skill of each novillero, brash young guys with slick hair and tight-fitting v-necks. But everyone in the giant, jostling crowd fell nearly silent as the first bullfighter walked into the ring.

He knelt in front of a large swinging gate, about a hundred feet from where the first bull was held. He carefully spread a wide pink cape out in front of him. The gate swung open. A giant, brown bull charged. The fighter stayed on his knees. The bull thundered on, spraying sand behind its hooves, until finally, the fighter rose to spin and pass his cape over the animal’s powerful frame as it sped by, bucking its horns as it passed.

In Spain, a bullfight (or corrida) is split into three parts called tercios, each announced by a shrill bugle. Ostensibly, each tercio showcases a unique set of skills and pageantry in the bullfight’s cast of characters. And from a more pragmatic view, the fact that the corrida is split into thirds builds suspense for the coup de grâce at the end, weakens the bull for the matador, and amplifies the animal's rage for a more dramatic finish.

First, picadors on horses entered the ring with tall, slender, spiked poles. They lured the bull to strike, and as the bull lowered its head to smash the horse’s flank, they speared the bull’s shoulder. Blood started to dribble steadily from the wound.

In the second tercio, banderilleros entered with colorful, barbed, three-foot-long spikes. As the bull charged, the banderilleros jumped, planting a spike in each of the bull’s shoulders and vaulting themselves off to the side. If the banderilleros were skilled, the bull would have six or so of the spikes bouncing from its shoulders by the end of the round — which is exactly what happened. A swath of blood colored the brown hair on the bull’s side. When the first novillero came out with his cape and sword, the bull was heaving, enraged.

In the third and final tercio, the bull charged the novillero in a series of moves that toed the line between sport and dance. The bullfighter’s cape flashed in front of the animal, leading it through a turn and subsequent charge, again and again moving in a furious pattern with the novillero in the middle. A bullfighter’s skill is partially based on how many turns it can coax out of a bull, and how close it can make those turns to his own body. As each pass crossed closer and closer, the once quiet crowd shouted olé in unison until the novillero lost rhythm and broke the dance short, letting the bull run a little farther afield and turning to prepare a fresh charge. When the bull charged for the final time, it roared — we could hear it all the way up in the cheap seats, just as we could see strings of snot flying from its nose.

Finally, the fighter aimed his estoque precisely, pointing it dead at the bull while it snorted and hobbled, ready for one last gasp of aggression. As it charged, the novillero jumped and plunged the sword between the shoulders with the goal of severing the aorta and killing the bull instantly. But these were novilleros — not accomplished matadors, and almost every kill took more than one strike. The novillero who took longest struck again and again, until the beast almost lay in the sand, snout shining bright with blood that dripped from its mouth and nostrils. Its breath shot in hot bursts, spattering drops of blood everywhere.

Each novillero fought two bulls, and eventually, the sun dipped below the outer wall of the plaza. And walking back on the cobblestone streets still smelling like rosemary, we didn’t talk much. We left after four bulls because of sunburn, mostly, and a sense of being full. Not disgusted, necessarily, but not far off. We had seen enough.

To an American like me, a bullfight is a stark contrast between horror and art — a bloodsport that turns stomachs and incites outrage, paired with a graceful, gentle bravado. And here they were together in the ring, inexorably bound as they have been for 300 years.

Watching it, there was a feeling of shame. History, pageantry, tradition feel merely like gilding on an unabashedly violent, base desire — the same desire that gave bore cockfighting, bearbaiting and, to use an extreme, the Coliseum. And at the end of the day, it's tough to justify the sport. The romantic courage of the matador, legendary in scope, doesn’t quite cut it. Many people display courage, but most of them don’t go looking for a fight with a deadly and desperately injured animal.

But if you wanted to try to justify it, the best way might be to say that most of us participate in the cruel exploitation of animals in one way or another. Those in the Plaza de Toros just choose to stomach the struggle instead of just the byproduct. Steaks, after all, aren’t born in styrofoam rectangles. And it’s worth mentioning as well that bulls killed in the ring are often butchered and served in surrounding restaurants. They’re said to be delicious.

A month after we left the country, a 29-year-old bullfighter named Victor Barrio was gored to death in Teruel. Apparently, a gust of wind caught his cape, giving the bull a clear shot, and one of its horns pierced Barrio’s aorta just as he was hoping to do to the bull with his estoque. He was the first matador to die in the ring since 1985. Since his death, bullfighting has experienced a resurgence in popular opinion.

Barrio’s death manifests the uneasiness we felt in the stands of the plaza as the late afternoon sun waned in the sky. We saw a man, a beast, and death. It was either the bull or the bullfighter, and Barrio’s death reminded Spaniards of the pride it takes to dance with death on the sand, among trumpets that get lost in the far reaches of the plaza, staccato cheers of olé and the bellow of a giant adversary that can (and will) kill you.

"Some people are more comfortable sitting next to death than others, and some may even be addicted to it."

Hemingway himself wrote hundreds of pages on this very subject. If A Sun Also Rises is any indication, he had a passion for the corrida and admiration for the great matadors of the early 1900s deep in the pocket of his heart. The controlled chaos of the bullring matches the booze-fueled self-annihilation of the protagonist and his fellow expats. Death by a million cuts indeed. That said, Hemingway was a veteran of World War I and would go on, after writing the book, to report on the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War, lead a guerilla fight in World War II, hunt animals in Africa, and write dozens of stories and novels in which death was anywhere but between the lines. And then, in the end, he killed himself. Some people are more comfortable sitting next to death than others, and some may even be addicted to it.

So it makes sense that Hemingway wrote so often of bullfighting. He must have felt a kinship with the matadors he so admired – they burn brighter under the eyes of thousands, daring death to come ever closer. And then are snuffed out fast when, one day, it does.

Blood, Bravery, and Bullfighting in Seville

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