Europe > Spain > Madrid > Madrid > Articles > Spain: Interview with a Bullfighter

“Si hombre, she’s truly a good dog." The young man was explaining to me the history of the dog’s breed. “She’s an Alano Español – a Spanish bull-herding dog” - sleek and agile, and as far removed from a British bulldog as a fighting bull is from a Friesian heifer.

Her owner too was a breed apart. His name was Jesús Millán and, although he looked younger than his 20 years, he was already carrying the knowledge of almost a decade in the world of bullfighting. I was counting heavily on those years of experience since all around us, on the rocky Castillian hillside, a herd of young bulls were fighting each other for their place in the herd’s hierarchy.

I was grateful that Jesús had spared the time to meet me because in two days he would be fighting the first bull of the season at Nîmes in Southern France. “Sure the nerves are normal - even healthy,” he smiled, “but I feel confident that I can do well this year and I enjoy my work.

“Like all small boys I dreamt about being a torero. But I never seriously considered it. What I really wanted was simply to pass my days like this, with the animals in the countryside. One year I went to a village fiesta with some friends and they let some cows into the plaza for the people to try to fight. I had to try because my friends pushed me in but the cow knew more about bullfighting than any of us and I was scared. The same thing happened the next year. I thought about it a lot and I practised some passes before I went to the fiesta for the third time.”

Jesús was 13 that year and by the time the crowd had carried him triumphantly out of the plaza on their shoulders he had already dedicated himself to becoming a matador. In his village there was a club taurino where kids can learn to handle the cape and the sword. For the next three years, Jesús was rarely away from the club unless he was on the road, hitching a lift to some fiesta where he might get a chance to fight. The week of his 16th birthday, he was at the most famous of these amateur bullfights in Ciudad Rodrigo and, against the stiff competition of fifty like-minded desperadoes, he won the trophy for the best performance of the fiesta. It was the turning point and soon after that his sponsors spotted him at a tentadero (a private bullfight, arranged to test the bravery of the season’s animals) near Madrid.

“In the old days it was very tough for bullfighters - sometimes they had to fight just for a meal. Now there are people who, because of their own interest in the bulls, will help us and give us the chance to be near the beasts.”

Bullfighting is an expensive business. If a matador is to cultivate the right reputation his ‘suit of lights’ must be of the best quality that he can afford. At a starting price of £1,500 even a grazing horn-wound can have painful repercussions.

“These days it is tough for different reasons. There are so many young toreros that some of the bullring owners have begun to charge for the privilege of appearing. There are some millionaires who want nothing more than for their sons to be matadors – they’ll pay as much as £80,000 in one season for their son to fight. But when they have to face a full grown four-year-old for the first time . . . well, I suppose those kids just don’t want it badly enough.”

Bullfighting is classed as an art rather than a sport: not so much a contest as a life-and-death drama in which there’s only one natural outcome. Every act in this drama is a preparation for the kill. The bull must be weakened, first by the lance of the picador, then by the banderillas (the barbed darts that are jabbed into the hump of muscle behind his horns). The faena, in which the matador performs his passes with the muleta, is the final stage in tiring the neck muscles so that the bull lowers his head and exposes the vulnerable spot on his shoulder to the matador’s sword.

“You can practise for hours in the plaza but there is no way to prepare yourself for the time when you have to reach over the top of the horns, guiding the bull with the muleta in your left hand. You know that if you get it wrong and the bull raises its head you will be on the horns.

“If you have fought well and killed perfectly and swiftly - que maravilla. They cut the ears for you and it’s the best feeling in the world. Other times luck isn’t with you on the sword and, even though you follow all the rules, you hit bone and then – madre mia, you’ve wasted it all. Lost the ears. Lost everything. Even the crowd can turn against you.”

During an average ‘dangerous summer,’ Jesús expects to fight and kill 80 bulls, in more than 30 different plazas across the country. “I believe that in his career a bullfighter will have maybe four or five bulls which he will always remember with pure clarity - and real affection. The life can be very hard: travelling every day, sleeping badly, the nerves before the fight – but it’s worth it. It’s the best life there is.”

As his battered Renault coughed into life to shuttle him to his regulation afternoon’s training at a nearby bullring, Jesús spoke again about the simple pleasures of country living. “Si hombre, a little bit of land, some beasts and lots of time to be outside . . . that’s worth fighting for in itself. But first, hombre, I need to get a new car - this is no car for a matador.”

It seems that, whatever your line of work, in many ways we’re all faced with the same little problems.

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