Bullfight

Warning! This is not for those people with weak stomaches or who like animals or are apart of PETA!

You will see the killing of animals and the skinning and butchering of them!

This past Saturday I got to experience one of Spain's most culturally unique activities. The bullfight. As many of you probably already know it is the sport that involves the killing of toros. It is a fight between the matador and the toro to the death.

Getting to see this was at first a little hard, but once you get over the initial shock of seeing a live animal get stabbed to death you can sit and watch and somewhat enjoy it.

This is the stadium. We were really close, I was kind of freaked out at first because I realized we were really going to be able to see them killing the toros.

It was funny this all people from our group. We had purchased our tickets in two separate groups and we just happened to be sitting next to each other.

Zak wanted to get a picture with the ticket guy cause he had a cool hat on and right before we took the picture they guy switched hats with Zak. He was so excited.
Before the fighting began they had a little opening ceremony where all the matadors come out and have a moment of silence. If I were them I would have taken about 30 minutes of silence to pray that I wasn't going to die!

Here we go! When the first bull came out I started to freak out I was so nervous to have to watch them kill it. I was also nervous for the men cause I have heard that there is a possibility of them getting injured and killed too.

When the bull first comes out they have a bunch of guys with pink and yellow capes that are there to tire out the bull a little bit. We found out from a guy sitting next to us that if the matadors are in danger, they can hide behind the yellow side of the cape and the bulls won't be able to see them. That is apparently because they bulls cannot detect the yellow at all so it is like the guy disappears when he goes behind the yellow side.

So after they tire the bull out a little bit by making him run around, they bring out the men on horses. They men have really long sticks with small spears on the end of them and they stab the bulls a little bit in the back. When the bull first rammed into the horse I freaked out cause I didn't want the horse to get hurt. (I know I am nervous about the horse getting hurt, but I sat and watched 6 toros get killed). They horse had protection on them so they wouldn't get hurt and they also had on blindfolds so they would freak out.
So once they are tired out a little and have been stabbed in the back, three men come out with these little knife hook things. I was so scared for these men because it was literally them and the bull face to face, no cape to distract them or anything. They were definitely the most brave. Bu they stuck the little hooks into the bull's back and they would hang onto the bull.

So then after all that the main matador with the red cape comes out! They spend out ten minutes tiring the bull out by making it run around and get dizzy. The poor bull at this point is bleeding big time out of its back.

After they finish tiring the bull out, the matador get the big long sword and has to stab the bull in the back.

You can see in this picture the matador lining up the sword getting ready to stab the bull.

Depending on how good of a shot the matador has the bull will either fall to the ground within a minute or the guys with the pink and yellow capes will on out and confuse it more and make it die faster.

After the bull falls to the ground another guys comes up with a little knife and stabs it in the head to make it die instantly.

At the end the matador walks around the stadium to show his triumph.

Theses guys up here are the ones who decide how good of a job the matador did. Depending on how good they did as a trophy the matador will get either one ear, both ears, or both ears and the tail of the bull.
It is kind of hard to tell but everyone in the stadium stands up and waves white flags and such to let the judge people know that they liked the matador also.
They have a little score board looking thing with the information of each bull on it.

Here is matador number two. There are three matadors and they each kill two bulls.
The second two matadors looked so young I couldn't believe it.

Matador number tres.

How the stood and walked was very interesting and kind of weird. They locked their knees when they stood and all their gestures were very cocky. I definitely think it was supposed to be apart of the show.
So once the bulls died guys would come over and take all of the knifes out of the bull.

It was weird when they died their legs always stuck straight out.

Then horses would come in and drag it out of the arena.

This is where is starts to get really gross. One of the guys, Marcos, had gone downstairs for some reason and saw that they skin and butcher the bulls right in the stadium. So of course when we found that out, after the next bull was dragged out we went and watched them do all of the skinning and butchering.

We were literally standing about four feet away from it. It was kind of freaky seeing it dead so up close when we had just seen it minutes before alive and kicking.

Immediately all these guys just started skinning it. They moved so fast it was kind of impressive.

Once they got the majority of the skin off they cut of the legs and hung it up so they could get the skin off its back too. You can also see in the picture the intestines hanging out to the left.

These guys were not shy about getting this bull butchered. The really sick part is that none of them were wearing gloves!

This guy was pulling out all of the intestines. Lovely isn't it.

My mouth was literally wide open from shock the entire time they were doing this. Yet I couldn't stop watching I was so intrigued. I am definitely not the type of person who gets grossed out by this sort of thing and I am glad for that cause I thought this was really interesting to watch.

Once it was completely skinned, the intestines were out and they head was chopped off they took an axe it is and started chopping it in half. The sound of the axe to the bone was crazy and not what I expected, it was like they were trying to chop a rock in half. It was really hard and loud.

Isn't that neat how you can see the ribcage.

After they were done chopping it in half they put them onto a truck and hauled it away.

The neat thing about this whole event is that they don't waste the bulls. They chop up the meat into smaller pieces and sell it and it eat.

We were going to try and go and find where they sold it and see how much it costs, but we couldn't find where they sold it. How cool would that have been though to be able to eat bull steak! Too bad. Maybe next time :)

Hope this wasn't too hard to read through. At least I spared you the videos. But actually you should let me know if you want me to do another post with the videos of it all.