(First of two parts)
During these days off I reread “Florinda’s calf and the warlike origin of bullfighting”, by José Alameda, bullfighting writer, journalist and chronicler, activities for which he was most recognized.
The essay starts from a premise: “Why does the bull, which normally occurs in nature, disappears from everywhere except Spain, where it remains as a surviving zoological species?” From the most remote times, the species called “Uro” (Bos primigenius) existed along the Mediterranean Sea, from Greece to Spain, with which the fighting bull, a fighting bull, is identified. At the beginning of the 8th century the Arabs invaded Spain. This originated a warlike confrontation of eight centuries. 800 years of battles and eventual dead times – in war, even periods of peace are death.
It was precisely during those intervals when “the warriors of both sides train in great tournaments on horseback —that is how Alameda describes it: Cavalry is the fundamental weapon, which must be kept ready (…) for training to be more effective, so that it resembles war, there is the bull ”-.
(…) “Fernando Villalón in his book” Racial bullfighting “warns (…) that” during the forced truces, they fought with the fighting bulls, as training for steeds and young caudillos. ” On the other hand, Villalón does not clarify that, at the same time that this was happening in Spain, the bull was disappearing from Europe ”.
When the Arabs were expelled from Spain, the bull that eight centuries earlier roamed Europe had already disappeared due to hunting and the destruction of its natural environment. Of the species, only what had been left, not only conserved, but increased in Spain where, in addition, it was raised in herds so that aristocrats would show off in the squares in the act of spearing bulls on horseback. The horsemen, sons of the nobility, were helped in their need by the young men, children of the people, who, directly due to the decline of bullfighting, aroused interest by moving with creativity and courage the rags they used as help and that later were called cape and crutch. The teacher Alameda wrote: “from the rejón, an instrument of bullfighting on horseback, one passes to the sword, whose handling will be the supreme luck of bullfighting on foot, from the” run “, a full show”. And so the popular art of bullfighting was born and its evolution from Pedro Romero (1754-1839) to José Antonio Morante de la Puebla (1979) or, to avoid being a malinchista, to the hydrocalid Joselito Adame (1989).
With religion, language and some contagious diseases, the Spanish also brought the so-called Fiesta Brava to New Spain. The first bullfighting show that took place in our territory was on June 24, 1526, according to Perogrullo in the modality of spearing bulls from the horse.
So far I have reached the space where I tried, briefly, to explain the birth of bullfighting and the roots it has had in Hispanic-Mexican culture for five centuries. There will still be a second installment to examine the show from an artistic, ecological and economic point of view. I do this with the aim that the animalists do not do with the bulls what, out of ignorance, they did with the circus animals: their prohibition caused the death of 4,500 animals of various species. They think they are animalistic because they have cats or dogs. Dogs that, in some cases, live in prison for many hours of the day, in the space of a balcony, until their owner can take them out for a walk or through the services of a dog walker, they go out in a pack despite the different sizes, needs and races.
Some owners and certain owners of dogs, for the sake of aesthetics, cut off their animals’ ears and tails.
Writer and television scriptwriter
The Privilege of Opinion
Mexican television scriptwriter. Known for having made the scripts for programs such as Salad de Locos, La carabina de Ambrosio, La Güereja and something else, El privilegio de command, among others.