A stew. A butchery. The fight is cruel. All you need to do is look the bull in the eyes, look at the stunned animal, see the blood dripping down to its hooves. And then the speedwells continue, the tulip passes, as if the arena were a field of flowers, the chest passes, until the heart bursts. The squares are in agony, although there is no room for even pins. And so the clichés continue, to the point of nausea. Some wave the rag at the crowd, others boo, suddenly everything is filled with shouting.
The bulls have always divided. Against, Quevedo, Jovellanos or Unamuno. In favor, Goya, Lorca or Bergamín. And so beyond the Pyrenees and throughout the Americas. Each one throws the toads they want in the pot, parsley, fans, all the combs and castanets about black Spain fit in the pot, black Spain, the one that fights with clubs, the one that bursts to the sound of a zarzuela. But better let’s continue doing our thing, with the party and the cubata, with the easy chorus, the one that sneaks into all your ears.
However, livestock farms represent economies, in that same empty and emptied Spain that some and others whine without finding a solution. The bullfights fill the boxes, giving rise to some of the greatest ballads in our literature. As if that were not enough, the breeding of the brave bull regenerates the pastures, keeps the spaces open, without having hives of wind turbines sneak in all over the hills. And the bull lives like a viceroy, in the middle of the olive trees, impregnating the females, while the oxen go straight to the slaughterhouse, barely having time to inhale and expel a handful of breaths.
Sometimes something happens in the squares. A creepy Caravaggio, he was also called everything. If he painted today, we would boo him for being a pimp. And there you have, every day, almost 20,000 people committing the great fault of him in the bullring, 20,000 biting into the forbidden apple of bullfighting. What they do is get rid of the milongas, they shake off the lice, they remove the dirt from themselves, and they dance to the sound of the sun, with the joy placed on them, the one that makes you create, love, grow.
Sometimes that’s what we have to do, to go in to live, like we go in to kill. Courage, daring, that’s what some people do who seek beauty, even if its truth hurts, even if the lyrics, the canvas, the score bleed. That’s what Francis Bacon said when he painted, I taste blood in my eyes. Because there are those who are cheap, those who take the hooks, and those who look for something that resists, something that never dies, whether it be called poetry, a painting, or a thrust. The art is to place yourself in front of the nose, between the pitons, it is to risk what is boiling in your veins, to release that elf, Lorca would say, that you carry inside, no matter what the cost.
You push the breastplate, you put pressure on the words, you look for an angle, a counterpoint, so that the chorus does not die, so that the canvas does not go out. You add kidneys to life, it doesn’t matter that the years shrink you, that they choke you. You bite into the apple. You ruffle the wind. You want to take death on your shoulders through the front door, so that he finds out once and for all. And so you attack, like a lover, who knows that everything is ending, that one day the bossy one will come to you, the one who will direct you with the scythe. And she will be the one who shakes the scarf, and says it’s over, she gets out of the ring.
The rest is behind the scenes. Some walk around the sets, plate a book, touch a canvas, play with their ponytail for decorum, so that the account counter on social networks goes up. And so we give out the prizes, decorating left and right, the big guy, the nymph, whoever, while the bubbles rise through the flutes, through the beads, while the followers get ready. So don’t let those who sin with the fallera encerrona hurt you, those who go on a pilgrimage. We will burn them on the fig tree, as we once did with the long-haired ones, because they are irrecoverable, the kind whose eyes burn when the sword buries itself in the flesh, because they tremble when the other swallows death.
One day we realize that we have a handful of thirds left. One day we realize that the tissues will get cold. So while, with the ring in our eyes, we enjoy that warming sun, the bursting power lines, let’s go live. That’s what bullfighting tells us, that’s what every bullfight tells us, time is ticking, the bullfight heads towards the night that will now soon fall, and then we will have lived, suddenly we will have known that each day is a life.