So I was in Barcelona last week working with a creative director on a fairly simple portfolio site for him. I say fairly because it was actually pretty complicated as the budget & deadline (a week) were too tight to bring in other people or get any backend framework sorted out. So the whole thing had to be hard-coded(ish) page by page. And there was a lot of content- this guy was prolific. Seriously. Check out the site here.
Anyway, whilst there, I went to my first bullfight. OK, I've always been pretty ambivalent about that kind of stuff... ritualised killing seemed somehow unnecessary in the absence of ritualised life. Or somesuch. And the demographic who tend to approve of such stuff tend in my experience to be every bit as clichéd (4x4 at Waitrose, Victorian wallpaper patterned wellington boots, country retreat for the odd bank-holiday) as the bedreadlocked, badgewearing, soundbitten solipsist student classes who make up the bulk of the protest contingent.
And contingent there is- Barcelona has banned most of its bullfights: there is only one ring left. As we approach we are flooded in the roar of the protesters, a team of samba drummers punctuate the looping meter of a grand mob of dissident activists.
However, today the ring is packed out. One of the Toreadors, "El Juli" is apparently the best in the world, and we are in for a treat.
What happens next I can't really think about. The fights are pretty messy, apparently, and the bulls are, it seems, gradually stabbed to death. Amazing animals, and some amazing displays of sheer nerve. But not an awful amount of grace. However, my back and legs went tense, and remained tense throughout. I was pretty much transfixed.
I suppose my genuine feeling is really one of slight mystification at the emotion this stuff brings out in people. It seems as if the lead protesters are just riding a PR wave to pick up the casually squeamish (a lot of people) and assign to them rather more intense viewpoints. A pretty standard method for padding out a small movement. But that makes me find the whole thing a little revolting- sure the bad guys use massive media agencies to cleverly manipulate information and sway public opinion, but should you really fight fire with fire? Won't that just burn your house down? I don't know.
It is clear that these bulls are seriously healthy (at first). I was taken to see 'Our Daily Bread' recently. It is an amazing documentary about mechanised farming. I won't tell you about it because you should see it. The bulls we eat are not even bulls. The 'issue' of 500-1000 bulls a year being killed in ritual fashion seems to pale in comparison to the issue of the hundreds of millions of bulls who's entire lives are part of a production line. And that seems pale in comparison to the reality that it takes 5000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of beef (next to 1000 tons of water per ton of grain), we are currently depleting our finite subterranean aquifers at a rate of 160 billion tons per year, and the emerging middle classes in India and China (who will more than double the affluent population of the world) have beef on their shopping lists... Ho ho ho.
2 comments:
Do we eat bulls? Or cows? Or both? I want to see that documentary now...
Actually yes- didn't mention it, but traditionally the bull is made into nourishing broth after a fight. Now they're taken to restaurants, where they are a premium meat. I think most beef cattle are bullocks, castrated bulls. Maybe some cows. But more often the cows are plugged into automated milk-extraction units, and fed lactation hormones. Until in some cases their udders explode. More usually they just get back problems.
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