MEXICAN bullfighter Leo Valadez set the tone for novice bullfighters at the Malaga feria.

14712088065583The young bullfighter was gored in his right thigh after getting caught on a banderilla – the decorated darts that are thrust into the neck or shoulders of the bull.

According to the medical report, the wound is “serious”.

Many of the less experienced bullfighters were noted for their willpower but also their lack of skill.

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26 COMMENTS

  1. Well said Dan. Shame on the intolerant Brits who like to post ugliness following some accident in the bullring. My mother used to say ‘if you don’t like it here in Spain, well you can just…’ You can guess the rest.

  2. “Decorated darts”. They sound nice. They are actually spears, thrust into the neck and shoulders of the bull, so that fumbling cowards such as these can take on a vastly weakened animal. And yet still make a balls of it! Bet the bull doesn’t “make a full recovery”

  3. Lennox said – Bullfighting “is about culture, bravery and spectacle.” Romanticising atavistic historic activities into sacred artefacts called ‘ traditional culture’ has long put a brake on moral progress. That is the stuff of vacuous anthropology from 1920, but sadly carries on in conservative enclaves.
    Bullfighting carries no hidden meanings, bravery or beauty any more than do colonial wars, the ‘father land’, the Inquisition or violent cult activity such as we now sufer in Europe and elsewhere, even though justified as ‘sacred tradition’.
    Sometimes activities are what they appear to be – imoral gratuitous habitual violence appealing to base instincts.

  4. Lenox,
    don’t let historical facts get in your way. Bull fighting was introduced into Spain by the nasty little Romans. The Colisseum should have been blown up when the allies arrived in Rome in 44. This place of barbarity was where so much European and North African wildlife was exterminated for the gratification of the sick mentality of the Romans.
    So bullfighting is part of the degenerate Roman culture and has nothing whatever to do with the various ethnic mix of Spain. If you are going to b/s, at least try and get some accuracy into your fairy story.

    • Huh? Bullfighting has nothing to do with the Romans (nasty, you say?). It’s a Spanish spectacle which essentially started – as we know it – a couple of hundred years ago. But, who cares when it started? It’s here today and popular enough. Anyhow, searching through my remarks, I find I neither mention the ‘tradition’ nor the history of the bullfight.
      The fun thing about bullfights, Stuart, is how the supporters are easy-going unaggressive creatures, unlike their opponents the anti-taurinos. Personally, I think a bullfight is a catharsis, it takes the meaness out of one (contrast, if you will, football supporters who only want a good punch-up after a match). Anyhow, all said and done – those who like will continue to do so, and those who don’t (and are not prepared to try), probably won’t. Me da igual.

      • Well actually it all started with the Greeks, well before the Roman Empire who eventually took the so called sport into Spain. I suppose one could say it’s like the British hooligan footballers that take their punch ups into other countries except the damages are to other humans and properties and not animals.
        Stuart, as for, “This place of barbarity was where so much European and North African wildlife was exterminated for the gratification of the sick mentality of the Romans”. Not only for the Romans but also today’s Spaniards and the human species of today who class hunting in North Africa for wildlife a sport which rare animals are gradually being exterminated. I’m an animal lover and all forms of killing animals is as far as I’m concerned is a crime. Has anyone seen the cruelty to animals we actually eat. If not download a documentary of….. Food Inc.

      • Maiming and killing animals – or people – can indeed be cathartic, bit most people classify indifference or pleasure at another creature’s pain sociopathological. Pain or no pain – for the sociopath, its the same.

      • the simple fact is that its barbaric cowards that operate and work this mentally backward slaughtering and torture of animals……it is also the mentally backward/challenged that support it……so if it is as you say its POPULAR in Spain then it just goes to show how mentally challenged the Spanish really are……it must be the heat,…!!!

  5. Lenox,
    how sad when you can’t admit your wrong – a sign of weakness, so bullfighting is something you could never do, even against a wounded exhausted animal. Also, only some football fans get drunk and violent – you neded to try some other analogy.

  6. The Nose,
    I think you are referring to the Cretan bull which the Cretan king, Minos allowed Heracles to capture it – there was no killing it after wearing it out and destroying the neck muscles. All this is of course lost on a primitive like Lenox.

    • Actually Stuart I just looked up when bullfighting commenced.
      Bullfighting traces its roots to prehistoric bull worship and sacrifice in Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean region. The first recorded bullfight may be the Epic of Gilgamesh, which describes a scene in which Gilgamesh and Enkidu fought and killed the Bull of Heaven (“The Bull seemed indestructible, for hours they fought, till Gilgamesh dancing in front of the Bull, lured it with his tunic and bright weapons, and Enkidu thrust his sword, deep into the Bull’s neck, and killed it”).
      Still it does not excuse today’s torture of such a majestic animal.

      • “Majestic” isn’t the word I would use to describe the bulls weakly contained near my house within a prado mostly delineated by rotting sticks-as-posts, and rusted wire and baling twine.
        Nor would I describe their owner in any Lenox-like romantic terms suggesting positive neighborly attributes. Of course that isn’t the bull’s fault, but lets also not forget that bulls are dangerous – not ‘noble- brutes to be left alone to inseminate cows, not gore humans who provoke them.

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