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On Saturday I had another one of my many "Oh f*ck, I'm really in SPAIN!" moments. Naturally it happened because me and a few people from the program went to a corrida de toros (bullfight) in a tiny town of Pozoblanco near Cordoba. I'll post some pics and many many of them are really good, mostly because it's really easy to take good pictures at a corrida. Every moment has this weird intense beauty to it, so it's only a matter of catching a few of those moments. The experience is definitely very, very intense. I don't agree with the killing of the bulls and it's very difficult to watch the end of each corrida, but at least you feel like the animal isn't suffering anymore. During the first one (there were 6 bulls killed in the span of about 2 hours...) I was so shocked I just sat there with my hand over my mouth saying "ohmygod...ohmygod...ohmygod..." As sad as it is, you definitely get a bit desensitized by the end of it, but the actual killing of each bull is still pretty hard to stomach. I feel conflicted on the matter, because I'm not a vegetarian and though I try, I don't eat organic very much so I feel like a hypocrite saying that corrida is cruel, but my filet mignon is not. I don't know how much pain my filet mignon cow experiences in comparison to the corrida bull, and who can really compare the two? Also, from a neuroscience point of view, I have no idea how pain is experienced by cattle as opposed to humans. Either way, I'd like to err on the side of caution and say that the torture and killing of the bull is not to my liking. That being said, I can't lie, the experience is absolutely beautiful. There is so much energy in the arena and though the bull is weakened before the fight, it at least feels like a fair battle. The matador is extremely graceful and (despite the funny black hat) just exudes an almost sexual confidence. It's almost like a machismo battle between the matador (or matadora) and the bull. One of the ways for them to get more points is to show their back to the bull and sorta wave to the crowd which shows the matador's dominance over the bull, I think. The level of showmanship is incredible and the whole thing feels like a dance. There is a corrida coming to Cordoba in a couple of weeks, and for a second I seriously considered going again, but it's still just too cruel. I would love to go to a bullfight in Portugal where they don't actually torture or kill the bull. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but I'm sure I'd enjoy it a lot more. In Catalunya (the northeastern region where Barcelona is located), people are really against bullfighting and it's almost abolished at this point. Apparently the only people that go are the tourists. I don't think they should abolish it, but the killing is unnecessarily cruel. I really wish I had read The Sun Also Rises or Death in the Afternoon before I came here. I'll try to get a hold of it at a library here cause buying books (esp. books in English) is insanely expensive.