Plaza De Toros Monumental De las Ventas Madrid is a place where beautiful, noble animals are humiliated, tortured, and slaughtered.
The bull is released into the ring, where he is taunted and exhausted by several Matadors with capes. They yell, “hey, hey” as they wave their capes in front of the bull and then hide behind a wooden fence that the bull cannot penetrate. The bull, having chased many young men around the ring, is exhausted.
Afterwards, the brave Picadors, feigning majesty, ride out on their powerful horses.
The horse is completely blind, his eyes wrapped with a cloth covering that allows no visibility. He is completely protected with pads under his belly, and around his neck and legs. The Picador himself has his feet is metal stirrups, and he is completely protected from the waist down. The bull is artfully lead to the picador by the men with the capes. The bull charges the picador, and in a cruel and inhumane fashion, the animal receives two or three severe wounds from the Picadors lance that causes him to bleed red rivers of blood.
Then the matador goes to work. He confronts the bull in his suit of lights, as he attempts to lord over the already wounded and dying animal. Through a series of passes, he exhausts and confuses the weary bull while preparing to administer the kill with his sword. The Matador is not alone. He is a member of a well trained team that work with great odds in their favor. While the others are exhausting the bull and the Picador is doing his bloody work, the matador is watching, studying the way the bull moves.
All of this gives the Matador extreme advantage over the bull, but to be sure, it would be a mistake to under estimate the power of a wounded animal or the determination of a skilled athlete who has no choice but to win. During one of the fights, it took the matador three tries to get the sword into the bulls hump, the sword bouncing out harmlessly and flying through the air, much to the matadors embarrassment. On the last fight, the matador came within inches of ultimate defeat. The bull caught his right side, and the young matador was flung high into the air, and then onto the ground underneath the head and horns of the massive animal. The matador instinctively covered his head and curled his body into a fetal position as his fellow matadors rushed the animal, furiously waving their capes and yelling to distract the bull. Afterwards, that same matador dusted himself off and demanded to finished the fight. When he drove his sword into the animal's back, he expressed particular pleasure as he watched it begin to die. He seemed to taunt the bull while the assistant bullfighters stood on either side of the animal, waving their capes in a manner that caused the bull to wag his head from side to side. The bull collapsed onto his front legs. But this bull, unlike any before him in the Plaza De Toros Monumental De las Ventas Madrid, did not die. He refused to die. This magnificent bull, unlike any before him on this night, rose up after falling to his knees. And it was as if he was saying, “Fuck you!’ to the matador. ‘Your nothing little miss matador!! You bastard! You and your fucking suit of lights. You are a coward, you and your team of fancy dandies! You cannot kill me; I am the noble one here!”
The crowd let out a collective “ooooohhhh!” when the bull rose up. The matador seemed undone, and he sauntered back to taunt the dying animal, the way a cheap gangster taunts a rival. Inevitably and gracefully, the bull pitched forward onto his knees, then slowly collapsed onto his belly and died in the yellow dust of the arena.
