Having not even made it through one bullfight on TV, I was not all that enthused when Harry and Jenny's friend Bryce proposed that we go to a set (6) of live bullfights in Madrid. However, I duly succumbed to peer pressure, the fact that it was only €5 and their reasoning that I could leave if I couldn't handle it. So, on Sunday evening, we made our way to the stadium, which looks quite Moorish in its design, with red brick and painted tiles.
They were still setting up when we got inside so we were able to watch them paint the 2 rings on the sand (we still don't know what the rings were for but suspect that the horses aren't allowed inside the outer ring).
There was a brass band stuffed in the rafters and another smaller one nearer the action. The royal box is apparently not used by the royal family very often as the Queen doesn't like bullfighting and the King and the Princess prefer to sit with the commoners closer to the ring.
One show is made up of 6 bullfights and 3 matadors, who, along with their teams (cuadrilla - entourage) take it in turns to fight. The length of each fight is not set and it was only at the 5th fight that we realised that there was some dignitary sitting high up in the stands signalling the start/end of each stage.
At 8.30, the matadors all came out and took a turn around the ring. The matadors have gold braids/embroidery/sequins while their teams have black or white. Jenny and I agreed that the white costume with gold and black braids was the best. The other two matadors had light blue and dark blue respectively.
A guy came out at the start of each fight with the stats on the bull - his weight, his birthday, his stable etc. A trumpet sounded after this and the bull got released.
The first bull came bounding out, had a look around and turned to go back inside again. They shut the gate on him so he had to come back out. He promptly made my heart stop when he mounted the fence just near us. The whole front half of his body got over the fence.
The entourage all have pink and yellow capes and they get the bull to charge after different people spaced around the ring to make him tire. When he gets near, they all go and hide in their little niches. Cowards. After a while, a trumpet sounds, which indicates the next round - the horses.
Apparently, horses didn't used to have padding so the horses would die when the bull tried to gore them. The guy on the horse's back has a spear that has a crossbar so that it can only penetrate about 5cm into the bull's back. When the bull attacks the horse, you can hear the thud of the impact. The horse is then bracing itself at almost a 45o angle as the guy pushes the spear into the bull. The more the bull is hurting the harder he tries to gore the horse. The horse is actually blindfolded, probably so that it doesn't freak out. In one of the fights, the horse almost lost its footing and was in danger of falling onto the bull. I'm sure if this had happened, the horse and the rider would have been in serious trouble. We found the horse part of the show particularly uncomfortable to watch.
After the horses comes a crazy bit. The banderilleros, the flag men, take 2 banderillas (sticks with sharp points) and charge at the bull, making him charge at them. They need to avoid his horns while reaching over and stabbing him with the banderillas as close to the existing wounds as possible. The object of all of these stabs is to hurt the bull and to weaken his shoulder muscles so that when he charges, his head is lower, thus reducing the risk to the matador. It's completely nuts.
After this comes the matador's one-man fight with the bull. He brings out his red cape along with a blunt sword. The sword is to hold open the cape to provide an inviting target to the bull. During this part of the first fight, the bull somehow got in contact with the matador and he was fully airborne for some time. Intellectually, I would have said that if I had seen this happen, I would have cheered for the bull but when it actually happened and I thought the matador was injured, my heart stopped (again!). It's quite shocking to see another human being in danger.
After a while, the matador goes back to the fence and gets a sharp sword. He goes back to duel with the bull for a bit longer before going in for the kill. When he does this, he puts the cape near the ground to get the bull to lower his head and tries to get the sword in through his back and into his heart without getting gored. This was the most disgusting part of the whole show. As the matadors were inexperienced ones (hence the cheap tickets), they were not very good at this part. Only one of them was reasonably good - both of his kills went down a few seconds after his thrust. The other two were a lot worse. The first one had to try twice to get the sword the whole way in. He didn't get it in the right place the second time either and it took a while for the bull to die. In the 4th fight, he screwed up again. He was also faced with a particularly feisty bull, who, even after repeated stabs to his neck (as well as the sword deep in his body), kept getting up. He bled profusely against the wall but after each stab was still able to get up. I felt quite nauseous. A similar thing happened in the last fight, which happened right near the fence near where we were sitting. The entire team surrounded the bull but were all very hesitant. I think it is because when a bull is seriously injured, it becomes unpredictable. The matador didn't get a clean thrust of his sword and the bull was still too well for them to be able get close to stab him with a dagger. So, they tried to stab him with a sword with a crossbar a few inches from the end. After many attempts, the matador stopped to take a deep breath and wipe sweat from his brow. Because of this last debacle, he ended up coming third when, with a good kill, he would probably have come first.
I am pretty sure I never want to see another bullfight in my life but I'm glad I experienced it once.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Madrid, the museum city
First stop on the Madrid museum trail was Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. This museum houses the art collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza, an avid art collector, who married a former Miss Spain and moved to Spain. The government renovated an old palace to house the collection. After he died in 2002, his widow continued collecting more art. There is virtually one piece of art from every major artist from the 1400s onwards. There are Renaissance paintings, a Titian, a Caravaggio, a Rubens, a Rembrandt, a couple of Monets, a couple of Sisselys, Pissaros, Rodin sculptures, several Picassos, a Dali...It's fascinating that a modern day rich guy can have acquired so many pieces.
Museo del Prado was my favourite museum in Madrid. Taffy already predicted it would be before I went as it concentrates on my favourite periods in art. It is also set up very well, with a Masterpieces list in the floor plan and where each of these paintings is housed. Some of the highlights were Raphael's The Cardinal, Caravaggio's David Victorius over Goliath, Velazquez's Las Meninas and the Titians. There was also a room full of Goya's Black Paintings, which are extremely disturbing.
The Centro de Arte Reina Sofia is almost entirely made up of paintings from the Realism, Cubism and Surrealism movements. Its most famous painting is Guernica by Picasso, which takes up an entire wall. The preparation paintings take up another room. My favourite paintings were Dali's Surrealist paintings, though there were also some of his Realist and Cubist paintings, which I didn't realise he had gone through before settling on Surrealism.
The Spanish Royal Family do not live in the rather grand Royal Palace. They live in a mansion in the country and come into the palace for official duties. The tour includes the Royal Pharmacy, with large porcelain and glass jars that used to be filled with medicines and herbs. There are also scales, mortars & pestles and trunks for when the royal family travelled and needed portable medicine cabinets. The Royal Arsenal contains armour worn by various kings and princes of Spain and their armies as well as gifts from other countries, including a samurai helmet and armour from the Japanese Emperor.
On the food side, we went to Botin on Friday night (the suckling pig and roast lamb place I ate at last time I was in Madrid). On Saturday night, we had paella. While we were waiting for the paella to arrive, a carnival procession came down the street. There were brass bands, people with enormous paper mache heads and people with costumes twice their height that were balanced on rings around their heads. On Sunday night, we had tapas. Each morning, Jenny and I went for breakfast in nearby cafes, having cafe con leche (milk coffee) with churros (Spanish donuts, parros (like yao jar guai) & churro relleno with chocolate cream (almost induced immediate heart attacks in us).
We also visited Parque Del Buen Retiro (the big park next to the Prado), Plaza Mayor (Madrid's most famous square), Plaza de la Puerta del Sol (with the statue of Madrid's strange emblem, a bear on his hind legs reaching up to the strawberry tree [which is not strawberry, it is a Madroño tree]) and the Cathedral.
This weekend, Taffy and I visited Buckingham Palace. It is open for a couple of months each year when the Queen goes to Balmoral for the summer. Buckingham Palace is THE most beautiful palace in all of Europe. It toes the fine line between being too ornate and elegant class. There is an exhibition on the Queen's visits to the Commonwealth with gifts from the countries and dresses she wore. The Australian gifts and dresses leave quite a lot to be desired. The wattle dress was almost fluorescent yellow, the opal necklace disgustingly large and the wattle brooch just a mess of yellow stones. The Canadian gifts, on the other hand, were totem poles in dark wood, a lovely Inuit jade statue of a polar bear, a maple leaf brooch and an evening gown of white and blue with beading stitched in the shape of maple leaves. Why can't we be classy like that?
Museo del Prado was my favourite museum in Madrid. Taffy already predicted it would be before I went as it concentrates on my favourite periods in art. It is also set up very well, with a Masterpieces list in the floor plan and where each of these paintings is housed. Some of the highlights were Raphael's The Cardinal, Caravaggio's David Victorius over Goliath, Velazquez's Las Meninas and the Titians. There was also a room full of Goya's Black Paintings, which are extremely disturbing.
The Centro de Arte Reina Sofia is almost entirely made up of paintings from the Realism, Cubism and Surrealism movements. Its most famous painting is Guernica by Picasso, which takes up an entire wall. The preparation paintings take up another room. My favourite paintings were Dali's Surrealist paintings, though there were also some of his Realist and Cubist paintings, which I didn't realise he had gone through before settling on Surrealism.
The Spanish Royal Family do not live in the rather grand Royal Palace. They live in a mansion in the country and come into the palace for official duties. The tour includes the Royal Pharmacy, with large porcelain and glass jars that used to be filled with medicines and herbs. There are also scales, mortars & pestles and trunks for when the royal family travelled and needed portable medicine cabinets. The Royal Arsenal contains armour worn by various kings and princes of Spain and their armies as well as gifts from other countries, including a samurai helmet and armour from the Japanese Emperor.
On the food side, we went to Botin on Friday night (the suckling pig and roast lamb place I ate at last time I was in Madrid). On Saturday night, we had paella. While we were waiting for the paella to arrive, a carnival procession came down the street. There were brass bands, people with enormous paper mache heads and people with costumes twice their height that were balanced on rings around their heads. On Sunday night, we had tapas. Each morning, Jenny and I went for breakfast in nearby cafes, having cafe con leche (milk coffee) with churros (Spanish donuts, parros (like yao jar guai) & churro relleno with chocolate cream (almost induced immediate heart attacks in us).
We also visited Parque Del Buen Retiro (the big park next to the Prado), Plaza Mayor (Madrid's most famous square), Plaza de la Puerta del Sol (with the statue of Madrid's strange emblem, a bear on his hind legs reaching up to the strawberry tree [which is not strawberry, it is a Madroño tree]) and the Cathedral.
This weekend, Taffy and I visited Buckingham Palace. It is open for a couple of months each year when the Queen goes to Balmoral for the summer. Buckingham Palace is THE most beautiful palace in all of Europe. It toes the fine line between being too ornate and elegant class. There is an exhibition on the Queen's visits to the Commonwealth with gifts from the countries and dresses she wore. The Australian gifts and dresses leave quite a lot to be desired. The wattle dress was almost fluorescent yellow, the opal necklace disgustingly large and the wattle brooch just a mess of yellow stones. The Canadian gifts, on the other hand, were totem poles in dark wood, a lovely Inuit jade statue of a polar bear, a maple leaf brooch and an evening gown of white and blue with beading stitched in the shape of maple leaves. Why can't we be classy like that?
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