Erik’s Blog

From last night’s Colbert Report.

It has been a huge year for Spanish sports, or España Esports. Spain’s soccer team won the World Cup, Rafael Nadal conquered Wimbledon, Alberto Contador took the Tour de France, and Javier Bardem took the world record in the Thousand Yard Smolder. His prize? Himself. But there has been a major setback in Spanish athletics.

[cut to CNN footage]

The controversial tradition of bullfighting is now illegal in one region of Spain, the Catalonia region, which includes Barcelona.

[cut back to Colbert]

I don’t understand! Barcelona should be used to horrors. Their streets are already running red with the sangria vomited by thousands of American backpackers. I’ll say it again, folks. Barcelona is just the San Francisco of Spain. They’re a bunch of effete liberal elites talking down to the rest of Spain with their sthmug Sthpanish listhps. They don’t undershtand! Heartland Spanish values like Mom and apple paella. I’m with the pro-bullfighting community who have called the ban a “political manipulation”.

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A couple months ago, I read this fascinating article about bullfighting in the NY Times. It really is as fair and balanced as I’ve seen any articles about the controversial Spanish tradition. I highly recommend reading it.

In that article, I learned of a bullfighter named José Tomás, who came out of retirement last year to wow spectators in Barcelona, the stronghold of anti-bullfighting sentiment in Spain. Ever since, the phenomenon that is José Tomás has been snowballing. You know how they say that there’s a fine line between bravery and stupidity? Well, most of the people in the bullfighting community, including many professional bullfighters, think that José Tomás has gone way over that line. So when Marga, a fan of bullfighting, saw that JT was coming to Santander this summer, she got pretty excited. She said, “Look, it’s pretty clear that this guy’s gonna die young, so we need to see him as soon as possible.” That pretty much sums up the opinion of all bullfighting aficionados in Spain. (more…)

We didn’t really have any plans this weekend. On Saturday it was drizzling all day long, so we didn’t leave the house much. But on Sunday we decided, "Heck, the biggest party in the world right now is only 2 hours away. People travel from literally the other side of the world to go to it. We should go!"

Plus, it gave me a chance to meet a second person on my blogroll. This is the second person that I have actually had a beer with after meeting them, and following their life, on the internet. You may recall the first was when I spotted Scott from South Dakota, an American video blogger in Laredo, in a local bar. I’ve been following the lives of Theresa, an americana in Pamplona (The Rain in Spain… on my blogroll), and her family for well over a year now.

So I sent Theresa an email, we exchanged mobile numbers, Marga and I watched the Sunday morning bull run live on television, and off we went to Pamplona! (more…)

On Friday morning, I cleaned the house a little and headed to Mondragon to pick up Gorka and his suitcase, go to a nearby town to pick up Aunt Marga from work (her oldest son talked her into letting him have the car to drive around Spain with his friends). When we dropped Aunt Marga off at home, Belén was waiting there with her luggage, and we took off for Extremadura. Eight hours later, we arrived in Higuera de la Serena, where Marga, her parents, and grandfather, were watching some sort of dancing horse show in the portable bullring. It finished as we got there and we all walked to Grandpa Ramón’s house for dinner and rest.
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Most mornings I watch the previous day’s edition of the NBC Nightly News (with Brian Williams). Yesterday, they did a report on “Bullfighting in Spain” (viewable with ads at link above), where Brian introduced it as,

And now we go to Spain, where, tonight, perhaps the best known national custom is under attack. A lot of people think it’s high time to do away with a traditional pastime. They want to ban bullfighting, because, they say, it amounts to torture.

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Two years ago, we went to León in June to see the Summer Solstice San Juan festivities. While there, we decided to see a bullfight. It was my first bullfight. The star of the show was a newcomer named David "El Fandi" Fandila. What I saw back in June 2005 was not a normal bullfight, but one of those magical, unforgettable moments in sports where the crowd cheers until they can cheer no more.

I’ve seen twobullfights since, one of them with El Fandi, and neither was very good (the latter saw two of the three matadors leave the bullring in an ambulance). So when Marga saw that El Fandi was fighting in León again this year for San Juan, we absolutely had to go see him.
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Last Sunday, Marga’s folks and grandfather came to visit just for the day. We went to the nearby town of Santoña to see a bullfight. We had no tickets and were planning to buy them at the gate.
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We’re having a big in-law-fest(-tation) here in Spain. Both Marga’s parents and my parents slept at our house last night. We spent Saturday in Bilbao and saw a bullfight.
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Yesterday we went to a bullfight in Santander. Our favorite bullfighter, El Fandi, was fighting. We fell in love with his performance in León last year, and we’ve been looking forward to seeing him again. As usual, three bullfighters killed six bulls. The bullfighters were: Julián Lopez ("El Juli"), David Fandila ("El Fandi"), and Miguel Ángel Perera.
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