Ouch.

Payback is a bitch. Bullfighter Pepe Manrique is tackled by a bull during a bullfighting festival at Canaveralejo bullring in Cali, Colombia, on December 30, 2010. REUTERS/Jaime Saldarriaga.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: Culture • Delightful Creatures

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Teller

I like our traditions. Like The Running of the Mouths.
Lummy

Forgot to mention that there are other type of shows. An earlier one features a bunch of young men trying to slip tiny keychains on bulls’ horns. The one who slipped more keychains won (the winner that day: 2)

But they’re not random schmucks, but apparently the participants of the national games. Its apparently a huge, organized industry of games. I think those young men would later compete with other regions, and that day was something of an exhibition match.
NFG

Aren’t this post and the comments just celbrating more pain and suffering? Why is anyone happy to see a man in this situation? I expected more from boingboing than petty revenge posts. What’s next, roadside carnage featuring deceased drunk drivers? They probably had it coming too.

I’m kind of disappointed by this whole thread.
- nosarembo
  
  So true NFG! If only people stopped discussing bad things on the Internet, then the bad things would go away. Anyway, I’m off to caption some kitteh pix.
Anonymous

I understand that we consider bullfighting barbaric and all, but any suffering is terrible and that looks pretty painful. So much for never blaming the victim, huh?

“He’s human garbage”
“Serves him right”
“looks like he fucking deserved it”

not saying it should be taken down at all… just a little disappointed with some of the comments
- Owen
  
  The bullfighter decided to step into a ring and kill an animal that others had already angered and wounded. He’s not a victim.
  
  I can understand not wanting to rejoice in a person’s suffering. But don’t make the bullfighter out to be something that he is not.
Lummy

Maybe I’m a cold-hearted bitch, but I thought it was an fascinating tradition, pretty in its own way. I mentioned that Pamplona was very much a dairy county because it’s one thing to get your meat in the supermarket all nice and clean and divorced from the situation, quite another to live in a farmland and have to kill cows and bulls all day because it’s your job and the city depends on it.

I’ve always thought people in the West have been way too divorced from death and tend to romanticize it, because its so abstract. The people from Pamplona seem to have a better grasp of the reality and weight of it.
- alllie
  
  There are laws in the west, at least in the US, about humane slaughter. If you want animals that were tortured to death try kosher beef. But little beef in the US is killed so cruelly.
- chgoliz
  
  Dairy country means cows, not bulls.
Anonymous

Unfortunately all these months there will be bullfighting in Colombia… that is something we must be a shame for all of us
ashabot

I wish the bull had killed the son of a bitch. God, I hate bullfighting, bullfighters, bullfighting fans and countries that still host this barbaric and cruel spectacle.
Lummy

I’m all for humane slaughter and whatnot, but even if you’re killing it with kindness, you’re still killing it. That’s what kinda bothers me about this. While eye-raising, the people of Pamplona, at the very least, seem to be more upfront about the killing part. And judging from the elaborate getups and rituals I was witness to, they seemed to be honoring the bulls, in their own bizarre way.
Shart Tsung

I think that people are better than animals too. Personally, I refrain from killing even insects but I love steak, bacon, chicken, and seafood. I will never stop eating animals. I’m also a big Mike Vick fan and I see nothing wrong with bullfighting.

What makes killing for sport worse than killing for food? You are still allowing the life of a living thing to be extinguished.

“Michael Vick hasn’t paid his debt to society!” said the hypocrite in the leather shoes, in between bites of his chicken sandwich.

Stop judging other people and other cultures and just don’t hurt animals yourself. Judging someone, in a way, is cruelty to an animal. It’s really that simple.
Shart Tsung

^As I typed that last comment a stink bug (of which I won’t kill) sprayed me!
cubicblackpig

Wow, Shart, the last time I read that many Tu Quoque fallacies in one comment someone was defending … well, a country it’s not germane to mention here.

Bullfighting is not a national sport in Spain.
quckitt

The captions for this pic could go on forever. But since I don’t have that long I’ll just throw out a couple…
“Payback’s a B**tch, aint it!”
“How you like me? now!”
“It doesn’t feel so good getting stabbed in the back, does it?”
“Word to your Mother.”
“Next time bring some horns to a horn fight.”

Anyway, a small victory for Senor Toro.
RadioSilence

I’d say it looks like he fucking deserved it.

apologies for the language but that just disgusts me.
- Anonymous
  
  Word. WTF like we care about teh ‘fighter’. How can we torture an animal like that? Been to southern spain, seen bullfights, and was confused by the dichotomy ‘tween the great locals and their acceptance of this kind of bloodsport.
- Blue_Jaunte
  
  No apology necessary. He’s human garbage. I only wish the worst things in life for him.
Shart Tsung

I didn’t say it was a national sport, but its clearly a cultural tradition. I don’t ‘get’ bullfighting but it’s not for me to get, I’m an Americano.

Yeah my point is everyone is a hypocrite so why not just shut the hell up and live right yourself. It’s painful for certain people to hear but it works.

I’m a hypocrite because I don’t kill animals myself, they are hypocrites because they judge others.

‘Everyone is a Hypocrite’ = My new children’s book.
- 3d bomb
  
  Everyone is a hypocrite you say. I find this kind of animal torture disgusting, I don’t kill animals myself and I don’t eat animals others have killed and packaged nicely for me. Am I a hypocrite?
  
  I can say I am wearing shoes that were once part of an animal. I’m sure I buy into many products that have some ingredients from animals. Maybe now I’m a hypocrite. All I can add is that I’d like buy everything from non animal sources and I’m working on doing that a bit at a time but I’m not there yet. I feel better for the choices I’m making, not perfect but better than when I was eating meat and feeling guilt and confusion about liking something on one hand and hating what it actually meant to be liking and consuming meat.
  
  You on the other hand seem to be perfectly happy with your decisions to let other people kill animals for you and even extend that to seeing nothing wrong with torturing animals, as long as you’re not doing it yourself.
  
  I’m not trying to encourage you not to eat meat, that’s your call but I would urge you to look at your logic here. Just because you’re not doing it yourself, isn’t any argument for something being right. If it were I could come out with nonsense like, my neighbour shot his wife, I wouldn’t do that personally but I have hurt people in the past. So its fine for him to kill his wife really, were all hypocrites when it comes to violence anyway.
Anonymous

Not true. There are a limited number of bulls and fighters. I think it is three and five. If bull one knocks two of the fighters out the next two bulls have a good chance of being spared. Also a bull can be spared for bravery.
Sean Bonner

Fuck Bullfighters. This isn’t harsh enough, he should have gotten mauled.
phisrow

I’m fairly sure that, under any school of ethics concerning the application of violence, other than hardcore pacifism, this guy falls right into the “had it coming/legitimate recipient of force, up to and including lethal” category.

Even if one subscribes to the notion that recreational bullfighting is ethically adequate, the right of the bull to do its level best to kick your ass seems pretty solid…
murray

HA-HA!
2k

If the point is that the performance is the only ‘real’ thing left then this is an intended, nae, desired consequence of the proceedings… :/
OMFG It looks like it’s pierced his back! IRONY!
JG

Please remove this image, there is nothing amusing about a tortured animal, under stress, being slowly killed for public entertainment.
- Zarabanda
  
  You’re talking about the human, right?
  - Phineas
    
    I don’t think inflicting pain on another being, and then receiving comeuppance for it really qualifies as “torture”. Good try, though!
    - Zarabanda
      
      >Good try, though!
      
      Yay for successful Sarcasm! congrats:-)
      
      >I don’t think inflicting pain on another being, and then >receiving comeuppance for it really qualifies as “torture”.
      
      Boo for your lack of a sense of humor. :-(
      
      You love the bull so much, why don’t you adopt him, wuss
- mdh
  
  please remove that comment (and this one).
  
  There is nothing attractive about feeling the need to comment on something you can scroll past on a website you don’t run or pay for.
- Blue_Jaunte
  
  Amusing, no. Eye-opening, yes. If the image horrifies you, then take action to stop this barbaric past-time.
EH

Say what you want about bullfighting, at least it’s an ethos. It’s probably less suffer-y than the bull would experience in the wild. And I don’t think it’s piercing his back there.

Even if one subscribes to the notion that recreational bullfighting is ethically adequate, the right of the bull to do its level best to kick your ass seems pretty solid…

Absolutely!
- Anonymous
  
  I completely fail to agree with either of your points.
  
  Just because something is an ‘ethos’, that doesn’t give it value intrinsically.
  
  As for the bull’s chances in the wild: in the wild, the bull would have a. the chance to get away, b. a chance not to get caught in the first place, and c. no-one killing it in a protracted way just for fun.
- Michael Smith
  
  Say what you want about bullfighting, at least it’s an ethos. It’s probably less suffer-y than the bull would experience in the wild.
  
  So its okay to commit a terrible crime because it’s less suffer-y than the victim would experience in the wild.
Zarabanda

Please excuse my crappy grammer today, I’m feeling a bit out of it.

I’m of the rare opinion that the value of a human life supersedes that of a non-human. I know, crazy, right?

That said, my Godfather’s parents had a house on the British-run island off the coast of Spain (though I don’t think the Hercule’s Pillars one)and he would spent many summers there, and he and his brothers would wander around the parts of Spain nearby. He’s told me that the Spaniards are some of the most brutal of people’s he’s ever encountered: snide, violent, sneaky, and bully-ish. it was a common occurrence to see village stray dogs regularly kicked to shit by Spaniards for no reason other than because. It was a cultural thing. He also told me that Spanish bullfighting is a bunch of bullshit (lol)… I may be messing up the specifics a bit, but if I recall correctly, he said that bulls can be separated into those that turn right, those that turn left, and those that go either way. When choosing bulls that will be fought, those that turn left AND right are never choosen, and bullfighters are always made aware of which way the bull they are about to face turns. And I think that just to be carefull, often times the neck muscles that would allow the bull to turn in the direction they are not chosen for are ussually severed, just to be careful.

He said that bullfighting is a reflection of the national character, which he didn’t have a very high opinion of.

Portuguese bullfights, according to my godfather, on the other hand are totally different: it’s more of a wrestling match, with a number of people pitted against a Bull and with the goal being to pin the bull.
- hdon
  
  RE: Spanish vs. Portuguese bullfighting
  
  I prefer the most overlooked variation of bullfighting, wherein a juicy bit of flamebait is waved in front of a bunch of Internet users, and they tear each other to pieces in a sort of virtual “comment” forum.
- RadioSilence
  
  “I’m of the rare opinion that the value of a human life supersedes that of a non-human.”
  
  Neither am I generally, but that doesn’t excuse arbitrarily ending a non-human life. It’s not as if it was a case of kill or be killed, neither *needed* to be in the situation.
  If one was being attacked by a wild animal and had a weapon one would of course try to defend oneself, but bullfighting is no random encounter between an angry animal and an innocent person.
  
  I know you weren’t stating a pro-bullfighting opinion.
- bklynchris
  
  “Spaniards are some of the most brutal of people’s he’s ever encountered: snide, violent, sneaky, and bully-ish”
  
  OK, I’ll give you that, seeing as they colonized my peeps. That said, I wouldn’t say the British are all that morally upstanding either, what with how they saw to it that the sun never set and all that manifest destiny garbage.
  
  In fact, if you changed violent to agressively passive aggressive (and all too often not that passive per se), your list of pejorative adjectives might succinctly sum up British “brutality”.
  
  Regardless, the flowery spears in the bull’s back pretty much say, “oh, its on” in bovine.
Anonymous

File this under, “had it coming.”
Anonymous

I find bull “fighting” pretty disgusting, but how can people take pleasure in this guy getting injured or killed in the name of comeuppance? As if two cosmic wrongs somehow cancel each other out, to make a right. Suffering is suffering, and the guy would be bringing it on himself through the ignorance of his actions. But you can’t enjoy his destruction while keeping the moral high ground.

Saying he “deserves to die” is every bit as divorced from the empathy and reality of his situation as he is from the bull’s. Not to mention the suffering of his family, who may be left without a husband, father, son.

Indeed there are no winners here today.
- Mitch_
  
  Sorry, I used up all my empathy on the innocent animal being tormented for entertainment and I have none left for the man who chose to torture and kill him for a living.
chgoliz

Fair’s fair.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  All’s fair in love and gore.
  - chgoliz
    
    Love in the time of bolero?
social_maladroit

Gross.

Like JG said: There is nothing amusing about a tortured animal, under stress, being slowly killed for public entertainment.

Fuck the bullfighter, he had a choice. The bull didn’t.
Rooker

Have to admire a sport with an “athlete” who uses a sword to fight an animal after it’s been tortured for hours, stabbed nearly to death by a dozen other people and with most of the muscles it would need to fight back damaged to the point it can’t lift its head.

I wish I could be that brave.

[/sarcasm][/disgust]
Sean Bonner

Bullfighting isn’t a sport. In sports both teams go in equal and one wins, both teams walk away and have the chance to play again another day, possibly with the other team winning.

Bullfighting is the slow torturous murder of an animal with an audience. IF it was a sport the bull would win sometimes. If it was a sport neither would be dead at the end of it. As it stands the bull dies at the end 100% of the time. That’s not sport, that’s fucking murder.
- Mushimatosis
  
  one could say the bull won this one
  - Sean Bonner
    
    That bull was killed immediately after it. You call that winning?
Anonymous

I’d be much more entertained by all this if they’d run the matador to exhaustion first, stick a few spears in him, maybe stab him in the neck a couple times. Family entertainment, yup!
Teller

The pics are meant to lower the bull’s head so that the horns pose an even greater danger to the bullfighter. Hem’s “Death in the Afternoon” is a great book to continue your lusty interest in a sport that embodies the much-beloved and espoused “cultural diversity.” btw, if you’ve ever referred to someone as an “aficionado” of something because he/she really likes it – it’s actually a word that applies only to fervent followers of bullfighting. HNY!
- Anonymous
  
  “The pics are meant to lower the bull’s head so that the horns pose an even greater danger to the bullfighter.”
  
  If they wanted to pose an even greater danger to the bullfighter, they wouldn’t reduce it to a bloody weakened heap first.
Anonymous

Me so horny
Donald Petersen

No winners here today.
Curt Hopkins

Always nice to see a rcst sht-hls posturing as Ethical Giants. And whether bullfighting is inhumane or not, there is not a single bloviating one of you who could carry a “sword” into a ring with a fighting bull and come out alive – between 30 and 60 bullfighters have died in the ring in Spain alone.
- Mushimatosis
  
  why are they racists, I actually AM From Colombia, and I agree with them
- Sean Bonner
  
  “between 30 and 60 bullfighters have died in the ring in Spain alone. ”
  
  Clearly that’s not enough.
- phisrow
  
  30-60 casualties across how many encounters? Hazard is a percentage, not an absolute number(if absolute numbers actually mattered, getting into a car would be at least three factors of ten braver than getting into a bullring, since that kills ~40,000 people a year in the US alone).
- RadioSilence
  
  “there is not a single bloviating one of you who could carry a “sword” into a ring with a fighting bull and come out alive”
  
  And why would I even want to? why would anyone?
- Anonymous
  
  “between 30 and 60 bullfighters have died in the ring in Spain alone”
  
  If you weren’t talking out of your arse, you would use an actual value – you know, one of those inconvenient things called facts.
Anonymous

Don’t bring curtains to a horn fight
fubbs

The business end of the bulls left horn is in the perfect position to give the bullfighter a nice memory of the day. The bull just needs to turn his head slightly to the right…
Anonymous

“Always nice to see a racist shit-heels posturing as Ethical Giants. And whether bullfighting is inhumane or not, there is not a single bloviating one of you who could carry a “sword” into a ring with a fighting bull and come out alive – between 30 and 60 bullfighters have died in the ring in Spain alone.”

LOL. So now being against ignorant practices is being racist? You win. We should all be in awe of the bullfighter’s amazing skill as his spine is being shattered in a moment of poetic justice. The bull is being a bull. The bullfighter is being an asshole, like the people who enjoy this “spectacle”.
PJG

let me first say I’m very anti bullfighting, it’s a brutal ‘sport’ that needs to end.

I lived in Spain for a few months when I was kid in the 80s and saw bullfights broadcast on TV during the spring festivals. I didn’t understand much about it and asked friends why this was so important to the culture.

The story goes that in old days, you’d have a village and herd of cattle and the bull. At some point the bull gets too aggressive and crazy and starts attacking the village. The village then must gather it’s bravest and send it to slay the bull and the whole thing eventually became embroiled in Christian symbolism with the black bull taking the place of the devil.

To clarify, bullfights last about 15 minutes (not hours as Rooker said), and the whole point is to create a visual symbol of man’s dance with the devil. The bull is attacked only at the back of the neck for two reasons 1) to release blood and lower blood pressure in order to keep the enraged animal from dropping of a heart attack and 2) to create the image of the devil bowing before the warriors of Christ before the beast is quickly dispatched. If the bull is not killed quickly in the final third, the matador is booed for dishonouring tradition and being inhumane towards the animal. And it’s far from an unfair fight, bulls are smart and dangerous and every bullfighter gets last rites before entering a ring.

Followers will argue the bull has a pretty decent life up until its last minutes, certainly better than feedlot cattle anyway. Makes them tastier too.

Still, it’s a terrible thing and people need to leave it to history.
- SpaceGhost
  
  That whole origin story is bull. When the Romans did away with the gladiators and slaughter for entertainment that region refused to give it up entirely, they couldn’t justify using people in a post slavery world but animals never seem to complaign loud enough so they get the short end of the spear. It was never a ‘sport’ made out of necesity from raging bulls, its a ~2000 year old tradition of watching something slowly killed in a large circular arena so everyone in the crowd can get their bloodthirsty rocks off. In a way it definantly is an extremely old tradition, unfortunately its also a totally evil one that every other society seems to get along fine without.
OkieJeff

I would like to see a few pictures of a cattle slaughterhouse side by side with this spanish tradition.

I wonder how many of you “oh noes this iz cow torture” types are going to eat burgers later.

Sometimes traditions may be unpleasant, but I’m willing to let the occaisional bovine suffer if it means that an old and vibrant culture resists the milquetoasting effect of the squeamish american masses.
DeWynken

We’re overlooking one very important thing here:

“Christ..what an asshole”
Anonymous

Racist? ORLY? How so?
Is the fact that occasionally a bullfighter dies supposed to make it less barbaric, somehow? The fact that bullfighters are highly trained and skilled certainly doesn’t make it a fair contest, – it’s still heavily weighed in the bullfighter’s favor. 30 to 60 people killed over how long? The last 100 years? They kill over 11k bulls each year, and supposedly the human death rate is 1 for every 18,000 bulls. (Very sporting.)
How well Boingboing readers would do as bullfighters doesn’t seem relevant to anything (in fact it rather misses the point), but I’d venture a guess that they’d mostly escape completely unscathed from a ring. Why? Because they’d not only decline to be animal-torturing assholes (which is how one gets hurt) but they’d get the fuck out of the ring like a sensible person.
Never mind that bullfighting is so unpopular in Spain these days that it requires large government subsidies to even exist (thanks to a tiny but well-connected minority who are bullfighting fans).
Anonymous

I might not remember it properly, but I recall being taught that the bulls that “won” were spared and put out to stud. And that meat from the bulls that were killed was given to the poor.

yes, it’s still pretty harsh. And not something I’d be all that interested in watching more than once. (And there’s videos for that) But if it does work that way it’s just a tad less barbaric.

As far as it being a sport…I grew up in a farming area. And there’s no way I’d willingly get that close to a one ton critter that has spent the last few minutes becoming really angry. Weakened or not, it’s still very dangerous. And if you miss with the sword it’ll get a lot more dangerous very quickly
I know I’m neither quick enough or coordinated enough to survive even by running away, so I’ll let it keep the label of “sport” for now.
Anonymous

Disturbing. (And I mean the image of the bloody, tortured, doomed bull.)
Anonymous

YAY BULL!!! :)
jm

totally sick coward “sport”…he totally had it coming and a heckuvalot more….
Nom_de_Guerre

Curious fact about the 3 european countries that allow bullfighting:

They have strict laws about animal cruelty and cattle mishandling but make an exception for bullfighting- basically if they transport the bulls in the wrong way to the arena they get fined and prosecuted, but after they enter it anything is allowed.

Zero coherence, right?
(this was the legal argument to end bullfighting in Catalunya BTW)
Mitch_

Serves him right. Some traditions have no place in a civilized, modern world.

A cow in a slaughterhouse isn’t subjected to prolonged torture to entertain a cheering crowd, OkieJeff. The bison I eat are quickly killed with a single bullet in the head inside the truck before they even enter the slaugherhouse. They’re not chased around by muchachos (or whatever the hell you call them) on horseback poking spears into them to make it easier for the guy in the pink tights to kill them at the end.

Where do the bulls who win bullfights go?
Nom_de_Guerre

@OkieJeff

This is a valid point for Americans, in the UE15(except the UK) battery cages or permanent intensive confinement for cattle are prohibited (also growth hormones, some anitbiotics, most GMOs used for feed, etc, etc).

Intensive industrial meat production is by far the worst public health, environmental and ethical disaster there is but that hardly excuses the smaller scale of the practice of woundind and slowly killing animals for entertainment purposes, which is also the principle behind banning dog fights, BTW.
alllie

I can’t buy the part about bull fighting being an important part of Spain’s cultural heritage. Remember that death in the coliseum was an important part of Rome’s cultural heritage until the 5th century when the monk Telemachus tried to stop a gladiator battle and was killed by the crowd. The next day the emperor issued an edict banning gladiator fights.

No matter how long bullfighting has gone on, it should still be stopped. Cultural heritage is no excuse.
Elece

Both aesthetically and morally (aplying some twisted ethics, OK) I prefer this.
RadioSilence

re: my post above (#34)

It should read “So am I” rather than “Neither am I”

Q for a moderator: why can’t we edit posts here?
social_maladroit

Coincidentally, if you all want to see a picture of a bullfighter who actually lost, look at picture #19 of Salon.com’s “most memorable pictures of 2010″ slideshow. Matador Julio Aparicio got a horn through the throat on May 21, 2010.
- alllie
  
  Horrific picture. But the man lived. I’m sure the bull didn’t.
  
  I’ve read many bulls are reluctant to charge so they must be tormented until they are motivated to do so. The mounted picadors jab the bull with a lance to weaken it so it will be less likely to be able to kill the matador. There is a protective pad around the picador’s horse these days but before they were instituted in 1930 the bull usually disemboweled the horse during this stage. Before then this entertainment usually killed more horses than bulls.
  
  Next sharp barbed sticks are planted in the bull’s neck to anger and weaken him further. A lot of bulls will not charge unless they have been sufficiently motivated by this torture.
  
  I guess many people can be desensitized to almost anything by their culture. Like we are desensitized to our government waging war on poor people around the globe. I guess movies and TV have helped with that.
Anonymous

Much righteous indignation, but how many bull-supporters are also happy meat-eaters? Where do you draw the line between acceptable suffering and non-acceptable suffering? So this barbarism is wrong because it’s for ‘entertainment’ and ‘unnecessary’ but the slaughter of millions of animals every day to satiate many of us way, way beyond anything like nutritional necessity or survival, and basically purely for pleasure is ok? Let alone the barbaric lives inflicted prior to that supposedly ‘quick and painless’ slaughter?
In a way at least this bull had some kind of chance to at least even the score, in spite of the dreadful odds. For many, many people most of the meat they mindlessly consume is no more a necessity than this bull fight. If you want to eat meat, go to it, but in all of this I find the casual, unthinking, careless, non-consciousness of our actions and the way many of us conveniently delineate suffering the most distressing aspect.
funchy

It’s sad that in a country that claims to be civilized they celebrate such blood, violent, barbaric acts.

I disagree with PJB’s candy-coated version of bullfighting. Bulls are not bled out to protect them from a “heart attack”. That contradicts the local explanation of why the bullfights were necessary (to dispatch a bull who was destroying the town). That’s just silly that one would need to stab a bull and let it bleed to “prevent” injury. Farmers here handle bulls for care, auction without the need to impale the animal first on anything.

The bleeding weakens them, giving the man in the ring some chance at survival. The stabs are in the neck to impair their ability to drop the head & charge.

It’s not quick. Add in the time in the holding pen, being antagonized + time being weakened by others before the “fighter” enters the arena = a heck of alot longer than 15 minutes.

We should all be in awe of his amazing skill as much as I am in awe of the amazing skill of the staggeringly-drunk pedestrian to make it across a busy highway with only minor injury. Both are stupid, dangerous, and unnecessary.
Anonymous

In Catalonia (Spain) the bull-fighting it’s forbidden right now. And there’s a lot of people who don’t like this “art”… not all the spanish people enjoyed bullfighting, some of us are trying to end this tradition.
danegeld

Curiously, while I’m appalled at bull fighting, I am in favour of hunting foxes with hounds.
tmcsweeney

In terms of bullfighting payback this photo (not for the faint of heart) http://goo.gl/uL3hf on The Big Picture pretty much takes the biscuit.
Anonymous

Actually, bullfighting IS a sport. It’s just that the bull is equipment, not a competitor. And while I personally find it horrible, if I really believed that the bull was a totally mindless creature, then for me it would be of no more moral consequence then toying with a piece of broccoli.

On the other hand, if you do view the bull as an opponent in more than a purely metaphorical way (like a mountain climber might view the mountain), then that implicitly requires thinking of it as more than just an object, and it really is just torture for sport.
Drade

Hi Previously, I apologize, until now I still wonder why this event is retained, even though it’s hurting the animal. Sorry if I offend her, only I one of the many animal lover
braininavat

I saw a bull rider stomped to death by the bull he was riding at a rodeo – not entertaining at all. I have not attended a rodeo since.
ARoden

My dad got mauled by a bull when I was a kid, we put him right in the freezer. The bull, not the dad.
Steak

Upon visiting Spain, my Spanish friend and I attended a bullfight. It was a bloody and dramatic spectacle, as one might expect. Afterward, my friend insisted that we visit a certain restaurant that served a post-bullfight specialty. This dish consisted of, atop a steaming pile of vegetables, two cooked bull’s testicles. My friend explained that it was a tribute to the strength and potency of the bull.

Some years later I visited Spain again. I couldn’t make it to the bullfight this time, but agreed to meet my friend at that same restaurant for the post-fight celebration. When the special dish was brought out, I was surprised to see that the cooked testicles were much smaller than before; tiny, in fact. I asked my friend why this was.

“Ah,” he said with a knowing smile, “not always does the bull lose.”
Anonymous

I’m not exactly a vegetarian, but this bull has been repeatedly stabbed in the back of the neck, pierced with barbed lances, and run ragged while facing a slow tortuous death. Ouch indeed.

FYI Bullfighters use red capes to hide all the blood.

Dude had it coming.
3d bomb

Every now and then a picture like this crops up and does the rounds. You rarely, if ever see pictures or video of what happens to the bulls before and after. I can’t think of a single article I’ve read in the last few years. These shots where the idiot man gets mauled in some way, I can remember quite a few of those.

Maybe that’s something that needs to happen. Show more of how repulsive this is and get people motivated to either help make change directly or just vote with their wallets and boycott Spain altogether.
PJG

“The bleeding weakens them, giving the man in the ring some chance at survival. The stabs are in the neck to impair their ability to drop the head & charge.”

Funchy, you can choose to misinterpret what I said but the whole reason for stabbing the neck with shallow cuts is to weaken the head precisely so it drops in a symbolic bow. Fighting bulls are bred specifically for their fighting traits, aggression, speed, sharp horns, they are nothing like farmed cattle and when riled enough they will drop from heart failure. Read up on it if you don’t believe me. Dropping the blood pressure isn’t about being humane, it’s about keeping the fight going for the full, yes, 15 minutes. There is no stabbing of the bull prior to going into the ring, when that bull gallops in it’s in full health, to do any less would be considered unsporting. The Picodors come in on armoured horses and poke at that muscle mass for a few short minutes, the toreadors enter to try and place six of those colourful spears to get the bull into series of charges and then the matador comes in, does about 8 rounds of charges with the cape, by then the bull bows and it’s stabbed quickly through the heart.

There’s nothing candy coated about it. It’s the tradition that’s all.
Blue_Jaunte

It’s a pity there’s no Hell for him to rot in…
loosethoughts

That bull is a freaking hero. I’m glad that most people see eye to eye on this inhumane sport. I’ve seen some good shots of bullfighters getting hurt.

But what happens to the bull after it wins? There should be some sort of prize, like it has earned it freedom to walk through the town with no one hurting it and everyone providing the respect it deserves….

No, they probably kill it. Savage. No honor in the tradition that probably had some honor, before it came down to just death for entertainment for the masses. Rite of passage for Retards.
rhodian

i’ve never heard anyone in spain refer to bullfighting as a sport; fans consider it an art form and many non-fans find it despicable. while in my mind i disagree with bullfighting, i found the corrida i attended a compelling, exciting and tremendously impressive spectacle – i can see why some people might appreciate and wish to preserve it. doesn’t mean they’re right, of course. yet when one reads comments desiring serious injury or death upon a human, it reminds me that there are very distasteful aspects in many cultures and makes me wonder if our cultural sentimentalisation (is that even a word?) of animals has also gone too far.
Anonymous

Just remember, you aren’t a real bullfighter unless you have pink socks!
Anonymous

I’ve been in the side of the people who disagree with bullfights. I live in a country where this is very deep in our culture. Let me tell you that this tradition has been dying slowly. People is not going to the “toreo” in big numbers, new generations don’t care too much about this tradition anymore and “toreo” entrepeneurs doesn’t know what to do to attract people, so my hope is that in a couple of generations bullfigthing will desappear.
Anonymous

â€¦And finishing with a quick thrust of his head (and horns) to the right, the bull executed a perfect mount of his victim.
Eia

I understand why it was shown, but please, no more pics of injured animals without fair warning.
Lummy

I was in Pamplona, Spain (Navarra, a 2 hours away from the south of France) this summer for the July festival. To make a long story short, they have a week-long festival which is sort of like ‘Woodstock-meets-blullfighting’.

Each day at the crack of dawn, for an entire week, they let the bulls run through the city to chase young drunk people dressed in white ensembles and red scarves. This lasts about 7 days and there are established routes, all conveniently located on the Pamplona website. People camp by theirs spots all night, which is easy, because its basically a 24-hour/7 day party. If you were diligent, you scored a local hotel months in advance. But why do that when you can sleep in a car? Or the park? Or a sidewalk? Or the gutter? (Seriously!)

How into it is the city? Well, there’s a HUGE iron statue in the middle of a plaza that shows bulls trampling over tiny metal men. Drunk tourists climb on the statues and pose for Facebook pictures to their heart’s content. Oh, and there were clean-up crews cleaning up the streets at 7 am. The Pamplona runs are Serious Business.

After the chase, the rest of the day is spent running attending bullfighting shows, and man, those things are PACKED and the locals are really into it. Tickets were cheap, about 20 euro a pop.

A few of my friends refused to join me and waited outside, because they felt it was too cruel. But honestly, Pamplona’s whole economic ecosystem runs on bulls. Not watching the bullfighting show because of moral qualms is like asking for Diet Coke after eating a big Mac made of peperoni pizza and chocolate ice cream. I wasn’t fooling myself, so I went in with another friend.

A whole bullfighting show is about hour and a half-long, and there are many bulls. Each fight lasts around 20 minutes and it’s not just one matador, but several, each with his own team. It’s actually very exciting and hardcore fans do consider it an art-form.

Something that caught my eye: The name of the bullfighters, their swords (!) and the bulls are showcased on a giant LED screen, so you know who’s who. It also names which farm donated the bull. Apparently, its a big honor. The dead bull is later sent back to the owner, to get chopped up and eaten, I suppose.

It’s starts with three dudes playing hide and seek with the bull until he gets tired. The dudes leave, replaced by two dudes in horses, which are the ones to pin the colorful knife things you see in the picture. Last is the bullfighter proper, who comes in armed with a sword and the red cape thing. By now the bull is tired and mighty pissed, and its the last dude’s job to kill the bull, preferably with a sword to the head. I counted about 4 matches that day.

The locals loved it. In fact, one lady started bitching when we had to duck out earlier than expected. “No respect!” she was grumbling.

Oh, and something else: as we all know, Spain won the World Cup this summer, and we got to see the match in a plaza fitted with a huge screen. Two things worthy of note: DAMN, those guys know how to party! When Spain won, the celebration was HUGE! And Navarra’s status as a dairy country really shone when they cut to commercials, because every ad sang praises of the beautiful countryside and the beef. Mostly the beef.
awjtawjt

it’s the monster truck races and WWF of the 1800′s
Anonymous

If somebody stabbed me with that many spears, I’d be sticking my horn up more than just his shoulder.
Lupelu

I’m colombian, and this is disgusting to me as well. It’s been 200 years since we overthrew Spanish rule and we have learned almost nothing.
cubicblackpig

Actually the Navarro link wasn’t directed particularly at you. I prolly shoulda put in a chapter break or something.