The Philadelphia Peña and Taurino Club
Our Guide to the Festival of San Fermìn, Pamplona
I saw my first bullfight on October 6, 2002 with my wife and 4 year old son, Sam. We had spent the day, a Sunday, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum of Art in Madrid. It was one of those flawless fall Madrid days, cloudless, with storybook blue skies. We’d had steaks at Casa Paco at Puerta Cerrada, so as we made our way towards Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas, it had already been a perfect day.
By luck, we were visiting during the Feria de Otoño, and by greater luck, we walked up to the ticket window and bought seats in tendido 10, immediately in front of the President’s box. Entering the plaza holds the same memory as my first walk into Veteran’s Stadium for a Philadelphia Phillies game. The turf was green, and, man, was that sand tan-ish / red-ish like nothing you've ever seen.
Madrid, President's Box
The bulls were from ganaderìa D. Adolfo Martin, and it was a mano a mano fight, between Luis Miguel Encabo and Fernando Robleno, who was rewarded an ear. We ate cashews. Like tourists, we took video and photographs, and understood little. By dusk, I was hooked.
The central event of the festival of San Fermìn is the bullfights, and the bulls are in town for the Feria del Toro. Without the fight, there would be no morning run. And there is no better place to see a bullfight than Pamplona, which has the world's third (3d) largest plaza. The crowds are full, knowledgeable, opinionated, and vocal.
Built in 1923, the ring has enumerable layers of paint, and its like seeing a baseball game at Connie Mack Stadium, or a football game at Franklin Field. I’ve booed Santa Claus and Michael Jack, and appreciate the opinionated aficionados of Pamplona, especially the occasional offerings of negative sentiment. 
Connie Mack Stadium
Like Rangers fans at the Philadelphia Spectrum, some matadors refuse to appear, largely out of fear of the boisterous crowd and the larger (man, they're huge) bulls seen at the feria. While the bullfights lack the elegance of Seville or Madrid, a Pamplona fight is democratic, raucous, and real.
Plaza de Toros, Pamplona
Other claims are the bulls are drugged or physically injured prior to fights, bred to placidity, or that their horns are shaved. Prior to the Festival of San Fermin, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals sponsors its “Running of the Nudes” (yikes) . We make sure to always miss this “event;” however, a left over zealot handed me a pamphlet in 2005 which said “there is usually little competition between a nimble sword-wielding matador (Spanish for “killer”) and a confused, maimed, psychologically tormented and physically debilitated bull.” I don’t know where they’ve seen a bullfight, but its certainly not in Pamplona. No reasonable person could make such a claim.
Finally, the pamphlet said “It is a very cowardly event.” This is where we definitely part ways. A matador is no coward, and someone who’s traditional bravery should be lauded. Like a hockey fight, bullfights have their appropriate place and meaning, and those reflective and calm enough can appreciate and celebrate the matador and his profession. Personally, I can’t wait for July 7.
By the way, after our first bullfight in Madrid, we had inspired tapas at the German influenced Cervecería Alemania in the Plaza de Santa Ana. O man, it was good.
Franklin Field
By Peter N. Milligan, March 2007
Sam, future matador
A bullfight is not a fight between man and bull. It’s a man’s contest with his bravery and responsibility to pass as close to the horns as possible, when the natural urge is to flinch or recoil. I spend 51 weeks a year telling myself I want to get as close to en los cuernos as possible, and every July 7, when I see those bulls in the street, its like I saw a lion in my living room. In fact, with a lion (or bear or shark or freakin’ T-Rex), there’s a chance it’ll take a look and move on, especially if its not hungry. A toro bravo will never do that, and does not charge depending on appetite.
So, when an experienced matador exhibits that self-control he evidences pundonor, the distinctive Spanish philosophy of obligation.
You should not go to a Spanish bullfight for joy, but to be a witness to “bitter glorious excitement...and courage, death’s enemy...” (The Running of the Bulls by Homer Casteel). The presence of blood and almost certain death is not agreeable, but necessary for completion of the allegory.
When the sword enters the bull at the cruz (the cross), the estocada should kill the bull. Some frightened matadors stab at the bull’s neck like butchers, and some bulls seem made of solid bone. It does not always go well. Yet, done rightly or wrongly, there is a lesson to be learned. In fact, very few matadors kill well.
"To kill honestly, to run straight to meet a bull who has been bred for generations to fight, and who is very interested in doing a little killing on his own account, to lure the bull’s head to the side with a furled , half-sized muleta, to plant the sword in an area about the size of a fist the length of a man’s arm behind the deadly horns, worrying about trajectory, and wind, and a million details, and to spin the right leg out of the range of the horn–all in a split second..." calls for bitter courage. Id.