Blindfolds and Bulls

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PART ONE: THE BULLS

For a moment, the Bull stops to weigh up his options. There are people everywhere, taunting him, laughing, showing no respect whatsoever. There are rock walls, and wooden barricades, and more people on those walls and barricades, exuding a cacophony of celebration. Around the Bull’s neck is a thick rope, held many yards back to several men dressed in white. They’re supposed to condition his movement, but the Bull knows, and they know, it’s more of a nuisance than anything else. A nuisance like the young men who dare to step forward, threaten him with movement from jackets or blankets or hypnotically twirling red umbrellas. The impetuousness! To dare to challenge such a beast, so strong and muscled that cows shudder their udders at the sight of him. A young man crosses the imaginary line and the Bull springs forward, horns primed, an unstoppable tank of nature. But the man sidesteps, deftly turning in a circle, and while the Bull is a fast and the Bull is big, the Bull does not have power steering. For a moment, it looks almost comical, like a cat chasing its tail. They play this game, closely bonded, man and beast, until the man skips away to the applause of the crowd. The Bull has choices. Should he charge into the crowd to send them scattering? Should he make an unexpected leap over a low wall where many others stand in mistaken safety? Should he trample the man holding a notebook, with his baseball T-shirt and distinctly un-Portuguese appearance? The Bull turns his thick neck towards me, and in the black orbs of his eyes, I see him weighing up his options.

I’m in the Azores, and the Azores lie in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. Nine islands, straddling the intercontinental plates, 950 miles from Europe, 2400 miles from North America. An important trading post going back as far as the 1400’s, the archipelago is part of Portugal, has a population of around 240,00, and is blessed with fertile land, diverse scenery and its own unique culture. Think of the Azores as Europe’s Hawaii. I’m on the island of Terceira, with a long and storied history, and a chequered green countryside that easily recalls Ireland or Newfoundland. It’s summer, and the annual festivities are full swing, with glittering coloured streamers over the streets, lanterns, bright flags and flashy fairs. Each island in the Azores has its own appeal or attraction this time of year, and in Terceira, the biggest drawcard is touradas à corda – the Bullfight on a Rope. Not one mind you, but hundreds, taking place throughout the summer, attracting visitors from the mainland and beyond. The bullfights can take several forms, and differ from other bullfights you may have encountered in Spain or Mexico. For one, it is illegal to kill bulls in a Portuguese bullfight. While it’s up to you to decide how heavy this all sits on your personal scale of ethics, organizers stress how well the festival bulls are treated, prepared, rested, and fed for the occasion. My first encounter with the touradas was on the beach of Angra do Heroísmo, Terceira’s main city, with its UNESCO World Heritage Site old town. I expected a baby bull for the kid’s bullfight, but arrived under an overcast sky to find a chest-high baby bull capable of causing bodily harm to child and adult. Two men held a long rope attached to the bull’s neck, while teenage boys ran up and taunted the bull. The bull would charge them right into the sea, where they could swim just a few metres to safety. The baby bull didn’t charge everyone on the beach, but rather seemed content to go after only those who dared to challenge him. Kids under 10 were on the sand, with plenty of distance to run to safety should the bull move in their direction. Confirmed by the hysterical laughter of the kids, it all seemed like harmless fun, providing the bull doesn’t get too close. After a while, I got a little braver, walking closer to the action, seeing how the braver teens kept still until the last moment, when they would dart in circles. I was taking some photos, when suddenly; the bull took off in the direction of the shelf on a wall, where the majority of spectators were watching the action, including our crew. It was at this critical juncture that we all learned something else about bulls. They can jump. The bull tore up the ledge, sending everyone scattering up stairs or spilling onto the beach. Somehow, of all the places to run on this wide-open beach, the bull managed to get tangled in Paul’s wholly expensive sound gear. I can’t exactly describe why it’s so funny to see a baby bull roped in electronic equipment, with a sound guy from Whistler charging the bull down in a sudden act of bravura. As I was to learn later, Paul was unexpectedly demonstrating some key aspects of bullfighting – machismo, testosterone, the public demonstration that man can stand up to the mighty beast. With the bull seemingly intent on mounting Paul’s fur-covered boom microphone, and the crowd tearing up in hysterics, it also proves the age old truth about show business. Never work with children, never work with animals, and for God’s sake, never work with children and animals at the same time.

Terceira’s landscape has been divided up by ancient stone walls into neat squares, which run right up to Angra do Heroísmo, the oldest city in all the Azores dating back to 1534. Monte Brasil, a lush hill and all that’s left of the volcano that once gave birth to the island, overlooks the city, along with an old castle named São Filipe. It’s 4km rock wall, blackened by time and the elements, looks more like it belongs in Angkor Wat. Considering Angra’s rich history of pirates and buccaneers, imperial warfare, trade and relocated royalty, it’s odd to find everything so clean and fresh-coated. Blue and orange churches seem almost new, while the facades of buildings along the narrow, snaking cobblestone are polished and decorated with flowers. The last major earthquake, a bastard that struck on New Year’s Day 1980, damaged up to 80% of the city, and 60% of the island’s settlements (the agricultural stone walls survived intact, as they have throughout the centuries). Angra was carefully rebuilt using photographs to resemble all that was lost, giving the city its old yet polished appearance. Cuisine is all fried fish or steak with rice and potatoes with Azorean made passion fruit soda and good cheap wine. Sodium freaks will enjoy the salty meals, along with the local recipe for peri-peri, the chilli sauce you’ll find throughout Portugal, mixed here with more salt than usual. I dived into the sea to find it warmer than the Hotel Caracol’s pool. When the sun finally came out, the land sparkled like emeralds, the sea like sapphires.

The Spanish matadors were dressed in skintight traditional costumes, as if their fans might need confirmation of the size of their balls. If they weren’t getting in the ring with a raging bull, I might make a comment about the pink socks. I’ve never been to a bullfight before, and I know it splits the travel community. Many are disgusted by the spectacle of taunting and torturing a bull, spearing it repeatedly until stabbing it to death to the cheers of the arena (although in Portugal, as previously mentioned, bulls are spared this fate). Many are thrilled by the cultural impact, the excitement, the tension, the art of the matador, the thrill of the sport. My jury was out when I first entered Angra’s Bullfighting Arena for a more traditional bullfight. A brass band blasts out their anthems, and the all ages crowd, paying around 30 euros a ticket, anxiously await the first of several encounters. Behind me is Frankie, the same taxi driver who picked us up at the airport (it’s a small island) who explains to me what’s going on in the American accent he’s picked up from the US soldiers stationed on Terceira. The bulls, he explains, are bred and raised specifically for the bull fights. They are fed the best food, get the best treatment, trained, and rested before the fight. Local breeders are honoured and renowned for the quality of their bullfighting bulls. The first event has a local kid performing cavaleiro on his white horse, an excellent display of classical riding that I can recognize and appreciate after my visit to Slovenia’s Lipica. Tame enough, until they let a 450 kg bull into the ring. For the next fifteen minutes, the bull charges the specially trained horse, which brings the rider up close enough for him to stab decorated spears of varying length into the rump of the bull. As the spears get shorter, so it gets more dangerous, and at one point the bull seems to connect with the horse who remains calmly under the rider’s control at all times (as opposed to, say, panicking and freaking out). It is overcast, and I don’t really see much in the way of violence until the sun breaks in the late afternoon sky, reflecting off a sheet of blood on the bull’s side. I finally understand why bullfights are so bloody. At the last spear, the young rider gets a heavy applause for his efforts.
“Watch these next guys, they’re the suicide squad,” says Frankie, and what follows is easily in my top three of The Craziest Things I Have Ever Seen Anyone Do, anywhere.

The Suicide Squad, or pega, consists of 8 men, dressed in traditional garb, who enter the ring with the same bull, by now way pissed off with the spears in his back. Their role, unique to Portugal, is literally to grab the bull by the horns. They line up in single file, with a young kid, no older than 18, right up front about 10m ahead of the rest. The crowd hushes. I can hear the ashes on the cigarette being sucked back in front of me. The boy, carrying no capes or weapons, yells something and takes a step forward. The others duplicate his step. Another yell, another step. The bull is now facing him head on, stamping its front foot like something you’d see in a cartoon.
“That kid is going to get killed,” I say.
“Just watch,” replies Frankie, who has been attending these events his whole life.
Boy Suicide is getting closer and closer to the bull, the others behind him carefully making sure that all the bull can see is the kid up front. Any second there’s going to be a charge down. Dead silence in the arena. I notice that I haven’t breathed much in the last minute. Suddenly, the bull explodes forward, and the boy lets out one last scream. He’s got seconds to move or get crushed, but instead of darting to the side, he crouches low. You can hear the WHUMP of impact, as the bull crashes into the chest of the boy, who jumped at the just the right time to wrap his arms around the next of the bull. Within a second the other guys rush forward to absorb the speed and blow of the bull, ensuring the bull cannot smash its head down. The bull has just run headfirst into a wall of men, and the men have prevailed, calming the bull down, blinding any further movement that might antagonize it. Somehow they extract themselves and the crowd erupts into cheers. His face smeared with the bull’s blood, the boy becomes a man, and the man becomes a hero. The bull is coerced back into its pen, the rider and the hero give a victory walk around the stadium. A teenage boy stands down an angry 450kg charging wounded bull. The line between bravery and stupidity has never looked so thin, or so impressive.

Next up the Matador, who face up an even bigger beast (480kg), this time with no horse, although he does have two assistants in the ring to occupy the bull’s attention. Flown in from Spain, the Matador uses deft feints, distractions, sidesteps, and his red cape to confuse the bull. The crowd is once again respectfully quiet. I hear the strange yelps of the Matador, the stamping of the bull’s hooves. The poses and facial expressions are almost comical, a kind of traditional dance used just prior to a ritualistic slaying. The Matador gets within a hair’s length of the bull at full charge. His prancing and bows to the audience seems arrogant, like one boxer demanding respect even though his opponent is blind. Bulls have been known to maim and kill Matadors, but it becomes pretty obvious that the Matador knows the bull’s weakness (manoeuvrability, confusion in sight and movement) and teases this weakness for the audience. As a further show of pride, he turns his back on the bull, a strut to demonstrate his compete lack of fear for the beast. It’s more challenging when, like the horserider, he has to spear the bull with different sized spears. A couple of times his assistants jump into the fray to prevent the bull from getting too close. You can hear the slam of the bull into the wooden fence where the assistants take shelter. The Matador lands his blows, until finally, he holds nothing but a long sword.
“In Spain, this is when he’d kill the bull, in Spain,” explains Frankie.
In Portugal, where killing the bull is illegal, the Matador will instead place one more spear, a symbol to show that he could slay the bull if he wished, and the crowd applauds his efforts.
There’s no Suicide Squad this time, instead five brown cows with bells around their necks are released into the arena, and the hurt and horny bull chases them back into the pen. Some of these bulls will shortly face the butcher’s blade. Others will receive veterinary care, return to the fields, and may or may not take part in next year’s bullfights. Before you start condemning the spectacle, allow me to ask you: Do you eat meat?

The jury is in. There is such diversity of culture around the world, and time and time again, it has proven folly to force the moral values of one culture on another. In Saudi Arabia, women are not allowed to drive. In parts of China, cats are on the menu. In tribal Africa, girls are married off as young as 12, to a man who has a dozen wives already. I enjoy a good steak, and the fact is, that steak comes from bulls and cows. If I wanted to be a vegetarian, I would visit the nearest abattoir, because part of the joy of eating meat is the bloody ignorance that comes with it. It is upsetting to see any living thing hurt, much less killed, and yet we could have this argument over a burger (vegetarians, I strongly suggest you stay away from such ethical bullfights). Bullfighting in Portugal aims to spare the bulls life (inside the arena, anyway) but you’re witnessing an important and cherished cultural tradition for the local people. Agree with it or not, but every traveller has a duty to respect it. There is no bullfighting in Canada, and that’s just one more reason why I live here. Condemn the people of Terceira for their bullfights on the other hand, and you may as well start condemning everyone and everything that doesn’t agree with you. In which case, you’d be too busy to read stories like these, or enjoy travel shows on TV. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to root for the bull, and continue to enjoy my steak medium-rare.

Unless the bull is staring me down, in which case, I’ll root for myself thanks. The next day’s bullfight on a rope takes place on a street in Angra, lined with shipping containers for spectators to sit on. This time, it’s the grown-up version, and the stakes are much higher. Two days ago, a local slipped and was trampled to death by the bull. It’s crazy enough for me to be on the dance floor with this monster, I don’t have to do the tango with it. As 6:30pm approaches, the street gets filled with men, many clutching small brown bottles of mini-Bock beer. There are plenty of women on the containers or patios, but none on the road itself. A loud firecracker explodes, announcing that the bull has been released on the street. I am a hundred meters from the bull’s pen, but feel an immediate pulse, as if the entire street just stuck its fingers in a plug socket. People further down start running back, causing a ripple up the street. Eventually I see the bull, at eye level, a terrifying site that forces a hard swallow. Attached to its neck is a long rope but the bull moves freely, pounding up the street, turning to attack the men who would dare get close enough to touch it. As the bull gets closer, adrenaline surges, and I sprint further up the street to safety. At the top are two white lines, and it is the job of the men holding the ropes to ensure that the bull does not cross it. As a sign of confidence in their ability, a half dozen caravans sell beer just metres from the line, and hundreds of people have congregated there to watch the action. There will be four bullfights on a rope this evening, and the first bull is uneventful. I keep my distance, taking photos, daring myself to move closer, but always quick to bolt back, or eye a fence to jump over. Frankie had warned me that the real dangerous part is not so much the bull, but tripping over people as you run, or over the rope. As long as you can run, you can get to safety. Frankie also points out that when it comes to this type of bullfighting, people get hurt, not bulls. It’s not going to satisfy PETA, but it’s a long way from the animal gore you’ll find in traditional bullfights in Spain and Latin America. After 20 minutes, the bull is slowly pulled back towards its container, with the crowd moving forward, a human wall closing in. Two firecrackers signal the bull is off the streets, and immediately it fills up with families and revellers. Stands have been set up a bit further down, and it is here that most of the crazy stuff happens, where feats are pulled for applause. I happened to see the TV news that morning, which showed the highlights from the arena fight, and also the guy slipping on the beach and getting trampled to death. One local actually makes his living filming the bullfights and then compiling DVD’s of guys getting trampled. Kind of like those “World’s Best Sports Disasters” shows, only with bulls and people. After watching just a few minutes of one on a TV inside a beer caravan, I’m more than happy to leave the horn grabbing to the professionals.

Bull number two distinguishes himself by launching over a low wall that hundreds of people mistook for a safety barrier. Talk about crowd dispersion. Sean had set up his camera on this side, and I haven’t seen him move this fast since that guy threw a live cobra at him in Taiwan. We both appreciate the absurdity of that sentence.
Bull number three trashed the glass beer bottles accumulated in a badly placed garbage bin, much to the delight of the crowd. For the fourth and final bull, I decided I knew enough to stand with the inner circle of lunatics closest to the bull. Branded on its muscular black hide, I did not know the organizers had saved the best till last - the meanest, fastest, biggest bull of all. There are plenty of exciting moments being that close. The bull can change directions at any moment, and a couple times I had to really hoof it or risk getting trapped by the containers. Sure, it could have turned sour, like the time it charged me and I jumped over a hastily assembled wooden fence. The bull smashed it with its ceremonially padded horns, and I had to help some guy literally prop up the wood otherwise the bull might jump into the small courtyard where women and children were watching. Fortunately, no fodder for the DVD guy today, but I still shake my head in disbelief when I look at the photos.

Bullfighting in Terceira dates back to the 16th century, and Bullfighting on a Rope, which takes place all over the island, has evolved to include beaches and boats, umbrellas, and kids versions. I felt a little sorry for the bulls, which looked bewildered, like high school bullies being showed up by a horde of nerds. Besides tradition, perhaps the men of Terceira ridicule the bull as a means of ridiculing nature, exerting some human control over the powerful and mysterious. Bulls have certainly been prominent for thousands of years across multiple civilizations. They were the symbol for idolism in the Biblical tale of the Golden Calf. Theseus battled the Minotaur, a man with the head of a bull, in Greek mythology. Shiva rode a bull, Egyptians were known to worship and mummify certain bulls, Celts had a bull deity, and some Christians believe there was an ox or bull present at the birth of Jesus. Taurus is one of the astronomical star signs, which reminds me: one week I’m racing a Lamborghini with the logo of a bull, the next week I’m running with them on the streets of Portugal. When the stock market is performing, as hopefully it will again one day, it’s described as a bull market. Bulls, the symbol of strength, virility, and raw power. Face up to a bull, as a kid on a beach, a Matador in a ring, or a travel writer on a street, and maybe a little bit of bullish energy will rub off on you. Hopefully, it won’t trample you to death.

About 250 fights take place over the summer, and every year, there are at least a couple casualties. Far tamer was the parade for the Festival of St John, the patron saint of Portuguese nobility, which takes place down the main street in Angra and involves thousands of costumed dancers. One section was set aside of kids, and with the colours and fairs and ice creams, I made a note to add Terceira to my list of great family destinations. Kids can even see a bullfight, without anyone, man or bull, getting hurt. With just a few days remaining from my European leg, which has seen me clash swords in Georgia and race Lamborghinis in Italy, I’m a little exhausted, and completely over-stimulated. Boarding the plane for Lisbon, I hoped my next adventure would help with that.

Gonzo Gallery for Blindfolds and Bulls

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