Bull! (Ronda: Part 3)

While the gorge may be Ronda’s defining feature, the town’s self-acclaimed claim to fame is something else entirely. What Ronda residents were most proud of, at least when we were there, was their bullring.

Which is exactly where we headed after wandering along the crumbling cobblestone of the local streets, checking out the shopkeepers’ wares and getting lost amidst the narrow roadways and secluded courtyards of Ronda’s interior. In all honesty, though, I was of mixed feelings as I walked towards the town centre, where Ronda’s storied bullring stands, about a two-minute walk from the site of the New Bridge.

The Plaza de Toros was still a working bullring, though on the afternoon we visited there was no such spectacle underway. If there were I would be a little less eager to enter the curved walls of the stucco structure, reluctant to support the bloody pastime it represents.

Have I mentioned that I’m a vegetarian? Cruelty to animals: not so much my thing.

But we were in Spain, and what symbolizes this country better than a bullring? Throughout our trip we’d passed them, one by one, in each of the cities we’d visited, deciding to wait until now to enter because of the place Ronda’s ring holds in Spanish history. Inaugurated in 1784, it is the oldest bullring in Spain and the birthplace of modern bullfighting. If we were going to visit a bullring, we figured, this was the one to go to.

But while for locals, the bullring was the place to see in Ronda – completely ingrained in the local culture and town history – for us non-Spaniards it hardly seems worth the steep five-euro entry fee we paid to get in.

Though there was a small museum on site dedicated to the art of bullfighting – with a history of the personalities, technique and costume of this Spanish sport – the Plaza de Toros offered little else but the huge columned ring itself. Between the museum’s vivid pictures, though, and the looming shadows on the hard sand surface, it was easy to picture a fight in play, to imagine the bulls’ blood that’s been spilt here over the years, the matadors turning heads with the flamboyant costumes now on display.

Outside of the ring, we saw the paddocks where the bulls ware corralled before the fight, and the hook from which they are gutted after. Without any placards or a guide to give us details, we were forced to imagine it all ourselves.

And what lovely images those were.

Photo - The Plaza de Toros – Ronda, Spain, November 2003 – LV.

This week’s header photo: A bullfighting poster from The Plaza de Toros. 

Posted by Lisa.

~ by Lisa on February 29, 2008.