British writer and trained matador explains Spain’s undying love for the bloody tradition of bull-fighting

THE coffin of matador Victor Barrio was yesterday carried through the streets of his home town Sepúlveda.

Victor, 29, was killed on Saturday as he fought a raging half-tonne bull in the ring live on TV – the first professional Spanish bullfighter to be gored to death in 30 years.

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One British writer knows what it is like to face a bull. He trained to be a matador as research for a book about the controversial sport.

Here, he explains what it takes to win – and why Spain’s love for this bloody tradition will continue.

You remember every detail because that’s what adrenaline does to your brain. It sears images and sensations into your memory.

Standing drenched in sweat under the burning Spanish sun, you face a third of a tonne of fighting bull that snorts and twitches with rage.

There is nothing between you and it but a square yard of red cloth in your left hand and a slim, steel sword in your right.

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I can still see the sand beneath my feet, the grains thicker and more sticky than any beach.

And the blood on the sand — mine and his.

I can still see his eyes, dark pools with rims showing white as they move in his great head, hunting for me.

Most of all I remember the horns, arcs of bone, waiting to be used on his enemy — me. It was terrifying.

However, the real fear, the gut-wrenching fear you have time to be aware of, exists only before you enter the ring.

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Once you are inside you have no time for such thoughts, only to consider your next move.

So you swallow your fears, analyse where the bull’s eyes are looking and its horns twitching towards, and decide which particular pass you will make.

A natural, for example, is where you lean forward and flick the cloth in its eyeline.

As the bull dips its right horn towards the fabric, you begin to slowly draw it towards you.

Most of all I remember the horns, arcs of bone, waiting to be used on his enemy — me

Then, rotating a little at the waist, you draw him past so the horns brush your locked-straight legs, your feet planted into the golden sand.

Then, as he passes you and you extend and stretch so he will go well beyond you and turn, you decide which dance step should come next in the sequence.

At the end of all this you know what you must do.

You are a matador, a word which translates literally as killer.

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You must launch yourself over its head with the sword, exposing your body to the horns in the traditional manner.

Mid-air, you must place the blade between the fourth and fifth or fifth and sixth ribs, its spine to the left, its shoulder to the right, hoping to penetrate that boneless letterbox and strike the aorta and bring a quick and respectful end to this animal you have grown to know in its 20 minutes in the ring.

Spanish fans — the aficionado — go to see a man stand in the face of death, and that means the man must risk his own life, not just take another’s.

On Saturday, this ever-present danger became a reality in Teruel, eastern Spain.

Victor Barrio, a brave, mid-ranking matador, was killed while making the very same natural pass I described.

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He made a mistake and a half-tonne bull punched its horn through Victor’s chest, piercing his lung and aorta.

The fight was being shown live on TV. He met his match and died in the ring, in front of an audience that included his father and wife.

As tragic as that is, Victor also died doing what he loved.

The corrida is not written about on the sports pages of Spain’s newspapers but reviewed alongside ballet performances and theatre productions

While you may not agree with it or like it, perhaps that is just because you do not understand it.

It is certainly more complicated than I ever thought it was when I first saw it.

The purpose of the bullfight is to create beauty. I know this probably sounds crazy to British readers. They are misled by the ideas of this cultural tradition.

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First, it is a not a bullfight, a word which comes from the British pursuit of bull-baiting with dogs.

La corrida de toros, as it is called in Spanish, grew out of knights on horseback jousting bulls.

Now it is a three-act drama that centres on a man on the ground, dressed in all the pomp and circumstance of Imperial Spain, in which he tries to create moments of beauty in a dance with death, as represented by a wild bull, before killing it in a ritual sacrifice.

The corrida is not written about on the sports pages of Spain’s newspapers but reviewed alongside ballet performances and theatre productions.

Only Hollywood actors and the football stars of clubs such as Real Madrid earn more than leading matadors.

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Top matadors such as José Tomás have been paid as much as a million euros for a single afternoon, while novices pocket only a few hundred.

It believes it is a fight and is adrenalised for combat.

This difference in pay is because José can create emotionally moving sculptures with his own body and the bull’s, connected only by that small piece of cloth, the bullfighter luring the bull with the movement of the fabric.

The myth that the matador’s red rag causes the bull to become angry is just that — a myth. The bull is colour blind.

A traditional corrida lasts two hours, made up of six bulls, fought by three alternating matadors.

It may sound shocking, disgusting even, but this is what the corrida is about.

Almost all the cattle that enter the ring will die, with only a few pardoned for their excellent charging and then used for breeding purposes.

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If they kill a matador they will still be killed themselves.

This is because this is the reality of the lives of all cattle, as it is with the roughly three million cattle killed annually in Britain.

Their meat has been sold long before they reach this sandy slaughterhouse.

Bullrings are registered as abattoirs under Spanish and EU law.

There are only three differences from British abattoirs that could possibly matter to the animal itself — the quality of its life before, the length of that life and the manner of its death.

As for the first, the average life of a fighting bull is five years, whereas that of a meat cow is 18 months.

The farms on which the bulls are raised are privately owned nature reserves of forest and meadow, and their interaction with humans is minimal. They are ranched from horseback.

Given that the bull does not know it cannot win, it believes this is a fight and is adrenalised for combat.

How much does it feel as it unceasingly attacks every opponent? Soldiers say that in battle they do not feel their wounds until afterwards, and for the bull there is no afterwards.

All I know is that if I were given the choice between these ways of living and dying, I would choose the Spanish option.

It's not a fair fight - EDUARDO GONÇALVES on the sport's brutality

EACH year tens of thousands of bulls are maimed, tortured and killed in bullrings in front of jeering crowds.

A bullfight is never a fair fight. The bulls are doomed before even entering the ring.

Prior to a fight they are starved and drugged to weaken and disorientate them and may even have petroleum jelly smeared in their eyes to impair their vision.

The bull’s horns might also be shaved – which can be likened to someone having extreme dental treatment with no anaesthetic.

In a typical fight the animal is attacked by men on foot and horseback with lances and barbed harpoons called banderillas.

The matador forces the confused and exhausted bull to make a few charges before eventually attempting to kill it with a sword.

If not killed, the animal is stabbed repeatedly until paralysed. When the bull finally collapses its spinal cord is cut, but the animal may still be conscious as its ears and tail are cut off and kept as trophies.

Bulls are not the only victim in this cruel “sport”. Blindfolded before entering the ring to prevent them from panicking, horses suffer severe injuries, if not death, from being gored.

This stomach-churning cruelty takes place all in the name of entertainment.

Bullfighting has been losing public appeal year on year. Like bear baiting and fox hunting – once considered traditions – bullfighting has no place in modern civilised society.

The League Against Cruel Sports campaigns for a complete ban on this barbaric and archaic activity.