No. 2 1

During a trip to Spain, TIME Correspondent Charles Christian Wertenbaker turned from the depressing political situation to matters of life & death in the afternoon. His report on the state of Spanish bullfighting:

The crowded, sleepless, dance-filled, dust-filled, wine-filled week of the festival of San Fermin at Pamplona is the climax of Spain's bullfighting year. Last week Spain's greatest season of the corrida in a generation came to a great climax. When the toro malo, the bad one with 21 painted on his side, lay dead in the sand, the aficionados had seen about all there was to see at bullfights.

On the first day at Pamplona, it looked as if the great annual festival would be an anticlimax. Pepin Martin Vasquez, who has built up a reputation as one of the best of the younger men, was very bad. El Andaluz, an old hand, was just plain dull. But the bulls were bad that day, and the crowd tended to make excuses.

Next day the bulls were good. Although Pepin Martin had never been gored, he seemed nervous. After a halfhearted effort with his first bull, he ran away from his second, playing it at arm's length, then tried to kill it too soon. The crowd showered the ring with cushions and bottles, shouting "Fuera! Fuera!" (Get out!), and when the fight was over Pepin Martin had to dodge more cushions as he tried to sneak through the gate.

Better than Pepin Martin, but not what the crowd had come for, was Parrita. They call him "el Manolete de los pobres" (the poor man's Manolete). He is tall, a little heavyset, and looks like a Yale man learning to be a bond salesman. Parrita does one thing that only he and Manolete, who is the master, can do, and which may get them killed one afternoon. When he has the bull under complete control, Parrita will incite the bull to charge, then look up into the gallery as the bull passes him, depending only on the feel of the muleta* in his hand to guide the bull and turn it. It gives you the same feeling that you get when an airplane goes into a spin.

Before the Bull. On the last day (memorable for big, tough bulls), Manolete (real name: Manuel Rodriguez) himself appeared, icily calm in a white & gold costume. To him, rather than any other, is due the present revival of the art of the corrida. He gets as much as 150,000 pesetas ($13,700) for a single performance, and his Mexican partner, Carlos Arruza, gets almost as much. This pair has collared so many important fights and so much of the big Mexican bullfight money that they are engaged in a squabble with the Spanish Bullfighters Syndicate, headed by Juanito Belmonte (son of the great Belmonte, who was the master bullfighter in the late '20s). Manolete haughtily says the dispute will be settled "before the bull, not behind the desk." If he stays as good as he has been this season, Manolete will win.

Most matadors keep the muleta between them and the bull. Not Manolete. He will stand motionless, between the muleta and the bull. The bull will look first at the muleta, then at the man.

Manolete, with a flick of the wrist, will transfer the bull's attention back to the muleta. Even if the bull, as it sometimes does, starts to charge toward the man, with his horns almost touching him, Manolete can stand there and put his life in the magic of his wrist. The Spaniards call this the "moment of jurisdiction."

On the last day at Pamplona, working with his second bull, Manolete surpassed himself. It was a big bull, but the old master had it eating out of his hand. He did everything in his repertory, including four magnificent manaletinas, in which the muleta is held close to one hip, then passed over the bull's head and horns when he charges. He stood there with the muleta almost directly behind him, his body between the muleta and the bull, and it is only a slight exaggeration to say that if the bull had stuck its tongue out it could have licked him. The crowd, which had booed everybody all week, went mad. (Pamplona crowds are notoriously hard to please because during fiesta week they dance the fandango and drink all night.)

Two Ears & a Tail. Out came the last bull. They had seen this one before. And the crowd went mad in a different way. That morning, during the encierro (a ceremony of running ahead of the bulls through the streets, which survives only in Pamplona) this bull had gored one Casimiro Heredia in the chest. When Heredia lost his head and tried to get up, the bull turned and butchered him.

A few minutes later, the same bull had caught a visiting runner from the town of Villaba and killed him. With two deaths to his credit, the big black bull, with the number 21 on his side, was known and hated by the entire crowd. They whistled and screamed "toro malo" and showered down more cushions and bottles than they had at the unfortunate Pepin Martin Vasquez.

Thereupon Julian Marin, a boy from a nearby Navarre town, made himself a hero. He fought No. 21 all over the ring, on his knees, sitting on the barrera and on his feet, so close to the bull that twice everybody thought the bull had him. On his first attempt to kill, he missed; normally, this would have forfeited his chance to get a full set of trophies--the bull's ears and tail. On his second try, he killed well. When the president of the corrida gave him only two ears, the crowd waved handkerchiefs until Marin was given the tail, too. His was the only tail awarded from the 24 bulls killed. And then the boys in the red scarves and red sashes swarmed down from their cheap seats in the sun and carried Julian Marin out of the ring on their shoulders.

All this is of the utmost importance in Pamplona, where bullfighting started (so the records say) 500 years ago, when two bulls were killed "by one Christian and one Moor."

* A heart-shaped scarlet cloth draped over a wooden stick which has a handle at one end and a sharp steel point at the other.

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