Page:A Handbook for Travellers in Spain - Vol 1.djvu/81

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
§ 22.—Bull-fights.
[65]

localities on the table-lands of Castile. Two of the most remarkable are Concua and Libros (Teruel), the first on account of the abundance of fossil bones, and the second because they are fossilified by sulphur.

Sea-water miocene at Carolina and Linares (Jaen), Montjuich, Barcelona, Alicante, and Alcoy, and Ninerola (Valencia).

Of the Pliocene deposits specimens exist at Cadiz, Arcos, and San Lucar de Barrameda.

Quaternary fossils at San Isidro and other localities near Madrid; Carrion de los Condes (Palencia), Udias (Santander), where bones of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros Licorhinus are found, ossified by hydrocarbonate of zinc.

§ 22.—Bull-fights.

The bull-fight, let moralists say what they will, is the sight of Spain, and to see one certainly forms the first object of all the younger portion of travellers from every nation; and as not to understand after some sort the order of the course, the salient features, and the language of the “ring,” argues in the eyes of the natives an entire want of liberal education, no Handbook for Spain can be complete without some elementary hints as to “what to observe,” and what to say in the arena; there the past is linked with the present, and Spanish nationality is revealed, for trans-Pyrenean civilization has not yet invaded this sacred spot. The bull-fight, or, to speak correctly, the Bull-Feast, Fiesta de Toros, is a modern sport, and never mentioned in any authors of antiquity. Bulls were killed in ancient amphitheatres, but the present modus operandi is modern, and, however based on Roman institutions, is indubitably a thing devised by the Moors of Spain, for those in Africa have neither the sport, the ring, nor the recollection. The principle was the exhibition of horsemanship, courage, and dexterity with the lance, for in the early bull-fight the animal was attacked by gentlemen armed only with the Rejon, a short: projectile spear about four feet long. This was taken from the original Iberian spear, the Sparus of Sil. Ital. (viii. 523), the Lancea of Livy (xxxiv. 15), and is seen in the hands of the horsemen of the old Romano-Iberian coinage. To be a good rider and lancer was essential to the Spanish Caballero. This original form of bull-fight (now only given on grand occasions) is called a Fiesta real. Such an one Philip IV. exhibited on the Plaza Mayor of Madrid before our Charles I.; Ferdinand VII. in 1833, as the ratification of the Juramento, the swearing allegiance to Isabel II.; and Alfonso XII., on his marriages, Jan. 23rd, 1878, and November 29, 1879.

These Fiestas Reales form the coronation ceremonial of Spain, and the Caballeros en Plaza represent our champions. Bulls were killed, but no beef eaten; as a banquet was never a thing of Iberia.

The final conquest of the Moors, and the subsequent cessation of the border chivalrous habits of Spaniards, and especially the accession of Philip V., proved fatal to this ancient usage of Spain. The spectacle, which had withstood the influence of Isabel the Catholic, and had beaten the Pope’s bulls, bowed before the despotism of fashion, and by becoming the game of professionals instead of that of gentlemen, it was

[Spain, 1882]
f