Catharthis at Five – A Bull Fight

In Franco's Spain

I can hear the shouts of the women in the next street. Their raucous voices cut through everything else. There is a strong sour smell of olive oil cooking. Someone bellows up the stairs. I must have been asleep for a couple of hours.

I have come to Barcelona on my own this time. Mother thinks I've hitch-hiked with Roger to the West Country.

I roll out of bed, and stick my head under the tap. It's time to see the city again.

I walk idly along the streets, then go to the port and watch the men arguing outside the custom house. The sun goes down behind the palace. I walk up towards the building which looms over downtown Barcelona. I climb the hill, stand on a terrace and watch the sun set.

The sun disappears into the pine woods to the west of where I am standing. The city ends down the stone track that runs along the coast in a gully between two small hills. The urban sprawl reaches inland for miles, and also spreads out north-east in a vast industrial complex, but going west along the coast the town almost immediately drops down into woods, and gradually levels out. In the distance I can see a plane take off from the airport. Tomorrow I will walk down there and watch the planes. Maybe I'll hitch a ride to somewhere fun.

The park around the palace is deserted. I walk down the curved road towards the big avenue, and down towards the bullring. I still cant make up my mind whether I should go to see a bullfight. It is one of those things which one should do in Spain, but somehow I disapprove. I cant quite accept the Spanish view of this drama.

Bullfighting is not supposed to be a sport or an entertainment, but a drama enacted with all the pomp and traditional customs and costumes one would expect to see in a play by Lope de Vega. The characters in his awful plays strut the stage like total idiots, pontificating about abstruse notions no-one in their right mind would characterise as anything but arrogant nonsense. I haven't seen a bullfight, but I've read so much about them, they seem to be in a similar class.

Isn't it rather pompous to talk about a noble contest between man and beast? The beast is attacked by dozens of people, all of whom are armed. The bull is on his own, and has no weapons other than his horns. Now, if the matador carried only a cape, and used that to weary and confuse the beast and then wrestled him to the ground that would be some kind of reasonable contest, but for the animal to be harried by horses and spears, then jeered at, and poked and prodded by sharp sticks, puts the event almost on a par with bear baiting.

There is something in the Spanish make-up that strongly relates to cruelty, and maybe they are relating to the cruel side of their nature when watching a bullfight. Maybe this is a good outlet for their socially unacceptable feelings, which are then assuaged, and the bull is their soul's catharthis. Maybe there is some strange cathartic way in which the struggles and pain of the bull are taken on by the crowd. Is this some religious experience, a kind of modern day crucifixion? But can one view six crucifixions every Sunday?

I stare across at the posters on the wall of the bullring. They don't look as if they are portraying some cathartic religious experience brought about by the sharing of suffering. They look more like Hollywood posters. Most of the bullfighters are advertised as coming straight from a triumph somewhere else. What have they triumphed over? Their own smallness? Their own inadequacies? There is nothing in the jubilant texts about a transfer of guilt to the bull. There is nothing about expiation, and yet I have read the religious texts that are used in school to teach the young to read. They are all about cruelty, and pain, and the way in which the saints have entered into the kingdom of heaven after excruciating experiences here on earth. It is as if the religious authorities are preaching that you can only reach redemption through extreme pain.

In every church are pictures of the saints being tortured. Christ hangs from his cross covered in blood, but also dressed in frilly starched miniskirts. The matador wears his starched clothes and fancy coloured trousers, his traje de luces, his suit of lights, dressed up almost like some votary in the church, while the bull ends up in the sand covered in blood.

What is going on here? All these things are so inter-connected. There is the church with its obsession with pain and sterility. There are the children's primers, set to instil the notion that pain is the most fundamental ingredient in life, and that to conquer pain is to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Then there is the public spectacle of the painful destruction of a noble beast, and this destruction is glorified. And the main man in this mess is dressed almost like a saint from one of the chapels in the cathedral.

Lorca's poem on the death of the famous bullfighter, Manolete, says it all:

At five in the afternoon there is an expectant hush in the arena

At five in the afternoon the high priest offers a sacrifice to the gods

It is five o'clock in the afternoon the madonna has been invoked and the congregation are seated

It is five o'clock the statue is lit within his alcove the statue comes alive and struts in his suit of lights and nobody notices we have made a mistake

At five we watch as our Christ goes forth to die for us struggling before the twisting horns

At five our Christ is an angel come to do for us what we dare not do ourselves

At five the angel thrusts his cape aside to reveal the Christ of the Bull the Christ that will suffer for the sins of those who watch the Christ that will be deceived, and deceived again and forced by our shining agent to lie in the sand and bleed and we are ready for our communion

The poem clearly mixes the religious with the spectacle. The matador's suit of lights, the blood of the communion; it is all there. But thirty years or more after Lorca wrote that poem did it still resonate in the same way? Somehow I doubt it. Somehow I doubt it ever did.

Perhaps I should go to a bullfight.

No. I wont go to a bullfight. I might as well suggest I go to a service this Sunday in the cathedral. I don't need churches. I don't need sacrifices. I don't need catharthis. I'm a fit and healthy teenager. Teenagers simply don't need all that crap.

What a fit and healthy teenager needs is some supper followed by a fuck. The Spaniards have this sorted out. The restaurant is on the ground floor, and the sex shop is upstairs.

It doesn't seem to matter what restaurant you go to, they all end up looking pretty much the same. There is one at the end of my street. As it is my street I ought to patronise the place. It also happens to be in a rather seedy area. If I turn right as I go from my hotel into the street I come to the Ramblas within about fifty yards. This is central Barcelona. If, however, I turn left, I walk past dark buildings and a waste lot on the other side of the road, then after a few yards I come to a very dingy area, where the place looks like some seedy East-End zone for prostitutes and down-and-outs in nineteenth century London.

I ought to feel threatened down here, but I am fifteen and walk the street with complete confidence. I don't have a care in the world, and anything nasty will, I am sure, simply bounce off me. I push open the door, and walk to a table. A waiter comes over with a menu, and I order a bottle of red wine.

It is very quiet in here. Breakfast was a noisy business with everybody talking to everybody else, and there were newspapers everywhere to read.

The evening meal is totally different. Everywhere is quiet. There are no papers. People come in quietly, whisper, and sit down. No-one seems to want to talk.

After the meal I ask where the guapas (pretty girls) are. The waiter makes a face. I have obviously used the wrong word, but he shows me anyway.

I go upstairs and am shown into a room. I swear the girl is younger than I am. I feel very embarrassed, and can't get it together. I can't function in a strange place according to a time-table. I want to flirt. She hasn't got the time. I want to slow everything down. She wants it all to happen as quickly as possible so she can get back to filing her nails.

She takes off her clothes, and with every piece of the strip-tease I lose more and more inclination to do anything at all. By the time she is completely naked I have no sexual desire whatsoever. This is not what it is all about. This was not a proper strip-tease, there was no tease at all. She might just as well have been at home undressing for the shower.

The trouble is, from her point of view it is a business. But that is not what it is for me. I want to get to know the girl. I want to chat, to laugh, to muck about, and play games. She just wants me to have an orgasm as quickly as possible.

The girl looks puzzled. I simply give her the money and leave. I had meant to ask the waiter what the proper word was, but realise I don't need to know.

I walk back to the Ramblas and the bright lights. The trees act like curtains, and the light weaves a way through the leaves. The birds are making a heck of a din in the branches.

This is more like it. I cross over to look in through the window of a restaurant. I walk a few more paces. A hand reaches out to touch my arm. I look sideways and see a very attractive girl, but covered in ghastly grease paint. She is wearing a shirt which is only buttoned half way up, and her tits are clearly visible. Her skirt is peculiar, with a half-moon cut out just below her crutch.

I stop and point to her skirt. "Where did you get that made?"

She smiles, then looks haughtily past me. "I made it up myself. Do you like it?"

"Very interesting," I say and walk on.

"Please yourself." She shrugs, and pulls a cigarette out of a pack.

I saunter round the square at the top of the Ramblas. This part of town looks posh and official, with large buildings, banks, and insurance offices. This is not for me. I turn and amble back down my favourite street, but I want to go to bed. Something has gone wrong with the day. Things will be better tomorrow.

My dark street now looks thoroughly seedy, and I just want to get to my room. What is happening to this city? It plays tricks on you. One minute it seduces you. The next it excites you, then slaps you in the face, and then menaces you. I've never before noticed how a city could have such a personality. It is like an animal which will uncurl and play with you, or front you out. Surely it isn't just me? I swear the damned place has some kind of Catalunyan soul, which is capriciously playing with me.

I shove up my window. I can still smell the fierce pong of cooked olive oil. There is a line of cats on a wall. Oh shit. They are going to howl all night, blast them. Suddenly I feel very lonely.

Damn. Why do I do this? Why do I have to run away from home and hide myself in some strange city?

I rush down the stairs again. I refuse to sit in my room and cry. I run down to the docks. I skip down a platform at the station. I go into the station bar and order a cup of coffee. I start drinking before I realise I have made a silly mistake. I should have ordered a carajillo*. I throw up my hands and shout "conyo"**. The barman turns round. I wave an exasperated hand in the air. "Un coñac por favor."

The coñac arrives. I take a slurp, then drink some coffee, and tip in a little brandy. I drink some more and tip in the rest of the brandy, and my world tilts back up the right way. I drink some more brandy. I giggle. This is the life. “He he.” I love Barcelona. Who the hell would want to be in England? “Ha ha.” I love it. I just love every silly minute of it. “Ha ha ha.” Wonderful.

Someone sits down beside me. He raises his glass. "Okay?"

"Okay? Ha! Estupendo!" And I burst out laughing.

* * * * *

Notes

* Carajillo is coffee with brandy. In the old days it came as two items, the coffee in the cup, and the brandy in the glass. You drink some coffee, and either intersperse the two drinks, or you tip some brandy into the coffee.

** Conyo is strictly translated as 'cunt', but is not considered as such a rude word as it is in England. A more useful translation in this instance would be something like 'Oh shit!'. It's different again when talking about a person, when it would be more realistically translated as 'silly ass'.

The bullring no longer shows bullfights. Long ago the stadium was transformed into a shopping mall.

jjohn