Yesterday Mia and I saw our first bullfight ever and it was a spectacular event!

During Las Fallas there are bullfights every day in Plaza de Toros and we were lucky enough to get tickets to a fight where matador David Fandila or “El Fandi” was performing his arts!

We arrived early at the arena, because these days with the Fallas things tend to get very busy. Earlier today we planned to visit the Mascleta, but thousands and thousands of people had the same idea, so we could not see anything.

Although I bought seats for the sector-sol of the arena, we were sitting in the shade, probably because it is still early in the year and the sun has not reached the top of the sky yet.

It seems that also the Spanish people don’t want to miss a second of the bullfights as everyone was in on time…

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The Plaza de Toros was built in 1850 and currently seats almost 13,000 people.

The Spanish style of bullfighting, the corrida de toros (literally running of bulls) or fiesta brava (the ferocious festival) takes place in 3 stages:

1. tercio de varas
2. tercio de banderillas
3. tercio de muerte

Of course the bullfight is most dangerous for the matador, but – as we saw yesterday – also in the tercio de banderillas accidents do happen and can be very painful. When a banderillero that was part of the cuadrilla (entourage) of Juli‚àö¬∞n L‚àö‚â•pez “El Juli” tried to plant the two banderillas on the bull, his vest was caught by a tip of the bull’s horn and it ended in misery for the guy. We actually thought he was dead instantly, but we read today in the newspaper that he survived the incident; although barely…
You can find a great photo-series here.

The first fight with matador Finito de Cordoba was not great; he needed to long time to kill the bull and the audience was not amused, which resulted in lots of “boo’s”.

However the rest of the show and especially the second performances of El Juli and El Fandi were absolutely amazing!

El Juli was spectacular by turning 360 degrees with the bull following him and El Fandi started his tercio de muerte by sitting on his knees while the bull stormed at him!

We took quite some photos and you can find the entire gallery here.

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