Bullfighting Makes a Comeback in Spain Thanks to Young People

Alvaro Alarcon is imagining what his big bullfighting debut at Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring will be like. He is an apprentice, or novillero, who will soon face this exciting challenge!

A 24-year-old man has been training in a dusty area outside of Madrid. He’s wearing a special suit that was made for him with beads and gold embroidery. If he succeeds this time, he’ll be able to achieve the highest rank as a bullfighter – someone who fights bulls that weigh over half a ton!

Bullfighting is the way of life for many people. You think about it from the moment you wake up until you go to bed, even when you are asleep! Surprisingly, though it has been said that bullfighting in Spain is dying, the number of bullfights taking place in the country are at their highest level since seven years ago! Also, younger people seem to be really interested, with older fans slowly disappearing.

On a Sunday afternoon, Alarcón needs to stab two young bulls in their should blades with a sword. This will pierce the animals’ big veins, making them bleed a lot. 8,700 people show up to watch this event and many of them are young kids and teenagers who are cheering him on. It seems that although there are all types of things to do now, enough people showed up to make this kind of activity still popular.

Attending bullfights is something only a small number of Spaniards do now, with just 2% taking part in the 2021-22 season. Surprisingly, the biggest group of people who did attend was teenagers aged 15-19. On the flip side, elderly people aged over 75 were least likely to go watch one.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child worried about this and asked Spain to stop kids from going to see bullfights in 2018 because they want to prevent children from being exposed to violence. Unfortunately though, so far their request hasn’t been acted upon.

Bullfighting may not be popular like it used to be fifty years ago, but Spaniards in the southern and central parts of Spain still consider it as an important symbol. Even though there are fewer people attending these bullfights nowadays, those who come take their support very seriously.

Miriam Cabas is a 21-year-old bullfighter from the southern Andalusia region. She’s one of only 250 women who are registered as professional bullfighters in Spain. She noticed that, since she was a kid sitting in the stands, there were fewer people coming to watch bullfighting. But now it looks like this sport is getting more popular among younger people and many of them seem interested in learning more about it.

Many young people who are politically right-wing have started wearing the colors of Spain’s flag on their clothes, like on polo shirts and bracelets. They also go to bullfights as an expression of pride for their country’s traditions.

When Alarcón was a teenager, his parents were shocked when he told them that he wanted to learn about bullfighting. “I really liked sports and activities like dirt biking,” Alarcón said. But before that time, he had never even seen a bull until he watched a movie about it at the age of 13. That’s when he realized what an amazing job it could be.

Not only bullfighters, but also the people who arrange bullfights and the journalists who write reviews of it are part of this industry. For example, El Pais (a famous newspaper) recently wrote a review about a bullfighter called Álvaro Alarcón. They said that he was great and was awarded with an ear from a dead bull.

Africa Calderon Garcia, who is 20 years old, works as a seamstress for a clothing store in Madrid. She specializes in sewing the special suits of lights that bullfighters wear when fighting bulls. As she was growing up, Africa went to a lot of bullfights with her grandmother and still continues this tradition even though she loves animals very much.

She was working on a bright blue shoulder section, threading white beads onto it. “Bullfighting is an art form and part of Spanish culture,” she said. People don’t recognize the amount of hard work in this activity and how well the bulls are taken care of. While some people state that these bulls are healthy and can withstand being inside the ring due to their outdoor life before the event.

Last year, many young people were angry when the government decided not to include bullfighting in a special grant given out to 18-year-olds. This grant was worth 400 euros (about $436) and could only be used to do cultural activities. A bullfighting association took matters to the Supreme Court of Spain and the ruling went against the wishes of the current left-wing government.

The court case had a good outcome because in Spain, bullfighting is treated as special and protected by an old law that was created to keep it alive. Yolanda Morales from the Animalist Party said in a video on social media recently “This law makes bullfighting safe in Spain even though it’s still a bad thing to do.”

Since the 70s, some well-known bullrings in Barcelona, Benidorm and Santa Cruz de Tenerife have not been used for their original purpose anymore – they were turned into stores, movie theaters or even dance clubs.

Antonio López Fuentes, who is Calderón García’s boss and a master tailor, thinks that the government recently tried to stop something which has been around for a thousand years. He believes that young people think, “If you try to keep me from something, I’m gonna do it!”

On the night before his last bullfight fight as a novice, Alarcón was badly injured by a bull and got three broken ribs. After he recovered from surgery, he sent a text saying that he would soon be back in the ring again.