Las Ventas - cathedral or museum piece?

One wonders at the true reasons behind the recent announcement that Las Ventas will be used almost exclusively for bullfighting.

The bullring, whose construction dates back to the late 1920s, has historically been used for events other than bullfights – concerts, opera, basketball, circuses, amongst others. However, in 2017, the then Left-controlled town council of Madrid, which has jurisdiction over any non-taurine events that make use of the plaza’s seating, refused to authorise the use of Las Ventas as un espacio multiusos on the grounds that its security and safety aspects were deficient.

The bullring’s owners, la Comunidad de Madrid (CAM), responded by announcing a substantial programme of works to the building costing over 5 million euros. The planned works included reducing the slope of the tendidos, doubling the width of stairs, providing more comfortable seating and building further evacuation exits. Some 5,000 seats would be lost as a result of the project. Because the building has Bien de Patrimonio Cultural (BIC) status, the Comunidad needed the agreement of Spain’s Heritage Commission for the works, planned to be carried out in phases and with minimal disruption to the plaza’s temporada. The first phase – attending to roofing repairs and addressing humidity problems in the andanadas - got underway after the 2018 Feria de San Isidro and was completed that September.

You’d have thought that the bullring’s 18-month shutdown from the end of the 2019 temporada as a result of the coronavirus pandemic would have been the ideal time for the rest of these works to have taken place. But in January 2020, ABC reported that the project was months behind schedule. Although work was underway on improvements to the Patio del Desolladero, the Corral de Arrastre, the Patio de Caballos and the caretaker’s accommodation, the work on seating and stairway improvements had still to begin. The delays were said to be caused by the complications of obtaining Heritage Commission consent.

Last month, with the works to the tendidos still to commence, a CAM representative announced that, in future, Las Ventas would be used essentially as a bullfight venue rather than be an espacio multiusos, and, consequently, there was no need for the remainder of the planned works to go ahead.

While the announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by such as the Asociación El Toro de Madrid, one wonders if the decision was actually driven more by the costs involved than by cultural considerations. The fact is that the Las Ventas tendidos need those planned reforms – I can’t have been the only spectator who has sometimes found myself scrabbling on all fours to get to my seat, and one dreads to think how a mass evacuation of panicking spectators might go. Money, too, needs to be spent on attending to longstanding problems with the plaza itself, such as the huge size of the ruedo and the propensity for windy conditions down on the sand.

Without such measures, there is a danger that the so-called “cathedral of bullfighting” will end up as an uncomfortable and out-dated museum piece.