Not radical enough

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara looking forward to a bullfight (archive)

As someone whose political views are left of centre, I’ve watched with some despondency over the years at the growing opposition towards the bullfight within Spain’s Left-wing parties, and, more recently, the adoption of the corrida as a totem worth fighting for by the ultra-Right, anti-feminist Vox party. So I was pleased to learn of a new book, Los Toros, desde la izquierda - a defence of bullfighting aimed at Left-wing activists by Eneko Andueza Lorenzo, spokesperson for the Socialist Group in the Basque Parliament, Secretary General of the Socialist Party of Euskadi (Guipuzcoa), member of the PSOE’s Federal Committee and an aficionado.

The book is divided into eight chapters, each of which addresses Left-wing values - ‘Tauromaquia is freedom’, ‘Tauromaquia is not franquista’, ‘Tauromaquia is equality, solidarity and social justice’, ‘Tauromaquia is ecological’, ‘Tauromaquia is social economics’, ‘Tauromaquia is feminist struggle’, ‘Tauromaquia is internationalist’ and ‘Tauromaquia is culture’ - together with an epilogue on coronavirus and the corrida.

The author begins boldly by countering the common defence by taurinos that bullfighting shouldn’t be regarded as political, turning round the frequent saying that, “Tauromaquia is neither of the Left or Right” by stating, “Tauromaquia is as much Left-wing as it is Right-wing”, having evolved as popular culture and mirroring society as a whole. He points to Left-wing taurinos such as toreros Curro Guillén (who antagonised French authorities in Spain), El Sombrerero, Curro Cúchares, José Muñoz Pucheta (a Liberal spy described by Karl Marx as “a clear example of one of the earliest urban guerillas”), Lagartijo, Melchor Rodríguez (who became Director General of Prisons for the Republican Government during the Spanish Civil War and is credited with saving over 12,000 people from death by firing squad), Luis Miguel Dominguín (who the author claims was as communist as his more active brother, Domingo), Antoñete and José Miguel Arroyo Joselito; artist Andrés Martínez de León; taurine critics César Jalón Clarito (member of the Republican Radical Party and Communications Minister in Alejandro Lerroux’s Government) and Alfonso Navalón; while the book contains a host of references to Left-wing politicians who were also aficionados, including Niceto Alcalá Zamora (prime minister and president during the 2nd Spanish Republic), Indalecio Prieto Tuero (a socialist minister during the Civil War and later president-in-exile of the PSOE), Alfonso Guerra (vice-president to Felipe González from 1982-91), José Luis Corcuera (the Interior Minister who established new taurine regulations in 1992) and Mariano Fernández Bermejo (Justice Minister from 2007-9). Even the famous Osborne bull road sign was the work of an active Communist Party member, Manuel Prieto.

Some of the issues Andueza Lorenzo aims to address are dealt with better than others. ‘La tauromaquia no es franquista’, for example, is a fairly easy argument (although the role of land-owning ganaderos in the period leading up to the Civil War and during the war itself is not addressed). ‘La tauromaquia es lucha feminista’, on the other hand, is simply a tale of women’s marginalisation in the mundillo and would perhaps have benefitted from a broader focus on women’s enthusiasm for the corrida.

One of the dispiriting aspects of this book is to note how rapidly political support on the Left for the corrida has declined. Lluís Companys, President of the Generalitat of Catalonia from 1934-40 (latterly in exile), was a bullfight enthusiast. Enrique Tierno Galván, socialist mayor of Madrid during the years of “la movida”, helped establish the capital’s bullfight school and wrote positively about los toros as an aspect of Spanish culture. Just a few years ago, socialist administrations agreed to move los toros from the Interior Ministry to Culture, initiated a national award and backed the decree to establish and protect bullfighting as part of the national heritage. Now, all too often, PSOE politicians at best sit on the fence when it comes to supporting la Fiesta, while their partners in government, Podemos, are open about their wishes to prohibit it.

While Eneko Andueza Lorenzo certainly demonstrates that, historically, the bullfight is as much of the Left as the Right, for me, as a means of winning comrades around to the idea of not opposing the corrida, the book does not go far enough. There is too much looking backwards in it (much of it to do with the 2nd Spanish Republic and the Civil War) and not enough engagement with today’s politics. In particular, he does not take the opportunity to question the Left’s allegiance to the animal rights movement. ‘Animal liberation’ and ‘animal rights’ are almost custom-made terms to appeal to people on the Left, but a dig behind these would reveal thinking that goes far beyond ensuring animal welfare - the equivalence of animal species with that of human beings, not viewing animals as property, extensional self-defence, and compulsory vegan approaches to food and clothing, in fact all products. Completely absent from the book are comparisons of the life of the toro bravo with that of other domesticated cattle (‘La tauromaquia es animalismo’ anyone?) or, indeed, those many household pets experiencing abused, unnatural existences. Nor is there any discussion of the prevalent cultural imperialism of ‘Disneyfication’ or ‘Anglo-Saxon’ attitudes towards animals, nor capitalist encouragement of consumerism in relation to pet-keeping. Los toros, desde la izquierda sets out much of the context for a changed attitude towards bullfighting, but doesn’t go on to challenge the contemporary views that lie at the heart of opposition to the corrida.