The Bulls

With the Chicago Bulls snagging first place in the NBA, home court advantage throughout the playoffs and home to everyone’s favorite for Most Valuable Player, I thought it’d be fitting to blog about The Bulls.

Los Torros that is.

It’s about that time of year, in Sevilla, where the bulls come out to play. During la Feria de Abril, Sevilla hosts a week long marathon of bull fighting. All day, every day.

It’s such a big deal that it attracts millions of people from around the world to Sevilla. The Kennedys and Kings and Queens from the European Union are some of the famous celebrities that have strolled around the streets of my city.  

A few friends and I are looking into buying tickets for this sought after Corrida (Bull Fighting) event. To our surprise, most of the tickets are already sold out…or out of our price range. The only seats left are way up in the stadium, out in the beating midday sun of Sevilla. Doesn’t sound too bad until you check the weather around that first week of May. Temperatures will reach higher than 100F. Yikes.

I decided to talk to my host parents before purchasing my tickets, hoping to get persuaded out of buying them. But I discovered that La Corrida isn’t just a bunch of bull fights, it’s a treasured art form.  If it weren’t for La Corrida, there would be no use for bulls in the world. A sad thought.

For years the bulls are fed, developed and trained in a particular way to get ready for these fights. Their stamina is built up in such a way, that even the smallest jab, during a fight, doesn’t affect them much (sound familiar ahem*Chicago Bulls*ahem). And when they are finally killed, they feel pain…but never suffer.  Apparently Torridos (the men) train for years and years and have become experts at what they do…each fighter earning anywhere from 30,000 to 90,000 Euros per fight (and mind you, each fight last 20-30 minutes).

And you thought Derrick Rose was making bank.

I decided that I’d give this whole bull fighting deal a chance. Manolo (my host dad) said I wouldn’t be able to handle it, that it took a certain strength and tolerance to watch a Torrido struggle to prevail over this large, dangerous creature.

Little does he know, I’ve patiently watched my Bulls struggle to return to the main stage and regain the glory that once belonged to Chicago, for the past 13 years.  

It’s not a matter of having the stomach to stand the two hour show, it’s a matter of believing that the opponent with the most hunger, desire and heart will come up on top.