Torros!! Espana!

Last weekend, I traveled back to Galeana with my host sister. Just three weeks had passed since I had visited and the countryside was bursting with color. The fields looked like oceans of purple, white and yellow. The black bulls stood out against the brilliant flowers. Their father was having a tenta. At a tenta, he picks which cows will be used for breeding the bulls for bullfighting. There is a small bull arena at the farm, where the mock bullfight was held. People pay lots of money to come and watch and have lunch. We woke up early and the cooks were already preparing lunch and setting the long tables. The Spanish bullfighters had arrived and they were standing outside. They didn’t wear the fancy bullfighting outfits and they didn’t get paid for coming. It was considered training for them. At 11 a.m. a bus full of older men in a bullfighting club pulled around the driveway and we were almost ready to start the show. We put a tablecloth in the bed of an old truck and put baskets of cheese, fresh bread, potato chips, coolers of wine and juice carefully in the back. It was already 80 degrees out and the sun beat down on the dust bumpy road on the way to the training arena. I held onto the clattering glasses as tightly as I could as we crossed the fields to the arena. We parked the truck in the shade and walked over to see the cows. My host sister’s father looked at 6 cows at the tenta. The cows were two and a half years old. They were let out into the arena one at a time. Her father sat in a little closed off section on the edge of the arena. He had two huge ancient looking books. These books had the background information for every cow: their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. The books also said how the other cows performed, the how the bulls were that they produced.

In the arena was a man on a horse with a long pole. The horse had blinds over its eyes so it couldn’t see and padded covering. The Spanish bullfighters were positioned behind the barricades with their pink flags. When the cows were released the animals charged out spitefully kicking the sand and charging at everything. The man on the horse would yell and the cow would charge at the horse (hence the need for the protective armor covering on the horse). The man on horseback poked the cow with the long pole and one of the Spanish bullfighters would come out with their flag. My host sister’s father watched each cow for 20-30 minutes. He wrote down notes like how they charged, what position they kept their head in, how fast they changed direction and how their stamina and endurance changed from the beginning to end. Based on this information, he would decide if that cow would become a mother or if it would become a hamburger. The cows that were rejected would be kept on the farm for about 4 more years and then sent to the butcher. The skilled Spanish bullfighters waved their flag and tired the cow out. No one was hurt and sometimes you forget just how dangerous the sport is. We learned the next day that one of the best bullfighters in the world, José Tomás Román Martín, had been gored at a bullfight in Mexico. The bull put a six-inch hole in the man’s leg and he needed 17 pints of blood! The bullfighters have to constantly be on their guard and expect the unexpected. The spectators sat in plastic chairs on a raised level, smoking cigars, peering down through their smoke. After 3 cows, there was a break and everyone came over to the truck to get food and drinks.

After the event was over, everyone came back to the house to have a typically Portuguese meal. There were different types of Portuguese sausage, cooked cabbage, carrots, and beans, pork and chickpeas. It was served buffet style. As always in Portugal, the red wine ran freely, an empty bottle always being replaced seconds later with a full bottle. There were five or more different desserts including two cakes made from cookies and cream, an almond cake, and an egg and sugar dish.

Later when we were driving the cooks home, I saw the largest solar power plant in Portugal. It is placed on a plain in Alentejo; a place in Portugal that has the most amount of sun throughout the year. The solar panels are always at 45 degrees, but they turn to follow the sun’s path.

On Sunday, my host sister and I decided to “walk to Spain”. I opened a gate to a bull field and we drove in (shutting it behind us of course). The bulls just looked at us, but they ran away from the truck. We bumped along a dirt road until we came to the rusty gate that separates Portugal from Spain. It wasn’t hard to find a place where two pieces fence were tied together with a thin wire. We untwisted the wire and stepped into Spain. Spain looks a lot like Portugal, the rolling green hills dotted with flowers. We explored for a bit then we heard the distant sound of bells and bleating goats. Not wanted to confront the goats; they can sometimes have tempers; we headed back to the border. Near the fence a bunch of small barking dogs suddenly appeared. At first, we though they were wild dogs and I was getting ready to do some newly learned kempo moves (Last week, I went with my friend to her kempo training class. Kempo is a type of martial arts like karate). We noticed a man and his mule under a nearby tree and realized he was the goat herder and the dogs were his. We said, “Hola” and he helped us to reopen the fence and we walked back into Portugal.