Labor Day

In Madrid, someone at some point in the past decided that Labor Day should fall in the spring, on the first of May, rather than in the fall. I got up this morning with the intention of heading to the museum district and trying some tapas, but only made it as far as the Puerta del Sol (remember, the “center” of the city) before noticing a giant mass of people moving through the street. My first thought was that there was a parade, but a quick glimpse at the signs being waved around expelled that thought. This was a protest, and when I asked someone what it was about, I found out that it was a workers’ protest trying to secure pensions and job security. To further the matter, it was Labor Day, so it was the perfect time for the demonstrators to argue that the state of labor in the country was nothing to celebrate, though as a member of the EU I doubt it is that bad. Also, Spain’s government is having enough debt difficulties at the moment, and I doubt that this protest would be any more successful than the demonstrations taking place every day in Greece.
I walked through the gardens in the museum district (the museums were closed on Labor Day) and made it to the Atocha train station in the southern part of the city. That is the one that is decorated like a rainforest, so I looked around in there a bit before reserving my seat to Lisbon the next day. After that I decided to take the metro to the Ventas, the stadium in Madrid where the bullfighting takes place. The building is circular and dates back many years (at least it lookes like that) and the bullfights take place every day at 6:30. I had enough time to get back to my hostel and still return to the stadium on time, so I did in order to ask about the Tapas night (which was supposed to be rescheduled to that night) and to pick up my sweatshirt to have as the sun went down.
I got back to the Ventas with a few minutes to spare and was shown to my seat, really just a place on a stone bench somewhere in the stadium. I was sitting in the sun since those seats are far less expensive than those in the shade. I got to see as the workers evened the dirt and prepared the field, and suddenly they left and the bull appeared. The bull looked confused at first, but quickly got used to the concept of charging at the men who were taunting it and waving red capes. Eventually the picadors came out on their horses and threw spears at the bull’s back, creating a stream of blood but not visibly hindering the bull’s ability to charge. On the contrary, this just made the animal more angry and ferocious. The bull even nearly managed to knock over the horse once, and certainly would have if it weren’t for the padding that the horse wears. After the bull had been stabbed several times, the matador finally came out with a sword to finish it off. Either he would aim for the back and try to hit the heart, in which case the bull would stumble around for a minute before collapsing. Otherwise, the matador would try to stab the bull’s neck, which wasn’t too hard since the spears to the back had weakened the bull and caused its head to droop.
I sat next to a couple from Australia there who were traveling around Europe for a few weeks, though they were staying in Madrid much longer than me. There was also a group of American tourists in front of me who were extremely disgusted by the show, and while I was not at the point of vomiting or too depressed about seeing the bull die (think how many animals are killed more brutally for food every day), I didn’t think I would become a regular fan if I had the chance. The reason for that isn’t that I find the sport too graphic, rather too repetitive. There were 6 bulls that fought that night, and only the third one really put up a good fight that was really entertaining. It managed to flip the matador twice and knock one of the horses against the wall, but in the end even it was killed by the exact same method as the other 5. The process was interesting the first couple times, but I could only marvel at the bullfighters’ close calls for so long.
After the fight I returned to the hostel and found out that Tapas night would indeed be happening, so I quickly got ready and met the rest of the group. The leader was a native of Madrid, and there were three others excluding myself, one man from Spain, one from Argentina, and one woman from Italy who had been studying in Spain. We started the night speaking Spanish and it remained that way until the end. The first place we went to was an Italian restaurant where we ate pizza, and then we stopped and went to a place to listen to some music. It was packed and we only stayed there a few minutes before leaving and heading back towards the hostel. I got into my room and noticed that in my absence it had filled up, so I was careful to be quiet as I went to sleep.