The Best American Sports Writing 2013 Read Online Free PDF

within inches of the enraged animal), bullfighting remains the national fiesta or the
fiesta brava
—“the wild feast.”
    In a standard
corrida de toros
, the common term for the spectacle, there are three matadors on the bill and six matches total. The fame and fees of 21st-century matadors range wildly, depending on official ranking and also “cachet”—a torero’s reputation. Group A matadors such as Padilla must perform in at least 43 corridas per season. These guys are the
seguras
, and the industry can support only a dozen or so of them. To maintain their status, Group As need to be frequent fliers and serial killers, traveling fiendishly from February to October, sometimes performing in plazas on opposite coasts in the same week. For Group B matadors, the minimum is 13 corridas. Group C? No minimums. It’s the ladder rung where rookies get classed with semiretired stars. Padilla spent years in Group C before finally breaking through.
    Today it’s harder than it’s ever been to earn a living in the bullring. Unemployment in Spain is nearing 25 percent, and the country’s flailing economy is taking its toll on the
mundo taurino
. (“We will
torear la crisis
,” said Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in a press conference, invoking the figure of the bullfighter to salve Eurozone panic.) Nearly a hundred corridas have been cut from the season, and still plazas are often only half full.
    Is bullfighting an art, a sport, torture? Dying out, or more popular than ever? You can find evidence in every direction. Spanish newspapers cover bullfighting in the culture pages, alongside theater reviews. In 2010, Catalonia outlawed
corridas de toros
; in Madrid they are legally protected as a “cultural good” and publicly subsidized, like the National Ballet. Telemadrid’s latest reality show is
Quiero Ser Torero
—“I Want to Be a Bullfighter.”
    â€œWe Spaniards don’t understand ourselves, the majority of Spaniards, we don’t understand our country without our fiesta,” says Juan Jose Padilla. “The fiesta unites the nation.”
    Bullshit, say Spain’s anti-
taurinos
. “The majority of Spaniards are against the bullfight,” says Silvia Barquero, spokeswoman for Spain’s animal-rights party, PACMA, who believes the Catalonian ban augurs a new and enlightened era in Spain. “We should not cause suffering to an animal that has the same right to life as our species.” (You certainly don’t have to be a member of PACMA or PETA to find a corrida alienating, cruel, and atavistic.)
    Then there is the controversy over televised corridas. In 2006, when the socialist party was in charge, Spain’s national TV network, TVE, stopped showing them. Now, with Rajoy and his conservative Popular Party back in power, the bulls have returned to the public airwaves. On August 24, TVE said that it would again air live bullfights after the six-year hiatus. Previously the network had pulled them from its schedule to protect minors from violence, but superfans could still get the afternoon corridas on premium cable channels. This is how Pepe and Ana Padilla were able to watch their son’s goring in the instant it occurred.
    Not only could they watch it—thanks to a freakish coincidence, you can now watch them watching it: on October 7, a Canal Sur production crew happened to be taping in the home of Ana and Pepe, filming them seated in front of their son’s televised image for a newsmagazine segment titled “The Courage of a Bullfighter.” When Marques gored Juan Jose, the glass eye of the camera was trained on Ana Padilla’s face.
    Should I stop taping? asked the cameraman.
    â€œSiga! Siga!”
said Pepe. Keep rolling. If these were Juan’s
pasos ultimos
, his final moments, he wanted a record of them.
    The cameraman obliged, and the result is an uncanny hall of mirrors. The nested footage of Ana and