Travel Photography > Iberian Peninsula > Cuenca, Spain

We drove to Chinchón after dark, and followed the empty yellow-lighted alleys about until we made it to the Plaza Mayor - the town square. Chinchón is a historical city - like Cuenca, it is ringed by water, and in the summers, the whitewashed and wood-framed square is converted into a giant bullring. The center lamppost is removed and rows of stadium seats are erected.

I liked this square, but I also tend to think bullfighting is cowardly torture; something extravagant and flashy and sensational that derives from that same Latin mistake called 'machismo'. Bullfighting is not an ancient Spanish tradition - it is a modern spectacle, a sick and sadistic voyeurism into the blood of death. Flamboyant peacockishness in males can be seen in any culture, but these over-hyped coliseum sports seemed awfully fishy for a landlocked metropolis.

Before bullfighting existed, hip peasants slid into the bullpens of wealthy ranchers and faced the bull bare-fisted, and slaughtered them in the true sense of sport and adventure. That tradition has replaced the sport with extravagance and entertainment. Traditions die, as is the siesta, anywhere. Hemingway loved the bullfight and he also loved marlin fishing.

Unfortunately, Hemingway's love for sport has ruined sport by bringing it fame and frog-belly white tourists. Marlin fishing has been no different than the bullfight: In The Old Man and the Sea and Islands of the Stream, men toiled against nature and beast with hook and line. He wrote of sportsmen and today teams of Floridians in giant yachts and embroidered shirts drop automated gold-plated reels in the water...and for what? All the Hemingway-marlins have been fished from the sea.

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