George Young reflects on Catholicism and the corrida, where the only certainty is death.
The convergence between bullfighting and Spanish Catholicism could not have been clearer this summer in Madrid’s Plaza de Las Ventas where, each year, a Mass takes place in the ring of what is technically “the largest church in Madrid” on the feast of the Assumption. It is an event that has occurred each year since its inception in 1964 to commemorate the mortal wounding in the ring of Manuel Leyton, “El Coli”. The annual service is therefore one of adoration, memorial and petition – especially so for madrileños who will fight en capilla (in chapel) and maybe face death later that evening or in the season. “He who does not fight on 15 August is neither a torero, nor is he anything,” runs a Spanish bullfighting aphorism.
