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Hemingway Adventure
Valencia, Spain (second day)
Every day at two o'clock a crowd engulfs Valencia's main square to be blasted by the mighty explosive event they call Mascletá.
Vicente is undergoing an almost Clark Kent-ish transformation as he warms to the theme.Bullfighting, he says defiantly, is something that cannot be done without passion. Technique is nothing without passion. He grabs at his cashmere sweater as if wanting to tear out the heart beating beneath it and show me the passion inside.
'You live your passion all of the day, you know. You don't have holidays, you don't have weekends, you don't have family, you only have your passion and the toro and the fiesta and no more.'
'Do you still have fear?'
He looks at me pityingly.
'Of course! If they don't have fear, they are crazy people! Matador is a person I think normally very intelligent and normal. A brave person is not someone who has no fear!'
I am not sure if this vehemence is the frustration of a highly educated, sensitive man continually forced to defend something at which he is particularly gifted or just a demonstration of the pride and controlled aggression which makes him able to do what he does.
All I know is that I would never describe anyone who stares a charging bull in the face two hundred times a year as normal.
But this is exactly how Vicente seems when the interview's over. He returns to his soft-spoken, almost solemn politeness, shaking all our hands and inviting us to come and see him fight tomorrow, and to go backstage afterwards.
Whereupon he slides gracefully out into the street leaving me alone with a plate of pig's testicles, by now greasy, congealed and ready for my close-ups.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Valencia, Spain (second day)
- Country/sea: Spain
- Place: Valencia
- Book page no: 121
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