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Hemingway Adventure
Valencia, Spain (third day)
At the corrida (the bullfight) in Valencia. Vicente, bedeckedin traje de luces, his suit of lights, completes a pass.
Ticket-touts are out at Valencia's graceful brick bullring long before this afternoon's fight begins and the souvenir-stalls are doing brisk business selling scarves, packs of cards, baseball hats, T-shirts and key-rings bearing likenesses of the stars of the circuit, though I notice a range of car-window ornaments offers Jesus and General Franco as well.I hire my cushion and search out my seat on the bank of long concrete terraces. There is a mix-up however and the seat is already taken. Then, just as I'm desperate, fame comes to the rescue. No sooner am I identified as the killer of small dogs in A Fish Called Wanda than I cease to be a troublemaker and am treated most cordially by all. The man whose seat it is introduces himself as Paco and orders his wife and friends to squeeze up and make room for me.
Paco, in a smart grey lightweight suit, looks like a late-middle-aged businessman. Like his wife and friends, he seems to be dressed more for the opera than the bullring.
Each of the three matadors fights two of the six bulls, and Vicente's first bull is the third of the afternoon, indicated as weighing 600 kilos and hurtling into the ring like a tank on steroids. Vicente, in black hat, blue and gold suit of lights and pink stockings, mops his brow with a towel before going forward.
The most unpleasant face of bullfighting, in which the bull is drawn away to charge a heavily armoured horse (whose vocal cords have been cut to prevent it whinnying) takes longer than usual and the crowd don't like it.
Vicente draws the bull away with his cape and fights close and is generally thought to have done well.
The fifth bull is fought very stylishly and the matador, Enrique Ponce, has the crowd on its feet in appreciation. He is awarded two ears by the judges, an acknowledgment of great skills.
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PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Hemingway Adventure
- Chapter: Valencia, Spain (third day)
- Country/sea: Spain
- Place: Valencia
- Book page no: 124
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