Death in the Afternoon

My father was quite an aficionado of the Spanish bullfight and over the years I attended a lot of bullfights with him. But none was as memorable as July 11, 1987 in Pamplona for two reasons, I was almost killed in the encierro—the running of bulls—and, later that afternoon, I watched a picador narrowly escape death by the one of the same bulls.

I have to admit that in the ten years that I regularly ran the encierro in Pamplona I was always the most apprehensive about running the bulls from two particular ranches—the Muiras, which have the reputation of having killed the most matadors, including Manolete, and the Pablo Romeros, which were the biggest bulls in Spain. That particular Saturday morning, the fifth day of the Fiesta of San Fermín, we were running the Pablo Romeros, known by the American runners as the “boxcar” bulls. Since it was my third year attending the fiesta, I had not run in more than a dozen encierros, so it’s not surprising I made mistakes, serious mistakes.

I started the run in a position that only an experienced runner should take, near the top of Calle Domingo, only a few hundred feet from the corral, which meant that the bulls would catch me at the 90 degree turn where the course heads up the dreaded Calle Estefeta. The Estefeta is a straight and narrow uphill street of shops shuttered for the run. The street holds no quarter for runners looking to bail out other than a small alley that bisects the long two-block stretch.

In my short time running the encierro, I was aware of the particular dangers of the course and one of them was that turn, which was difficult for the bulls and even some of the lead steers to negotiate. I was told that I didn’t want to be on the outside corner as the bulls skidded into the turn and to be between a 1200 pound bull and the heavy wooden barricade.

But on that chilly July morning that’s exactly where I found myself, at exactly the wrong time. One of the bulls skidded into me and hit me with his hind-quarter so hard that I flew about 10 feet into the barricade well ahead of him and out of his path. It felt like getting hit by a car.

It was an inglorious encierro for me. I lost all the skin the entire length of my left arm and, unknown to me until I returned to the States, had dislocated a disc in my vertebrae. That morning, however, the medics at the makeshift enfermaria, bandaged me up and sent me on my way.

Aching all over as I was, I knew I had to bare the pain to see these bulls fight that afternoon. If my father didn’t have a date for the bullfights, I could wrangle his other ticket in his abono from him. I enjoyed seeing a bullfight with my father as he was quite knowledgeable. He also had a press pass, which he occasionally used to get us into the callejón, the passageway between the barricade and the stands to get closer to the cuadrillas, the bullfighters’ entourages, and the action. That he said I could go with him.

Of course, the Pablo Romeros did not disappoint. I remember the hush that fell over the crowd when the door from the stalls opened and an even larger bull came out for the second fight of the afternoon. His name was “Chivito,” little goat, and weighed 651 kilos or 1435 pounds. I couldn’t imagine why he was given such a name, but it would soon became apparent.

Chivito ran the length of the ring twice then trotted out to the center and, after turning abruptly as if something had caught his attention, charged the barrera and leaped over it, landing in the callejón, where he chased mozos through the narrow passage before being led back out into the ring.

“He’s big enough he can see over the barrera,” my father observed. “He’s attracted to any movement behind it.”

Then the first picador, a horse-mounted torero with a lance, came out along with another torero carrying the traditional magenta and yellow cape to draw the bull’s attention. The bull immediately charged the horse and hit it so hard that the picador flew off. He quickly got to his feet, but would have been gored if not for the torero attracting the bull’s attention with the cape. The picador scrambled over the barrera into the callejón. The bull turned again to the now rider-less horse, and butted his head under the horse’s belly like a goat and proceeded to lift the horse completely off the ground and with a flip of his head tried to send the horse over the barrera.

As the mozos held his now battered but yet unbroken mount against the barrera the picador climbed back on his horse, while the torero caped the bull a few more times. Again the bull, ignoring the torero, charged the barrera and leaped over it. Again mozos ran for their lives in a chase to lead the bull back into the arena.

By then the second picador had come into the ring. Chivito immediately charged the horse, pinning it against the barrera and then got his head under the horse and proceeded to lift both man and horse off the ground. If it hadn’t been for the mozos pushing back from the callejón, he would have flipped both man and beast out of the ring.

The bull turned his attention back to the first picador and charged him again. The picador got his lance into the bull just as it met the horse, got under it again and gave it a toss. Because the picador was leaning over so far, the toss caused him to fall off the horse and be impaled on the horns of the bull. The bull started violently tossing his head, throwing the picador off who was stuck to his horns.

The bull was eventually distracted long enough for the medical team to pick up the fallen picador. As they raced out of the ring with the picador on a stretcher, he managed to give the crowd a thumbs up, which they acknowledged with cheers and bravos.

“That’s always a bad sign,” my father said. “He’ll be dead before they get him out of the plaza. I’ve seen it too many times before.”

Finally, the first banderillero came out and placed the first pair of banderillas in the bull. I noticed, due to the sheer size of these bulls, it was difficult for the banderilleros to get their barbed sticks, banderillas, over the horns and into the back of the bulls’ necks. They were arching way over and leaping higher than I’d ever seen them to avoid the lethal horns.

It’s not uncommon for the matador himself to place one of the three pairs of banderillas into the bulls neck, but that day the matador who was to fight Chivito, Luis Francisco Esplá, refused and was jeered by the Pamplona crowd and even had a bottle thrown at him. After all six banderillas had been placed and Chivito was showing signs of tiring, Esplá came out to fight.

Esplá’s fight was mediocre, not worthy of such a fine bull, but eventually death came to Chivito, but not to the picador, Victoriano Cáneva, who survived his cornada. I found out later, that the horns of the bull had punctured a lung and his liver. He was in surgery for two hours in a Pamplona hospital and spent the next 11 days in intensive care, after which he was moved to a hospital in Madrid. Luis Francisco Esplá vowed that day he would never again fight in Pamplona.