feria de san blas

disclaimer. this turned out epic. In word it is 12 pages double spaced. longer than any essay i've had to write for college in quite awhile. it's not really all that coherent. So, if you dare, dive into the mind of jake. take it in sessions if you are really intersted. Otherwise, i enjoyed writing for only myself.


I’m way past due for an online journal entry, aka, a blog. But, it’s been a few weeks of transition. A few weeks of finding my place in Madrid. Of finding what it means to survive in a city of six million were you never see a familiar face in the streets even when you take the same train every day at the same time. But, I assure you I am finding it, and even may jump the gun and say have found it. While, it isn’t as I had imagined, it’s certainly not with Spanish friends, the language barrier sees to that, but currently it is with other foreigners like myself. Others who have run to Madrid from their home countries all for the sake of finding whatever is to be found when removed from a comfort zone, removed from familiar culture. Some of them are world travelers. My friend Lindy has spent the past two years moving from country to country. She’s as much of a vagabond as they come. She embraces the fact that she’s spent many winter nights sleeping in the streets and finding dinner in the dumpster. Embraces the fact that friends are the highest form of love and that one can never expect more than a good conversation and a shared solitude in the warm sun. Of the group, I believe I’m the only first timer. Most are experienced travelers. Been to many places, used to existing on the outside. It’s a very accepting culture. One that recognizes the individual worth of all peoples. All peoples have talents hopes dreams even when they are the simplest forms.
My intention of this blog is to write about the Feria de Sans Blas, and the effect bullfights have had on my mind, that I went to this weekend in Valdemorrila, a very small pueblo (village or small town) 40km north of Madrid. The experience was phenomenal and it was hands down the best three days I’ve spent in Spain to date. But my mind is wondering and I’ll get there eventually. First though I feel I must give some thoughts on Madrid to fully understand the grandeur of my fin de semana en Valdemorrila.
Madrid is a city of jaded individuals. It’s comparable to that of New York City, or I’m told, seeing how I’ve never been. But I imagine all huge cities must be this way. When every face you see is a face of a stranger. When one cannot leave the house and go anywhere outside of their barrio (neighborhood) and possibly recognize anyone. In this circumstance one always has a feeling of insignificance and irrelevance. Whether they realize it or not. Locals I imagine do not. In order to feel like one matter in a city of strangers one must rely on one self. One must put credence, and too often in Madrid it is an overwhelming belief of self, in order to feel like they do matter. When I go to cafes, and not just me, it’s locals as well, the camereras (bartenders or waiter, there is no distinction between the two, verbally anyway) are short. They spit out, “digame” which roughly means “talk to me.” It’s short and curt and they expect a short and curt response. Do not try to be polite in Madrid, you’ll only piss people off. And, being an American who is learning Spanish pissing people off is what I do often. Though it’s occurring less as my knowledge of the language grows. But still, this is a city with an influxed ideal of self worth. But, that’s okay. That’s how it exists. That how the people here survive the feelings of insignificance. And it’s becoming very beautiful to me.
In order to survive in Madrid one must have a niche. All people have them. It occurs in the barrios. Do not expect to come to Madrid and make friends with the camerero on a first visit. Do not expect to go to Sol or Plaza Mayor or Chueca and befriend anyone. These are the cosmopolitan areas. These are the areas where self worth swells the highest. But in your barrio, the place you dwell and shop and spend a few hours in the plazas you’ll begin to be accepted. It’s happening for me. It’s how the locals survive. When walking down the calle (street) at six pm and looking through the windows of store fronts I see the same faces in the same bars each night. It’s really beautiful. The bars and cafes and restaurants—there is hardly a difference in any of them, bars are places for families, not like in the states—are filled with friends who joke and laugh with the staff and joke and laugh with each other. I frequent a café called Obador where I like the café and the pasterillas (pastries, which are nothing like American pastries, super sweet things here hardly exist) and the camerara talked with an old couple at the bar and they laughed together. And tonight must have been my seventh time going there and for the first time one camerera spoke English to me. She’s waited on me many times allowed me to look foolish and now she speaks English! This is Madrid in a nutshell. Once accepted, once becoming a part of a community, then one can really begin to feel like they are at home. I’m glad I’m settling. The first month, as noted in one blog, was very hard. But my niche and settling has begun. Even in Madrid, a city far from my ideals of what makes humanity humane.
So Madrid, gave me a sour taste for Spain initially. Culture shock my grand uncle Maurice would call it. And he’s right, definitely culture shock. But (now we are getting there), Valdemorilla has shown me a side of Spain I love. I absolutely love. The Spain of Hemingway romances. It was a weekend where I lived as though I was a character from a Kerouac novel, or under the ideals of Thoreau and Whitman and Emerson. It was a weekend that reminded me of who I am. What I love. And if I could live like this eternally I’d be a very happy man. But, realistically it does not seem plausible. Even Lindy, the closest person I’ve ever met to existing like a beatnik in true from has to have a job for a year at a time. She has had many hardships and scary instances and times of desperate poverty. Which, all are romantic. All are life. All are a part of an accepted existence. One, I am not sure I could give up my schooling for. But, one day would love to try.
Feria Sans Blas. The week long festival of the patron saint of Valdemorilla, whose population is nearly 8,000. Where to begin? Chronologically? Grouping events? Or just pick a moment and write? That seems good.
I feel in “love” with my first Spanish woman. Obviously lover here is used as about as loosely as it can be. But, my lord, what a beautiful and kind woman. When I first exited the bus west of the city center on the outskirts, not sure of where to go, or where I was, I walked north towards the buildings, it seemed logical. I found a hostel near a very old inglesia (catholic church…well, church, but all churches are catholic here…nearly). I walked into the hostel expecting the same struggles I deal with in Madrid but found such a warm welcoming. My Spanish beauty smiled immediately and stood up from the bar where she was reading book and said “beinvenidos,” and I requested a room. The hostel was owned and operated by one family, who were sitting across the room gathered at a table eating dinner and drinking wine. Quickly the girl, whose name I never learned, realized I didn’t speak Spanish too well and she began to speak to me in English, though her English is on a par with my Spanish. We talked briefly, but warmly, and she escorted me to my room and opened the door and asked if she could do anything else. I removed the few non essential items from my bag, a pair of underwear, a change of socks, and school text book, and went back down to the bar. I ordered a glass of wine and when the daughter, my Spanish queen (haha), went to pour me a glass from the bottle behind the bar, her father shouted from the table and she put the bottle back on the backbar and walked over to the table and took the bottle the family was drinking from. She told me it was a better wine and the father wanted me to have some. It was so awesome. The act that is. The wine was good too. And then her and I sat and talked for an hour, her in English, I in Spanish (we both seized the opportunity to practice a foreign tongue). It was a simple conversation, but it was so pleasant. They had two bulldogs and one had a cone one its head and bandage on its leg. And she told me he was too fat and his knee was giving out and he had to have an operation. We both laughed at the fat thing sitting crumpled upon itself looking helplessly around the room. She told me about the fiesta and what was occurring and the events that would take place. At point in our conversation she would say excuse me, and turn from the bar and yell, I mean really yell (“mama!”) to her family across the room about me and what I just told her about myself and they would laugh or nod their heads, and she would turn back and tell me what they had said. Then I left, went and explored. But, when I returned, every time, the family, be it the brother the sister or either of the two parents, I was always greeted with, “Que tal?” and they expected, no were generally interested in a response. It was great. Absolutely great.
Now what? Hmmm…let’s continue with the niceties of the peoples in Valdemorilla. The streets of the small pueblo were lined with booths and vendors selling all sorts of random things. Children’s toys. Hand made leather bags and wallets and bracelets. T-shirts. Spanish souvenirs. Tons of food, comparable to food at the state carnival, only Spanish. And walking along the calle and looking at merchandise the proprietor would nearly always asked “de donde eres?” (where are you from). Which in Madrid is unheard of, people don’t care. And we’d tell them we were from the states (here the we is lindy and I, and I’ll have to take a whole section to write about the awesome time I had with her) and people were receptive to it. Again, unlike Madrid.
Another example (I have two more I’ll type though I could go on and on) of incredibly friendliness of the Spanish: We were at a café, El Fronton (which has amazingly huge and delicious plates for super cheap) and I wanted a wineskin (you know those leather bags that you put wine in and are commonly passed around at a bullfight…and yes they were passed around at the bullfights) and I didn’t know the word for one and I didn’t know where to buy one. So I asked our camerero as best I could where I could get one. It took some creativity, “Sabes donde yo puedo comprar un…uh…bolso para vino…” and then some hand actions, and then, “son de piel.” Eventually we got there. He began to draw me a map before throwing it away and grabbing me by the arm and saying, “Vienes (you come).” He led me out the store down the street and to a store which sold them. He picked one out for me said, “esta bein?” and smiling and saying he’d see me back at the café. It was so incredibly nice. I loved it. Really really did. I tipped him five euro, which is unheard of here…tips aren’t common in Spain, and five percent is a huge tip.
Finally, at the end of our adventure while lindy and I were waiting for the bus back to Madrid, a man approached us and said, “tienes fuego (do you have a light)?” we started talking to him and, obviously, he asked where we were from and why we had come to such a small and untouristic destination (valdemorillo has no grand historical relevance, just a small village). We told him we had come for the bullfights and he immediately assumed, as we were American, we had found the event grotesque. But once we told him how much we enjoyed it, how much fun we had, a whole line of dialogue was opened. Angel, the Spaniard, was an older retired man. And his thing, as all retired peoples have a thing, was he traveled city to city during the bullfighting season and ran with the bulls (I was unaware that there are fifty pueblos in Spain that have a running, valdemorillo included…I’ll get there…). He said he runs 120 times a year. The runnings usually occur during the pueblos ferias (festivals celebrating patron saints) and they usually have three or four during the week. And he runs at many. He told us the basics, what was expected, how well the best runners could do. Nobody runs start to finish in one go…the best runners (yes there’s a whole league of people who travel and run at all the cities) can run 150-200 meters at a time (they release one or two or three bulls at a time, each being set off with a loud firework shot into the air, and there is about five sessions to try and make it all the way to the plaza). Anyway, point being, cool man very friendly. We exchanged numbers with him, and he told me to call him in the middle of march, for that is when the season truly begins, valdemorilla begins very early, and we are going to give us information on all the runnings in all the cities, and, hopefully, we are going to meet him in some pueblo, somewhere, and run with him and then go to the fights with him. It was a very cool experience and one I’m very glad occurred.
K, lets give credence to the romantic side of the weekend with Lindy. And not romantic like boy girl kissy kissy…tiene un novio, so there was none of that. But, romantic in the sense of Whitman and Snyder. Romantic in the sense of aimless wonderings which fill the soul with such joyous pleasure of the simplicity man seems to forget. Lindy and I did nothing spectacular in the sense of my other adventures here. It wasn’t possible, there’s nothing grand to see in Voldemorillo. The basis of our weekend was drinking wine, which costs all of two dollars for entire day!, and walking and enjoying nothing but observations and awesome conversations. At one point, after desayunar (breakfast), I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said let’s go nap in the park. Which is one of the best times I had in the pueblo. We laid down between the shadows of the tree in the sun whose rays were warming and mixed perfectly with the wine in our bellies. There was a light breeze which swayed the grass gently and on blew onto my face like the feeling of soft felt embracing my skin. We fell asleep in the sun and occasionally one would stir and then the other would stir and we’d both know the other was awake, and someone would ask a quiet question and the other would respond and when the conversation had settled and had been finished we would close our eyes without any transition and fall back asleep until one would stir and repeat the whole process. We laid in the park for four hours. With no anxiety or desire to anything but simply exist. At points I’d pull out my journal and write a poem or make an entry and she’d wonder and pick a flower and investigate the trees, and then we’d return lie back down and enjoy the solitude which each of us has learned to embrace in our lives, learned to fully love, and also, embrace the perfect shared solitude. The understanding of silence and allowing ones self to feel the emotion the world creates if one is willing to perceive it.
On the last night we were there we snuck onto a roof of building under construction. We watched the stars and she told me tales of her travels and her life of wondering. And I shared stories of my domestic life, which the morals one pulls from each are the exact same but the experiences are different. We drank more wine and smoked cigarettes and could see the lights and rooftops of the entire pueblo. We played harmonica, though neither really know how, and the songs from each sounded perfectly sorrowful and full of the beauty of solitude. After leaving the roof we headed back to the park and we stopped at a frutaria, and I bought an orange and she bought some pickles. And we sat in same place and talked more, and smoked more, and drank more, and I ate the finest orange I’ve ever ever had. Oh god, to live like this always would be the pinnacle of my existence. To be so happy with so little. For one weekend I was Japhy Ryder, I was a dharma bum, and I did not need anything more than shared solitude with another who understands it so finely and an orange and some wine and tobacco.
Now what? There was the church, where I accidentally walked in on a funeral and did not know it was a funeral until the grand doors to rear were swung open and line of pallbearers walked forward and picked up the casket hidden from my view and the funeral line that proceeded past me while I knelt and prayed hoping they wouldn’t think I was a complete asshole for crashing their funeral, hoping they’d think I was a devote catholic weary from travel finding sanctuary in the chapel, which isn’t entirely false, but certainly not based upon the catholic notions. There was the church itself constructed long ago of solely stone and mortar, and the ground too was paved with old granite stone. And there was its high arched roof which hung omnisciently 100 meters above our heads and the fine paintings from artists that hung on the walls. There was the pastors voice who spoke through a microphone and his voice through the speakers echoed off the walls and returned and reverberated in such a manner that I could not tell where the voice was coming from, it only seemed to come from up high, from god himself and the feeling the huge church and the pastors voice like god’s, which was a feeling of punity and irrelevance, which to me was amazing a feeling which inspired self–reliance and the recognition that when I die I will die and be forgotten within a few generations, granting I do have children and they have children. And the only solution to this is to live each day and moment and enjoy all the world has to offer. There was the graveyard the meditation on death that one must go through in order to fully understand a bullfight. And the Spanish views of death which are far from Americans. Death is not ignored. The dead are buried in sarcophaguses above the ground where the dead’s bones rest right in front of you, not hidden deep within the ground. Death here is something accepted, as far as I can tell. And I went to the catacombs of a monastery where all the kings of spain are buried with the usac group a few weeks ago. Most of them were very uneasy being so close to the dead. Knowing their bodies lay hidden but their caskets fully visible. This is a difference of Spain. Death is something confronted, feared still, but confronted, which is the true meaning of a bullfight. The bull symbolized death and the matador man kind. The even is not a barbaric one. It is not cruel. It is no more cruel than in nature when mother bear eats her cubs, or when I pack of dogs gang up on another dog. Cruelty is a notion created by man, for man, based upon their own insecurities and the feeling of uneasiness created by a bullfight. A Bullfight is man striking back at mortality. For one afternoon a group of mortals come to feel vicariously immortal through the bravery (if the fight is good) of the matador. Bullfights are rich in tradition which still exist to this day. They are far from cruel, if one is willing to realize that man is an animal of nature just like the bull and that we have the ability to separate ourselves from nature as though we are not apart of it. Carlos Fuentes said of bullfights, “Spain rips off the mask of our puritanical hypocrisy in relation to nature.” The bull is our brother, the spainards know this. When a bull is killed cowardly they boo the matador and comment on the unjustness of the death of the bull. These events are not for the simple minded. Sure, simple minded people do attend, but they do not understand the brilliance of what they are seeing. A bullfight, when truly amazing, leave all who witnessed it sure of the inner power, sure that they are alive, that they do matter, that their life is no apology, but a feat and triumphant victory. Man is an animal, which has evolved, to its place of power but still recognizes its utter weakness. Through bullfights, for one afternoon, everyone feels alive.
I guess I really have nothing more to say of a bullfight. It’s pointless to try and explain the stages, I read them before I went, I read Hemingway’s memoir on them, and still I could not comprehend them until I saw them. And if Hemingway can’t make me understand than I cannot make you all understand either. It’s a very complicated event. With three stages, and any one of the stages that does not go perfectly can ruin the rest of the fight. I saw it happen nearly every time. Hemingway said one in ever twenty fights you see will be mundane and will not give an individual a true understanding of what bullfight can be, or should be. And this proved to be true. I saw eighteen fights total. One was unbelievably brilliant. Unbelievably. I had witnessed fourteen fights before seeing a brilliant fight. And I had a notion of what a bullfight could be from the prior fourteen. I had a glimpse into the feeling of immortality, into the artistic genius of matadors. But once seeing Daniel Loque fight, I was overwhelmed with a feeling indescribable. It was powerful, beautiful. Bullfighting is an art. It truly is. And it takes an artist, with inherit artistic talent to create the event as art. There are many good bullfighters who are not artists, who are athletes. And these fights are the ones that become mundane. But bullfighting is an art, if you see a bullfight with an open mind, you will understand how true this statement is.
I will give slight homage to Daniel Loque. He is seventeen, incredibly young for a matador, and he faced the bravest bull I had seen that night. The way to judge a bull is not by how fierce he is while entering the ring, but by how well he handles the first wound he receives. If when first picked the bull fights back he is brave. This bull immediately went after the banderillos and showed amazing bravery throughout the entire fight. And do not kid yourself, that bullfights are a science and a simple minded event where a man calmly tricks a bull. Matadors and members of the cuadrillo die every year. They are facing a very dangerous animal. The matadors have great fear. I saw them sweat with anxiety, I saw them run from the bull, I saw them hurt the bull cheaply out of fear. There is a very real danger in bullfighting, and the best matadors are the bravest ones. Or the ones who are able to control their fear the most. Daniel was ambitiously, possibly naively brave. He worked so close to the bull he was covered in the bull’s blood, which is not that common. He hypnotized the bull with his muleta (the scarlet cape), and he did not allow the picadors or banderillos to hurt the bull in the way other matadors do. He wanted the bull strong. He wanted the bull healthy. And this is precisely how he faced the bull. And, he showed no fear. His proximity to the bull was outstanding, his calm and collective presence is unbelievable considering the circumstances. He killed the bull very soon too. Long before the other matadors would have. He did not tire the bull to the point of exhaustion. He killed the bull when the bull was very likely to do much damage to him. Witnessing all of this was unlike anything I have ever seen. And I will look for Daniel to fight in las ventas (the Madrid plaza de toros) while I’m here. I will travel to see him again. He was truly an artist who has no fear. However, of characters such as himself, Hemingway says there are many. Many young and ambitious matadors will fight brilliantly for a season, and maybe two, until they receive their first coranado (gorging) and then they have fear, and then they work far from the bull. But, I’m glad to have seen him with his youth and his bravery intact.

Huzza!
Jake.