Every town has a local fiesta with a running of the bulls. Americans only ever hear about Pamplona, but in fact we had three to chose from this weekend.
They set up these temporary walls leading to the bull ring.
The heart of these festivals are the local social clubs. They organize activities for the whole week, book musicians for the evening concerts, and prepare free food to hand out. The food above is churros and chocolate.
In another village, we had fried eggs.
Random pink ladies.
Here is the add for the bullfight in another village, Hoyo de Manzanares.
The actual name of the festival is in honor of the local virgin, in this case of the Consolation. I misspoke at the hospital and said that protestants don’t have so many virgins, and they set me straight that it is all the same virgin, with the same face, but she shows herself differently to different people and they love her for all her characteristics. The most beloved in the city is La Paloma, the one my hospital co-worker invited me to, and there is another, La Mudena, but she’s a bit more for the royalty and not for the common people. So that’s what I know so far about the Virgin in Madrid.
A singer that I like played for the opening night concert. The plaza was lit up like Christmas. The walls echoed with people singing along. The boys are lined up for cotton candy.
Here come the bulls!
Some people have a nice balcony view. The two women in the street are friends from the embassy.
Grandma is about to get run over by this kid because...
the bulls are right on his tail.
My town, Pozuelo, does not even have a bullring, and the information in the flyers was all a little sketchy. I found the temporary bullring by going to the end of the road with the barriers.
The kids run into the bullring and then the parents chase them around with the wheelbarrow bulls. After the kids, the locals get in the ring with younger bulls. One young man got trampled, butted, and thrown into the wall. We were already below the bleachers, so we saw the emergency team jump into action. They were impressive and had the young man into the trauma van in two minutes flat. His friends were left outside crying.
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Later that night we were back for the bullfight.
After he killed the bull, the torero made a circle around the ring. If he does a good job, the judges award him the bull’s ear, which he throws into the crowd.
My kids scrambled for the ear, and got it, but ultimately gave it to the family behind us. They did not like the bullfight much, but we had some good conversations.
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