The Last Arena

Para una versión de este blog en español, La Última Arena: En Busca De La Corrida De Toros, haga clic aquí.

I created this website – as distinct from my online archives of journalism, research and academia at www.fiske-harrison.com – to keep track of my particular work in the world of Spanish bullfighting. 

Above you can find pages on me, the author, an introduction to the structure of the bullfight, a more in-depth piece on the nature of the Spanish fighting bull, and how to contact me.

Two other posts I would mention here are this one on the popularity of bullfighting in Spain and the often quoted ‘Gallup’ polls, and also this one on the 535 famous professional bullfighters killed in the ring in the past three centuries. However, the standalone piece on this blog, and the product of almost 25 years of research is my long essay on bullfighting here.

In the past two and a half decades I have watched well over a thousand bullfights, run the bulls myself in Pamplona for a decade and a half – along with a over dozen other bull-running towns such as Cuéllar and San Sebastián de los Reyes, Tafalla and Falces. I’ve fought alongside matadors in the ring and wrote the first two years of those experiences as a national book award shortlisted memoir, Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, available from Amazon (for Amazon UK click here, US here, Canada here, Australia here and India here.)

“Complex and ambitious, compelling and lyrical.”
Mail on Sunday
“An engrossing introduction to Spain’s ‘great feast of art and danger’. Brilliantly capturing a fascinating, intoxicating culture”
Sunday Times
“A compelling read, unusual for its genre, exalting the bullfight as pure theatre.”
Sunday Telegraph
“He did not expect to fall in love with bullfighting, but then he had his eyes opened by the beauty, dignity and art of the sport.”
The Times
“Thrilling. An engrossing introduction to bullfighting.”
Financial Times
“An informed piece of work on a subject about which we are all expected to have a view.”
Daily Mail

…BUT ALSO…

“Although Fiske-Harrison develops a taste for the whole gruesome spectacle, what makes the book work is that he never loses his disgust for it.” (Daily Mail), “It’s to Fiske-Harrison’s credit that he never quite gets over his moral qualms about bullfighting.” (Financial Times), “Uneasy ethical dilemmas abound, not least the recurring question of how much suffering the animals are put through.” (Sunday Telegraph), “Fiske-Harrison admits that with each of his fights he knows more, not less fear. When he kills his first and only bull he feels not triumph but overwhelming sadness for a life taken.” (Mail on Sunday) and “The question of whether a modern society should endorse animal suffering as entertainment is bound to cross the mind of any casual visitor to a bullfight. Alexander Fiske-Harrison first tussled with the issue in his early twenties and, as a student of both philosophy and biology, has perhaps tussled with it more lengthily and cogently than most of us.”(Literary Review)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Fond memories of how I met the Spanish politician and amateur bullfighter, Adolfo Suárez Illana – number two in their conservative party, Partido Popular (PP), and son of the founding Prime Minister of Spanish democracy, Adolfo Suárez González – and the number one matador of Spain for so many years, Juan José Padilla. These two were my first teachers, and first friends, in the world of the bulls.

Nice to see them surprised on Spanish television by a question on the origin of their friendship with me, although Adolfo may be overstating it when he says I am better known in Seville than himself and Padilla.

(The video automatically starts at 1:00:45, but one can scroll back.)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

The Dominican Republic, located on the eastern side of of the island of Hispaniola.  French-speaking Haiti forms the western side, and they are divided by a border wall, begun in 2022, and second in scale in the region only to that which divides Mexico and the USA, begun post-9/11 by President Bush (and continued by Obama, Trump and Biden.)

The DR was the site of the first European settlement in the Americas and is home to Santo Domingo, the oldest European-founded city in the New World. El Caribe, established in 1948 and based in Santo Domingo, is a widely read national newspaper, written in Spanish, the national language. It has been translated by myself with the help of Chat GPT. 

While it is always flattering to be referenced as an authority on the subject of el mundo de los toros bravos, ‘the world of the Spanish fighting bulls’, it does mean I feel compelled to write a few words to explain what this article is actually about. 

In Spain, this event would be called a capea, not a corrida, due to its informal style, lack of the traditional three act structure, and also that these are clearly not fighting bull breed animals. In fact, they are not even the same species. These are zebu cattle, Bos indicus, while toros de lidia, aka toros bravo, ‘Spanish fighting bulls’, are a strain of Bos taurus. What is more, they are bred for ferocity, and raised in a semi-feral environment with no contact with humans – other authors like to call this ‘wild’, but this is a scientific misnomer for any animal of domesticated heritage – and these animals below are clearly not naturally aggressive but what the Spanish call manso, ‘tame’, hence they require so much provocation to charge and are so unreliable when they do, precluding the practice of true toreo, the Art of Bullfighting. 

Ironically, this also makes the event, in its own way, even more dangerous. 

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

EL CARIBE

Bullfighting, a Cultural Passion That Endures in El Seibo

Manuel Antonio Vega

November 22, 2024

THE UNTOUCHABLE

(Originally published in French, translated from the original English enclosed below. En español aquí.)

I was told this story by an elderly Englishman who boarded the ‘Ciudad de Sevilla’ alongside me at the Port of Marseilles, en route to Rio de Janeiro in the Spring of 1940. His French was rusty and this had led to some confusion with the marseillais-speaking porters, so I assisted him and he thanked me in my own native Castillian, even though we had conversed in English up until that moment.

Seeing him dining alone that evening, I accepted his invitation to join his table. The rest of the ship’s passengers were refugees from Europe’s troubles, and that difference in itself gave us something in common.

He was clearly a man of private means and was journeying to Petrópolis to pay his respects at the funeral of the son of the old Emperor, whom he had known as a young man. I told him that I worked as a translator and had been sent by a publishing house to assist one of their authors, an Austrian, who had fled due to his religion and race and was seeking safe haven in Latin America.

We bonded over a shared love of history and storytelling and, as the wine flowed, he gained confidence and began to switch readily between my language and his, and I remarked that he must have spent some time in Spain.

This remark, innocently made, gave him pause, and I wondered if I had offended him or opened some old wound, and I apologised. He brushed my words aside and, having made some internal decision, began to tell me the story which I recount below, to the best of my ability and memory.

What shocked me at the time was not the story itself – fiction is at least half of my work – but the way that he told it. As I say, I cannot speak for its truth, although one wonders how an Englishman would know so accurately the inner workings and ritual of that closed, arcane and cruel world of ‘tauromachy’.

However, on his absolute sincerity I would bet my life: he believed every word he spoke. With each passing segment of memory his skin flushed and paled, his fingers trembled and steadied and the tendons of his hands and neck swelled and became distinct as though in a much younger man under great physical and emotional strain. This was not a performance, but a reliving of events both terrible and mystifying.

As a side note I should add that the ship docked at Barcelona the next day to take on a last group of passengers before heading out into the Atlantic. When I did not see the Englishman at dinner I enquired of the steward and was told he had unexpectedly disembarked in Spain. Whether he caught another ship or ever even made it to Brazil, I do not know.

*                      *                      *

I travelled through Spain in my twenties on a small inheritance. I had served in the Second Battle of Ypres, where I lost my innocence and the use of one leg, which explains the silver-headed cane which I carry to this day. Being no use in battle, and with the war between the various descendants of the Celts and the Saxons continuingly so bloodily in the north, I travelled south, to Madrid, and gained an interest in the more personal, less mechanised form of slaughter so wrongly called by my countrymen the bull-fight.

It was for that reason I saw a famous young toreador of the day with a bull named Barbero on the 27^th of June 1917. It was the same day my brother succumbed to wounds received at Messines. Such were the times. That is also why I remember the date, although I should always remember that bullfight. Until, that is, I saw one better. I get ahead of myself, though. Suffice to say it was no coincidence that it was then that my passing interest turned to a fascination in that strange, formalised dance between man and beast that is la corrida.

I spoke with friends in the city, and they told me to head further south, and, from there, friends in Seville sent me out into the countryside so I could see from where those magnificent animals and valorous young men gain their instincts and their techniques.

I saw things in those days I had not thought possible. I have seen courage in the field: I have seen a regiment of men hold steady as half their number, comrades and friends, were snatched out of existence as though by the hand of some impatient deity, leaving behind a mist of pale redness and the sound of roaring thunder.

However, I had never seen a man, armed only with a piece of cloth, hypnotise a half of a ton of wild beast until it rests its horn against him like the Lady and the Unicorn in those tapestries which were also the products of Flanders but in a more civilised age.

As with the visionary and the zealot, at each new revelation my obsession grew.

It was around that time that I heard the story of a matador who was so nonchalant of death that the people who saw him said the bull that would kill him was not only weaned and eating grass but had probably already been loaded onto the truck bound for the plaza de toros that morning.

They had continued to say this about him for fifteen years.

The strangest thing of all about this fearless and nerveless man, besides his apparently charmed life, was the evolution of his character: at one point he had been the star of the bullfighting world, but that had changed. He had ceased fighting in the major bullrings or cultivating the visibility that such a profession requires. When he was young he had fought in Barcelona and Madrid and been seen in the finest restaurants of those great cities. Then he started only to fight in small, unknown towns, Tafalla in Navarre or Osuna in Andalusia – do you know them? No one does.

He even began signing his contracts under an assumed name so he would not appear on the posters announcing his bullfights. He stopped paying the customary bribe to the critics in the newspapers, and they duly ceased writing about him. Then, finally, he ceased appearing altogether.

However, among those with deep afición, true lovers of the taurine arts as I was seeking to become, his name was still one to conjure with, spoken with passion in those hidden bars near bullrings with their dark-wood walls and cigar-smoke air.

His name was José Luis Castro Martín, but he was known more simply as ‘The Untouchable’.

To read on, please click here…

THE TIMES

JULY 13 2024

DIARY

PATRICK KIDD

A LESSON IN COLD BLOOD

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, Britain’s leading bullfighter, is inspired by men who keep their upper lip starched. He writes in Boisdale Life that his hero is Charles Upham, twice winner of the Victoria Cross. In 1943, Upham attempted a bold daylight escape from a prisoner of war camp only to get caught on the barbed wire. A Nazi corporal put a loaded pistol to his head but Upham reminded him that it was only legal to shoot a PoW while escaping. Since he clearly could not move, he should be spared. He then lit a cigarette and said: “And I refuse to be shot by a bloody corporal. Bring an officer.” Upham lived for another 51 years.”

Para leer esta publicación, ‘Colgando La Chaqueta: Adiós a las armas’, en español, por favor haga clic aquí

On Sunday in my beach café in Sotogrande in Andalusia I opened the Spanish newspapers to see myself and my bull-running jacket – originally my old secondary school athletics ‘colours’ blazer awarded for running the 400m when I was 17 and which just so happened to be in the traditional red and white of the world famous Fiestas of San Fermín in Pamplona – being discussed in the national newspaper La Razón under the headline, “Why are there young men who run the bull-runs of Miura wearing jackets in San Fermín?”

Why are there young men who run the bull-runs of Miura in San Fermín?

This 14th of July, the Seville-based ranch marks 42 years at the Pamplona festival

After eight days of bull runs, the legendary and totemic Miura bulls, as feared as they are revered, bring a climax, with the permission of the “pobre de mí“, to the San Fermín festival. The six bulls from the Sevillian ranch (raised on the Zahariche estate in Lora del Río) return for another year, now for the 42nd time, to test the runners who dare to position themselves in front of the herd.

This 14th of July 2024, the Miuras mark their 42nd bull-run, a breed that never disappoints with its challenging behaviour. They are especially dangerous in the final barriers and at the entrance to the bullring, due to their skill in orientation.

Moreover, this is the ranch that has caused the most injuries of all types in the history of San Fermín: 225 in total. In the last bull run of 2023, fortunately, there were no injuries from bull horns, but there were six cases of trauma. The duration of the run was two minutes and 14 seconds.”

Running the Bulls in a Jacket

For those who follow the bull-runs on TV, there is one image that particularly stands out: a significant number of young men dressed in jackets, instead of the classic white shirt and red scarf. We wonder why this is:

As journalist Chapu Apaolaza recounts in his book ‘7th of July’, it was a trend started by the American spy Keith Baumchen, known as ‘El Bomber’: “Bomber and his friends decided one day to run the bull run in jackets, as one would attend Sunday mass in the USA, as a sign of respect.

“This custom is still maintained today in the Miura bull runs. Bomber’s jacket was ivory-coloured. All kinds of blazer models parade down Estafeta Street, including the red with white stripes from Eton College worn by Alexander Fiske-Harrison,” Apaolaza reports.

However, as I said, I was drinking an café cortado on the other side of Spain and my jacket was hanging in a wardrobe at my family home in East Anglia.

To read on click here.

COURAGE BEST

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Britain’s only bullfighter and veteran bull runner, pays homage to British stoicism and bravery

THE most laconic tale of British bravery in combat is arguably Lord Uxbridge’s sang froid remark after being struck by cannon shot at the Battle of Waterloo: “My God, Sir, I’ve lost my leg.”

To which the Duke of Wellington replied:

“Yes, Sir, so you have.”

One doesn’t need to be a Kenneth Tynan to recognise this as a performance, even if made unconsciously, with understatement used to say infinitely more than the words themselves. It does not make much difference if the story is apocryphal: the mere fact that the story has survived in popular consciousness in this form tells us exactly what the British perceive their own particular brand of bravery to be.

It is also hardly surprising, then, that I grew up with the Charge of the Light Brigade as my model, as it was to the British Army. Indeed, it is from the cannon captured that day that most of the Victoria Cross medals are cast (more of the VC later).

Compare this form of courage with a tale from my adopted country of Spain. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, the medieval Alcázar fortress of Toledo was under siege to little effect, when the attackers captured the son of the colonel of the garrison. They reconnected the severed telephone lines and summoned the colonel to the parapets so he could watch as his son was handed the telephone to tell him that he would be executed unless the fortification surrendered. The colonel told his son that ‘he knew what to do’. Father and son saluted one another, the son turned and told his captor to shoot him, which he duly did, before he turned to salute the father, who returned the salute.

The tales of Uxbridge and the Spanish colonel are extreme examples of courage. But like a cocktail mixed with alien versions of similar ingredients, the latter’s is somehow un-British. Nevertheless, we recognise the resemblance.

Seneca, the father of Roman Stoicism, was a Spaniard born in Córdoba, hence the Hispanic flair in his pronouncements on this subject. “A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave,” he wrote. It was no idle theorising, for within twelve months the Emperor, his former pupil, falsely accused him of conspiracy. Seneca duly took his own life, remarking, with more than a hint of caustic Britishness: “After murdering his mother and brother, it only remained for Nero to kill his teacher and tutor.”

One of the reasons I came to Spain was to witness an echo of such bravery outside of war. Ernest Hemingway gave a similar reason for coming to watch bullfights one hundred years ago. I remember when I first went to Pamplona to run with the bulls, I witnessed the boiling mass of 300 tonnes of humanity fleeing four tonnes of toros bravos, Spanish fighting bulls. The mass of people shattered and fled like a medieval rabble under a heavy cavalry charge. This was a sight few people in the modern era will ever see: a populace put to flight through its own streets, as though a siege had been broken, a city wall breached. Of course, I am aware that the event itself, and even talking about having done it, is all rather un-British.

To read on click here. 

(Para leer esta publicación en español, haga clic aquí.)

When the great fine art photographer David Yarrow contacted me to help him capture an image of a Spanish fighting bull, I contacted my friend, mentor, colleague and the greatest ambassador el mundo de los toros, ‘the world of the bulls’, could ever ask for, matador Eduardo Dávila Miura. We then took David to the most famous fighting bull-breeding ranch in the world, Zahariche, outside Seville, which is owned run by Eduardo’s uncles, Eduardo and Antonio Miura, and introduced him to the 8-year-old, two thirds of a tonne semental, or breeding sire, bull Pañolito, who has never been fought and never will be.

No animals were harmed in the taking of this photo, only humans (I am still walking with a stick after breaking my ankle in that ring.) You can read all about it in my earlier post here, with a selection of photos by the rest of our team, including three-time British Champion Jockey and two-time Grand National winner Richard Dunwoody – who took the photo above – and professional polo player and horse-breeder – and semi-finalist in the British Ladies Open Polo at Cowdray Park last year – Klarina Pichler.

After the massive success of the release of limited edition, signed and certified prints of that image, El Toro, he has gone on to release another photo, which is my own personal favourite from that day, Bullish. (Click on links in-title to purchase from the Maddox Gallery in UK or US.)

In my own mind, I titled El Toro ‘The Threat’, and Bullish ‘The Hero’. And it is the latter which will soon be hanging on my own wall. That is if they deliver the 5 foot 7 inch wide version. If it is the 7 foot 10 inch print – and that’s not even the largest – it will have hang in the office of City stockbrokers Fiske PLC on loan and I’ll visit it during my monthly board meetings.

It is a suitable venue, given that the bull and the bear are the historical symbolic representations of optimism and pessimism in the stock market. Of course, David knows this all too well, having worked in the markets himself, and is why he named the picture as he did. In his own words:

Three years ago, I took a picture of an imposing mother bear in a rainstorm in Alaska. The image grabbed the eye and held it because the bear was emphatically in a face-off with me and she cut a formidable presence. It looked like my sparring partner would win any battle and therefore I captioned the photograph Bearish.

Early in 2024, I travelled to Seville to photograph the famous bulls of the Miura ranch. They are the most dangerous and revered lineage of fighting bulls in the world. It was not an assignment for the timid, as the behind-the-scenes footage shows. Most of my photographs of this bull failed to convey the immediate sense of threat as this emotion is only evoked by a head on charge, which tends to be challenging to photograph. In a full-on encounter, common sense and self-preservation should instinctively take control to the detriment of the filming.

But in this split second, I felt secure enough to give the camera half a second more. That’s it – half a second. But that was all I needed. Before I entered the arena, I had no preconception of my lens choice or my shooting position because I had no idea what to expect from these bulls. I certainly didn’t expect to so intensely process the trade-off between risk and reward. It was the purest of iterative processes.

The bull has great stature and looks to be a King amongst Kings. He conveys total confidence in himself, as well as an ability to manage the current situation. It was time to marry up the picture Bearish, with a new picture Bullish. ~ David Yarrow

For all enquiries, contact alexander@thelastarena.com

“Chat GPT 4.0 is a different animal.” I was told this by a friend and client, who made his billions in silicon valley, and whom I taught how to run bulls in Pamplona, and how to bullfight with young bulls alongside my friend and colleague, matador Eduardo Dávila Miura – no animals harmed, only humans – and to whom I was trying to sell an exclusive version of the great work on the sire of the Miura Spanish fighting bulls, who fathered the bulls with which we ran, by the fine art photographer David Yarrow, who photographs animals so famously well…

…sometimes doubling down on that fame by adorning the beasts…

…but always taking the finest of images, even if this is the one of which twenty three prints exist and are on sale here, as opposed to the one I am discussing which no one else has.

For more on the photo and the taking of it, during which I broke my ankle, click here.

Returning to Artificial Intelligence, the newest edition of Chat GPT is vastly more consistent and apparently intelligent than its precursors, which is what makes its views on my book, Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, so interesting. Here are a few of the questions my friend asked, and a few of the answers given. (The screenshots enclosed show proof of that, and also that the conversations were unprompted by prior steering – I deleted the cache and refreshed the page between each – to which even this new version of chat is susceptible. (Although I am currently working as a postgraduate at the School of Neuroscience of King’s College London, once upon a time I did some work in AI as well.)

So, here are the four questions and their answers on Into The Arena that so caught my tech billionaire friend’s interest. I follow with two more complicated questions which may be of more interest, from literary criticism of my writing to an AI attempt at imitation.

Question
What is the most important book on bullfighting in English by a living author?

ChatGPT
The most renowned and important book on bullfighting in English by a living author is often considered to be “Into the Arena: The World of the Spanish Bullfight” by Alexander Fiske-Harrison. Published in 2011, the book offers a profound and immersive insight into the controversial and ancient world of Spanish bullfighting. Fiske-Harrison not only explores the history and culture of bullfighting but also delves into its ethical dimensions by training as a bullfighter himself. This firsthand experience allows him to provide a unique perspective on the subject, blending a personal narrative with a broader cultural and ethical exploration. The book has been recognized for its nuanced and balanced approach to a topic that often divides opinion. Continue reading →

I was contacted by the National Public Radio Service of the United States originally to give some comments on the reopening of the largest plaza de toros, ‘bull-ring’, in the world, in Mexico City after it was sumararily closed by a judge on what appears to have been a whim. The legal argument proffered, that the citizens of the city had a right to live in an environment free from violence was entirely without merit as it hard to see how boxing tournaments and martial arts contests would surely be banned under those auspices, unless it is the killing of the animal which is the crux, in which case farewell to slaughterhouses.

In the end, I was actually asked to talk about women in bullfighting, which I have always found a fascinating subject. I actually began the post-script of my book, Into The Arena, by saying:

The book is dominated by men. This is because it is representative, but there are women in the world of the bullfight. Like the Venezuelan torera Conchita Cintrón, ‘The Golden Goddess’, who died aged eighty-six in February 2009, warranting obituaries in every major British newspaper as one of the greats of the bullfighting world, although in the write-ups her abilities were overshadowed by her sex. Antonio Ordóñez and Luis Miguel Dominguín were not so well covered in death. Or Cristina Sánchez, who was by all accounts a great matadora (not just a torera, as, by the time of her ‘moment in the sun’, a woman could officially take that title) but whose career stalled because the great men of the day would not fight by her side. Or the novillera Conchi Ríos, whom I saw turn the men’s sniggers into olés in Casa Matías as we watched her on the television while she fought around the corner in the Maestranza in May 2010. Or another trainee, who partnered me in training … to whom I explained that the bullfighter could be Lady Macbeth too, although what she did with that advice I’ll never know.

I had not revisited those words since I wrote them almost fifteen years ago, but apparently Shakespeare is still foremost in them, as the article version of the interview NPR published – and over 250 other stations republished from Alabama to Wyoming –

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, author of Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, likened female bullfighters to women playing Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Macbeth. “If the setup is such that it is defined by masculinity, you are subverting expectations,” he says.

Necessarily, such interviews always cut out the complexity and nuance of a real viewpoint on such matters: at the time the context I was discussing was how all art is an act of subversion as creativity requires innovation rather than meeting expectation through repetition, but there is always a line about how far one can go before one has departed from the chosen artform all together. I referenced successful examples like Matthew Bourne’s famous all male Swan Lake and my personal favourite, Denzel Washington’s extraordinary performance as a black Macbeth in Joel Cohen’s film of that name.)

I went on to make a more important practical points about the problems of a spectacle where the audience is 2:1 ratio men to women (and most of those women attending with a man), followed by what I have always thought was the greatest difficulty in a career where advancement comes from appearing alongside superior exponents.

Fiske-Harrison says male bullfighters have historically not wanted to mix with women. If a male bullfighter sees a fellow male close to being gored, “you still wouldn’t run in to help until he is literally bouncing on the point of the bull’s horns,” he says. But if a male bullfighter sees a female in distress, they face a conundrum: “If you run into the ring to protect the woman it’s a massive failure of professional courtesy.” On the other hand, he says, male bullfighters break the “chivalric code of being a knight or gentleman” if the woman is, in fact, gored.

“I think the matadors may have taken the line that there is no upside for them,” Fiske-Harrison says.

(Read the full article for free online here. This post formerly contained some words on Chat GPT, Artificial Intelligence, literature, bullfighting, more particularly books on bullfighting, and most particularly my book Into The Arena. That is all now at its own post which can be found by clicking here.)

Meanwhile, as I complete the corrections, edits (less ego, more facts), new forewords, post-scripts and entirely new chapters (including the horrific goring of my friend and teacher Juan José Padilla who was so much in the first edition, to his comeback with one eye – which I covered for Condé Nast’s GQ magazine – his subsequent meteoric rise to number one on the escalofón, to his retirement), I was pleased to see that the latest instantiation of open access artificial intelligence, Chat GPT 4.0, seems to value the first edition of my first book even more highly than I had supposed.

Question:

Who is the greatest living author in English on bullfighting?

Chat GPT 4.0: 

As of my last knowledge update in 2023, determining the “greatest” living author in English on the subject of bullfighting can be somewhat subjective, as it depends on criteria such as depth of knowledge, literary achievement, and personal taste.

However, one name that stands out for his contributions to the English-language literature on bullfighting is Alexander Fiske-Harrison.

Continue reading →

(En español aquí)

When the legendary fine art photographer David Yarrow calls you answer. Not least when he says he wants to extend his famed art photography of wild things to the animal that most closely resembles the undomesticated ancestor of all modern cattle (Bos taurus), the aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius.)

David’s up close and personal shots of the beasts of the wilderness, reproduced on the internet ad infinitum, but in actuality produced as vast, wall-sized prints of the highest quality, hair-fine resolution, sell for tens – sometimes hundreds – of thousands of pounds, euros and dollars.

Sometimes he includes supermodels in his more set-piece works.

The Spanish toro de lidia, aka toro bravo, ‘brave bull’, comes in the top ten genetically for relatedness to the ancestral aurochs, and six of the others in the top ten are its Spanish cousins (including the berrendas who feature later.) However, the toro bravo is the closest in phenotype – anatomy, morphology and behaviour – by far.

Having received my brief, I knew exactly where to go: the one breeding ranch, founded in 1847, which is famed for the cattle that most closely match the vast size of the aurochs of all strains of toros bravos and whose extraordinary ‘feral’ (I mean that in the biologist’s sense of the word) aggression most matches the aurochs’ wild character. It is the family name which conjures most fear among matadors. As Ernest Hemingway put it in his 1932 classic, Death In The Afternoon:

There are certain strains of bulls in which the ability to learn rapidly in the ring is highly developed. These bulls must be fought and killed as rapidly as possible with the minimum of exposure by the man, for they learn more rapidly than the fight ordinarily progresses and become exaggeratedly difficult to work with and kill. Bulls of this sort are the old caste of fighting bulls raised by the sons of Don Eduardo Miura of Sevilla… which made them the curse of all bullfighters.

A study by the University of Complutense in Madrid, published as ‘Ancestral matrilineages and mitochondrial DNA diversity of the Lidia cattle breed‘ in the journal Animal Genetics in 2008 showed how among the toros bravos which all show “a certain degree of primitivism”, the Miuras stand alone as a breed-within-a-breed.

On a less academic level, Miura is the reason why Ferruccio Lamborghini named his first car the Miura in 1967 – he showed it to old Eduardo Miura, father of the present owners, Eduardo and Antonio, and even drove it to their ranch to show him. Several more models from that marque took their name from Miura bulls afterwards: from the Islero in 1968 to the Murciélago in 2001.

Continue reading →