A Eulogy for Bullfighting

GERMÁN SAUCEDO JULY 14, 2025

Growing up, I had always felt that I was “too sensitive” for bullfighting, and thus opposed it. I nevertheless visited La Plaza México—the world’s largest bullfighting arena—for the opening of the 2018–2019 International Grand Season along with my now-wife and a close friend, both avid bullfighting supporters. The experience confirmed all my preconceptions: It was bloody, brutal, and terrifying. It was also magnificent. Diego Ventura, a Portuguese rejoneador (otherwise known as a “lancer”—a bullfighter on horseback), gave such a spectacular and brave performance—bringing out all the bravura that the bull named Fantasma had to offer—that the bull was pardoned and his life was spared. This is highest honor that can be bestowed on both the bull and the bullfighter, and had only happened in La Plaza to a rejoneador twice in seventy years.

I exited La Plaza that day with a newfound appreciation for the art, for art is what I saw. I sympathize with my many conservative friends who decry its fast approaching death.

On March 18, the Congress of Mexico City (the largest bullfighting city in the largest bullfighting country) voted overwhelmingly (61–1) to mandate that bullfighting shall only be celebrated “without violence.” Bulls may not be harmed or killed inside or outside the Plaza, and each bullfight cannot last more than ten minutes per bull. Bullfighting advocates complain that the practice cannot survive with these new regulations. They are, of course, right. There’s no accident here: Legislators have been targeting bullfighting for many years, trying to find a way to make it unfeasible without banning it outright. It seems they have finally succeeded.

Bullfighting advocates meet legal attacks with many tired but familiar arguments. They argue that, without bullfighting, the breed of Spanish Fighting Bull will go extinct. They point to the jobs the industry generates, and they claim that bullfighting is a centuries-old tradition that ties all the Hispanosphere to our Iberian roots. The reforms to Mexico City law have brought them to the fore once more. Many of my distraught friends and family have spent the past few weeks repeating them. They have yet to realize that they are fighting a losing battle.

Bullfighting’s greatest virtue is that it forces the spectators (and by extension the world) to stare reality straight in the face. Because of man’s fall from the grace of God, we live in competition with the natural world. For man to thrive, he must displace and consume nature. This dominion requires violence and death. Hunting, agriculture, and even scientific experimentation require violence upon nature. Bullfighting reminds man of his dominion, and suggests an ideal way to face reality: head-on, with grace and bravado. 

Opponents of bullfighting are unable to tolerate the essence of the art. 

Twenty-first-century man can no longer look violence and death in the face. Though he may avert his gaze, violence and death have not disappeared—they have merely been hidden away. Most of our meat consumption comes at the cost of brutal industrial farming in which animals live miserable lives and are dispatched in a cold, mechanized, and undignified way. Unborn children are slaughtered by the millions, while our elders are left to live out their lonely final days in retirement homes—that is, of course, if they are not euthanized. Death, however aseptic and medicalized, is just as present as ever.

But violence and death take center stage in the bull fighting arena. The bullfighter (and the audience through catharsis), challenges the bull and puts his life on the line. “Death Anxiety,” as described by Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death, should be dealt with directly. There is danger in this exchange: On the day I saw Fantasma pardoned, I saw another bullfighter get violently gored by another bull. There is an honesty to the sport, as well as a stark reminder of the costs of life in a fallen world.

The lawyers of bullfighting associations may triumph in the present legal battle (as they have in the past), allowing bullfighting in Mexico to live to fight another day. But bullfighting has been condemned to death. Its execution just keeps being put off. The mind of modern man cannot allow it to continue. It defies his essence: safetyism and cowardice.

Bullfighting will one day resurrect. The reality of man’s struggle against nature cannot be put off indefinitely. Other societies have tried and failed. No matter how much we avoid it, it bubbles to the surface. It has no tolerance for those who deny its existence. We will someday need heroes to teach us how to confront it. Maybe then the bullfighter will return once more.