The Bull Farm and Seville's April Festival

 

Javier and his ancestral home

Today Javier showed us the oldest bull farm in Spain, Serto de Fuente. He is a 4^th-generation rancher. They sent their first bull to the Ring in 1888. Since then, the village of La Pasajosas has grown around their 1700-acre family farm. There are 348 bull ranches in Spain. The bulls are separated into fields by age. In the first area are the bulls that are 1 or 2 years old. Because of the drought, they’ve had to supplement their grass with animal feed. The bulls have several markings: a circle with 3 lines is the farm brand above that is their year of birth. The qualities they are looking for are fast bulls with straight noble horns that are just beginning to curve. In the second area were the 3-year-olds. Here the bulls have settled into groups with some lone bulls who have lost fights lingering in the area. Finally, we saw the sixty 4-year-olds, these are scheduled for the bull ring this year. On average they will sell for 4000 Euro. Their meat is tough and only worth 200 Euro. In Spain, bull fights are considered a performance art, not a sport. A bull fight has six bulls and three bull fighters. The bulls have never seen a bullfighter before. Each fight is about 15 minutes. The bull is stressed being separated from the herd. The fight ends with a sword strike to the heart. We debated on whether this was animal cruelty or not. What is a better life? A gentle life on the farm and a quick death, or the life in a feedlot and death in a slaughterhouse. The cows and bulls used for reproduction die a natural death after about 12 years. We had lunch at the family home, originally built in 1830.

Three year old bulls

In the afternoon I walked in Seville to the Plaza de Espana, the Golden Tower and the Bull fighting ring.

Plaza de Espana

After dinner we visited the April Festival of Seville, la Feria de Seville. It starts 2 weeks after Easter and lasts for 2 weeks. Over a million people attend the festival. We’ve been watching the parade of carriages and walkers from our ship from noon until 7 AM the next day. The fair is held just across the Guadalquivir river from our ship. People dance and sing in each of the marquee tents, “casitas”, which are setup by companies, politicians, and organizations. Most of the women are dressed in flamenco dresses with Manta de Manilla shawls, the men in suits, even some of the teenagers.