Spanish stereotypes and Tordesillas' Meadow Bull

Like every year, the Spanish village of Tordesillas "celebrated" yesterday the festivity known as El Toro de la Vega (The Meadow Bull), which consists, as wikipedia well points, of slaughtering a bull by people on horseback or on foot.
Groups defending animal rights protest against this brutality year after year without success.
And here's my view.
As usual, it's always about the two Spains. And for this purpose, we could divide Spanish young society in two main groups: the toffs and the perroflautas.
According to the stereotype, the Spanish toff is typically a middle/upper class kid who studied business or economic sciences in a private university, votes for PP, wears sunglasses and hair cream (and pearl earrings, as big as possible, if it's a female) and goes to clubs to dance like crazy, drink long drinks like crazy and if so, takes drugs in the form of pills.
The Spanish perroflauta, as opposed to the toff, studied social sciences or journalism in a public university, votes for lefty or republican parties, wears clothes as colorful and wasted as possible and green/blue/pink dyed hair, has multiple piercings and tattoos, and gather with friends to drink beer and smoke marijuana sitting on the floor in a public square -where he pees when needed.
The perroflauta will protest in favor of free abortion, euthanasia, public services and female rights. The perroflauta might have worked as a volunteer helping immigrants in the coasts of Cadiz, or cleaning the petrol spilt in the coasts of Galicia (whereas the toff volunteered to receive the teenage pilgrims who came to Spain for the World Youth Day).
In their condition of perroflautas, these guys also protest for animal rights and, in this case, against the meadow bull. Problem? Society doesn't see them as people concerned by the brutality committed against the bull, but as young and miscarried trouble makers who have nothing better to do with their time.
Even myself, being my ideas much closer to those of the perroflautas, tend to consider them this way sometimes...
You'll get my point when you see the photos in this article:
(Click here to see the article)

For the record, I want to make it clear that I'm talking about "stereotypes". I don't mean to offend anybody... Only those who support the festivity!!

I would like to end this post with a funny anecdote... My friend Miky writes a blog where, from time to time, he posts about wikipedia sabotage. Of course, they have moderators to censor the fake facts from the articles, and they act rather quickly, so I had never seen one live... until today!! When I found this:

There's a fake line in spanish next to the photo, under the title "Torneo del Toro de la Vega".
Translation: "Nonsense consisting of slaughtering a bull with lances, which some idiot murderers find funny and they support it. A whole country against this tradition which, mayor after mayor, all completely retarded, no one has the balls to abolish."
(And yes, for possible spanish-speaking readers, the last tab reveals I had no idea how to get a screen shot with a Mac...)

Reflections on S11

13 years ago now, televisions all around the world interrupted their programs to show a plane crashing against one of the towers. I remember I was at home, watching the news while having lunch -it was lunch time in Spain- when the anchor announced this last minute news about a horrible flight accident. Then we all saw live the second plane.
When I first visited NY last year I had a lot of time to go sightseeing by myself. Not only in the US but in general, I'm not attracted by these "glory to the brave who gave their lives for their homeland"-kind monuments, and I visited the WTC only after I had seen every other main touristic attraction I could think of. Once I got there, I saw I had to pay if I wanted to visit the memorial, so I decided to pass. I wandered around, not really knowing where to go next, when I accidentally found St Paul's chapel. I hesitated for a moment, but as I was already there...
Patriotism is one thing I will never understand, and about that, the land of the free and home of the brave knows quite a bit. Religious -or any other kind of- fanaticism is another one. Actually I guess patriotism could be considered as another form of fanaticism.
Anyways. I saw the churchyard first. Despite it, I still entered the chapel, not knowing what I would find. And what I found was a few improvised altars showing personal objects that belonged to the victims, along with firefighter helmets, army medals and decorations and so on. At the very entrance, at the right, a bed and a piece of paper on the wall explaining that volunteers took turns to sleep there during the rescue works. Everywhere, photographs of the victims, many of them young people smiling in their graduation ceremony, or dressed in their firefighter uniforms holding a little child on their arms, or simply posing with their families. And all around the place, short letters, postcards and post-its reading "God bless America", "Always in our hearts" or "We will never forget" type of notes.
As I was walking around the place, I passed by a few groups of proud americans.
Do you know how I say sometimes a shabby drawing can inspire me more than the finest work of art? It was kind of the same thing here. It was like if I had entered some grey space, completely unexpectedly, I didn't know how to feel. Those americans had it very clear, they felt proud of their country. I mostly felt awful, awful and ashamed of the human stupidity and blindness.
Don't get me wrong. If I were american, I'd probably feel proud. Even being spanish, even being politically atheistic, even not being part of this wonderful community of brave and free people, I absolutely think that all those volunteers, dead and alive, deserve my admiration and my credit for what they did, had their reasons been patriotic or simply humanitarian.
But I cannot share that feeling of hate and revenge, of America vs the world that some people seem to have. As I said, I felt terribly awful and all I could think of was the blindness of the human race. Just like I feel when my fellow talks about getting a kalashnikov to go kill russians in the name of Ukraine, or when he says I can't compare the Soviet Union to the spanish civil war, because we only count 500000 killed against their millions.
We tend to organize in groups. Geographical, political, religious, racial. And we defend our members against the others, just because they belong to our group. We don't seem to fucking understand that we are all alone here, and equally alone. That we all have the same feelings, the same needs, the same fears. If you allow me, that by the 8th week of intrauterine life we all have our body parts equally formed, that from a unicellular organism we all end up being human bodies, with our arms and legs and head, and our heart in our left chest and our liver in our right abdomen, and we don't develop wings, peaks, tails, scales or hoofs (but even if we did). That we'll all have the same end. That our lives are rivers ending in the sea of death... And therefore, that we should help individuals fight situations, instead of groups fight groups. Even more when what makes us belong to a particular group -geographical, political, religious, racial- is some artificial distinction that in most cases (even political and religious) has not been chosen, but imposed to us. So watching those americans share that feeling of "together against islam for the memory of our dead" only contributed to my general feeling of shame.
The same when I read this kind of idiocy in the bbc news: "The bell tolls, the national anthem is sung but always it is sound of relatives reading the names of lost love ones that lingers longest in the autumn air."
I guess someone should explain the writer a few things about physics... Or that might just be me, but I don't see the necessity of getting sentimental when it's supposed to be an objective article.

Connecting with these ideas, I can't help talking (again) about african immigration into Spain, and the fucking brutal fence.
Frontiers aren't but artificial lines drawn arbitrarily to separate the political units we call countries. Now, to all those who protest against immigration, we should wonder what we did to earn the land we live in. Personally, I don't think I have done much. I have never worked the land, I have never built my house, I have never planted fruit trees, I don't even recycle most of the times. And if I had ever done any of these things, it wouldn't have been because I am more worthy than others, but because I was allowed to be there and do it. And if my ancestors (assuming they lived in what we call Spain, which I don't even know) had done anything, I don't think I can attribute that merit to myself.

Anyways, I just wanted to write a few lines with the occasion of the anniversary...

I will still say one last thing. On March 11th 2004, more 200 people were killed in Madrid in several train bombings. From the beginning, Al Qaeda was said to be responsible. My mother works as a primary school teacher, and she always has a lot of immigrant students in her class. By that year, she had a muslim girl whose mom was the typical muslim veiled woman who didn't speak a word of Spanish. The day of the bombings, when the woman came to pick up his girl from school, she approached my mother, crying under her veil, and hugged her. That's what I mean by individuals.