Toro Embolado — Oropesa del Mar
Where I was:
When I was:
Oct 8, 2016 — Nighttime
Personal notes:
So this was a first.
I had attended a bullfight once in Córdoba, but this was something different. Rather than dancing around with a dazed and injured bull and then killing it, the toro embolado involved mounting a pair of balls on the bull's horns, setting these balls on fire, and then racing past the annoyed animal. The goal was to get close enough that it seemed daring, but not so close you found yourself with a new belly button. Once the bull gave chase, you could then squeeze between the bars at the edge of the ring in order to get to safety.
No one was harmed——though one overweight man struggled to get through the bars and it was a close thing——and as far as I could tell, the bull was eventually loaded back onto a trailer to return to his pasture.
Just prior to this, a local man brought a wheelbarrow into the ring upon which he had mounted a set of horns, and the children raced through the ring, practicing for some future date in which they could join the other local adults in dodging a live and deadly animal.