EL MIRÓN DE SORIA

TRIBUNE: Abject Indecency, Perverse Immorality

FRIDAY, 19 JULY 2024

In this editorial, Amalio de Marichalar analyses the weekly events that exemplify a deeply perverse interpretation of power and the erosion of fundamental societal values, criticizing the shift towards indecent and immoral behaviours as a rationalisation for daily developments.

IS IT POSSIBLE to forgive crimes as severe as those sentenced in the ERE [Expediente de Regulación de Empleo – ‘Employment Regulation Expedient’- AFH] cases, including two former presidents of Andalusia and other prominent officials, seemingly absolved by the Constitutional Court at the behest of the Prime Minister?

Indeed it is, and they audaciously claim it was all political persecution. The system has utterly broken down, as there is no way that a years-long trial, conducted with all guarantees, respects scrupulously what has been adjudicated. It is clear that corrupt socialist politicians are rescued by even more corrupt socialists from this new school imposed by their leader if they hold power. We, the rest of the Spaniards, can do nothing but remain silent and accept this injustice.

The greatest robbery in history, including drugs and prostitutes, did not exist. This is the ‘new normal’ of the Prime Minister… we remember, do we not? It is what he seeks to impose on society in addition to ending democracy… and it is about ending the values shared by all and the most basic meaning of words and the commitments they entail.

On Wednesday in Congress, a law for democratic regeneration will be presented by those who are the supreme champions of political and moral corruption, who are wells of darkness, poisoned, and in bad faith. It is unheard of, in a democracy, to have to endure this. All of Europe is astonished and incredulous, also given the news already known worldwide about the ongoing investigation of the Spanish Prime Minister’s wife. Yesterday, more reports surfaced in The Times, echoing meetings of a businessman with the president’s wife at the Moncloa, sometimes with the couple, as well as other top-tier newspapers denouncing this charge against the president’s wife. Continue reading →

Alexander Fiske-Harrison running in his red-and-white striped Eton College athletics ‘colours’ blazer, which is in the same as the traditional colours of the Fiestas of San Fermín. (His hand is momentarily and illegally touching the bull as he balances himself before slipping into the middle of the herd between this bull and the bull behind him in the photo below.)

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.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison, bottom left in jacket, arm raised, running the bull-run down the side of a mountain in Falces in Navarra

Continue reading →

Natasha Hamilton, formerly of the band Atomic Kitten and, far right, William Sitwell, restaurant critic for The Daily Telegraph, host as Roy Sommer, Managing Director of Davidoff cigars presents the ‘Davidoff Bon Viveur of The Year Award’ to Alexander Fiske-Harrison, for his article ‘Courage Best’. On the left is AFH’s old friend, whom he had not seen since 1991 and who recently left the British Army after 23 years, including two decades in the 22 SAS, and with whom AFH is now working on new project, more which later (Photo: Jules Annan)

Click on image for PDF

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.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison runs between two bulls in Pamplona in 2011

Continue reading →

BULLISH by David Yarrow (2024)

(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.

David Yarrow and Alexander Fiske-Harrison in the ring with the bull Pañolito at Finca Zahariche, Ganadería Miura, outside Seville in 2024 (Photo: David Richard Dunwoody)

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.

EL TORO by David Yarrow (2024)

To read on click here. 

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…

Copyright David Yarrow – All Rights Reserved

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

Copyright David Yarrow – All Rights Reserved

…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.

Copyright David Yarrow – All Rights Reserved

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

David and I getting the photo – Copyright Richard Dunwoody 2024 – All Rights Reserved

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.)

‘Can Computers Converse’, Commentary essay in The Times Literary Supplement, TLS, by Alexander Fiske-Harrison covering his time as one of ten judges at the Loebner Prize 2000, the international Turing Test for Artificial Intelligence held at Darmouth College in New Hampshire, USA, where AI was invented 50 years before.

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.

To read on, click here.

You can read the full interview for free online here.

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.

To read on, click here.

© 2024 Richard Dunwoody – All Rights Reserved

(En español aquí)

When the legendary fine art photographer David Yarrow calls you answer. Not least when he says he wants to extend his 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.

CHARGE by David Yarrow (2013)

THE SNOWMAN by David Yarrow (2023)

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

CINDY’S SHOTGUN WEDDING by David Yarrow (2019)

Cara Delevingne with lion for Tag Heuer #dontcrackunderpressure campaign by David Yarrow (2018)

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.

The Aurochs from Vig, whose skeleton is in the National Museum of Denmark, weighed almost 1000 kg (2,200 lbs), and its shoulder height was almost 2 metres (6 feet 6 inches.)

You can see the relatedness of the toro de ‘Lidia’ to a British fossil of aurochs, in this summary for Rewilding Europe of the paper ‘Genetic origin, admixture and population history of aurochs (Bos primigenius) and primitive European cattle‘, published in the journal Heredity in 2016.

Having received my brief, I knew exactly where to go: the one breeding ranch, founded in 1847, which famed for its cattle that most closely match the vast size of the aurochs of all the 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 name which conjures 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 are 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 them. Several more models from that marque took their name from Miura bulls afterwards: from the Islero in 1968 to the Murciélago in 2001.

Autumn 1968. Finca Zahariche in Lora del Río, Spain. Standing, in a black suit, Ferruccio Lamborghini, next to Eduardo Miura, patriarch of the famous family of fighting bull breeders. The year before, the legendary car began to be sold, the Lamborghini Miura, the first supercar in history.

To read on, click here.

For all enquiries, contact alexander@thelastarena.com

Accepted. Returning to Academia.