Tag Archives: bull-runner

Article about me in The Spectator

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An amusing article about me in the oldest – and most successful in current affairs – magazine in the English language, The Spectator, founded in 1828.

Bruce Anderson godfather-patron of the Conservative Party, friend of Prime Ministers (and part of the No.10 Downing Street Policy Unit under Margaret Thatcher) and former political editor of ‘The Speccie’. He interviewed me at The Travellers’ Club, the oldest gentleman’s club on Pall Mall in St. James’, London. Our club is the haunt of diplomats and spies, explorers and mercenaries. I once stayed there and dined with the Papal Nuncio, the Archbishop appointed as Ambassador from the Vatican to the UK, and breakfasted the next day with the Colonel of the Special Boat Service (the SBS is what they modelled the Navy Seals on, for my American readers.) AFH

Original article online here

THE SPECTATOR

Bruce Anderson

What wine should you serve to a matador?

26 August 2023

We were talking bulls. A friend of mine, Alexander Fiske-Harrison, is a remarkable character who can claim at least two distinctions. First, he must have been about the worst-behaved boy in the modern history of Eton College. He claims that this is an understatement and that he heads the role of infamy since the days of Henry VI.

He was certainly put ‘on the Bill’ – that is, for a disciplinary interview with the headmaster – on 68 occasions. So he was fortunate that corporal punishment had been abolished before he arrived, though his career of rapscallionry was possibly not the strongest argument for its demise.

He must have come close to expulsion. But there was apparently a feeling that Fiske-Harrison would make his mark in the world. And those who argued in that vein might now feel vindicated, because Alexander became a matador.

He insists that this is a slight overstatement and that he is only partially qualified, not the full Escamillo. But he did kill a bull in a ring: impressive enough for me. He is also the first Etonian ever to hold that honour. If not the full Hemingway, he has written well on bullfighting. He also runs with the bulls at Pamplona and other towns: whence a remarkable story which I have mentioned here before. Continue reading →

My column in The Telegraph: Pamplona’s spectacular bull-runs are too often misunderstood

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For the original article, available to subscribers only, please click here

Pamplona’s spectacular bull-runs are too often misunderstood

ALEXANDER FISKE-HARRISON

“I’d much rather be a Spanish fighting bull than a farm cow”

I left the site of my last Andalusian postcard with a heavy heart and burning ears: apparently some locals had taken offence to the “elitist” connotations of my comparison of their town to Notting Hill. People take things the wrong way with a vengeance nowadays: as with Montparnasse in Paris, the artists that first made Notting Hill famous were followed by richer creative-types and the resulting economic gear-change had both upsides and downsides.

Notably, though, these complaints were British ex-pats. The Spanish were delighted, with the Mayor of the town, a socialist, writing to say how much he looked forward to hosting Telegraph readers.

After Gaucín, for the first time in a decade I did not know where to go in Spain mid-July. Normally, I would head north to Pamplona for the Feria of San Fermín, known here simply as Fiesta.

Some people think running with bulls, a pastime for which that city is most famous, is dangerous and anachronistic, and the end place of that run, the bull-ring, is a place of torture and death. And indeed, all Spain’s bull rings are registered abattoirs – they have to be, because the carcass of every bull ends up in the food chain. The only difference, in terms of the bull’s welfare, is the manner and duration of their life and the manner and duration of their death, but perhaps not in the way readers think.

A Torrestrella bull is caped by the late matador Ivan Fandiño in Pamplona on July 11th, 2013. This photo also appears, among many others by the same award-winning photographer, in The Bulls Of Pamplona. Jim Hollander has run bulls and photographed them for over fifty years, between other assignments for Reuters and EPA around the world. (Photo © Jim Hollander / EPA)

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My column in The Telegraph: After two months of draconian Spanish lockdown, with fines for ‘bad attitudes’, I’m dreaming of the feria

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For the original article, available to subscribers only, please click here

DAILY TELEGRAPH

After two months of draconian Spanish lockdown, with fines for ‘bad attitudes’, I’m dreaming of the feria

Alexander Fiske-Harrison
1st May 2020

After six weeks of house arrest without even the opportunity to go to the village shop like their parents, or to go to the park like their pets, Spain has finally released its children – those aged 14 and under, with supervision, within a kilometre of home, and for no more than one hour a day.

Given that the average size of an apartment in Seville, our regional capital, is less than 600 square feet, one can only marvel that domestic violence has not been a bigger problem.

Of course, with three quarters of a million fines being issued by police and the Guardia Civil during that period, perhaps people did what they naturally do and simply found a way around an impossible set of laws. One could hardly blame them. The social contract is wearing thin.

Alexander's Andalusian town
Alexander’s Andalusian town Credit: getty

One of the categories of fine listed in a recent document from the national government includes €2,000 for “inappropriate attitude”. What exactly would be appropriate right now? Perhaps one should not be surprised that a revenue stream is being taken advantage of as the Spanish economy goes into the steepest decline since the Thirty Years War. Continue reading →

My column in The Telegraph: It doesn’t feel like lockdown has been eased here in Spain when armed police still stop you at every turn

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DAILY TELEGRAPH

It doesn’t feel like lockdown has been eased here in Spain when armed police still stop you at every turn

Alexander Fiske-Harrison
16th April 2020

We wake today in our village of Jimena de la Frontera – a full month into lockdown – to the news that the social democrat Prime Minister is planning to extend confinement by another month, while his hard socialist deputy has called for nationalisation of everything up to the coronavirus itself. We live, as the Chinese like to curse, in interesting times.

That same deputy’s criticisms of the Spanish Head of State, King Philip VI, for wearing military uniform in his rather dignified public appearances as Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces were ill-advised, though, with even left-wing allies pointing out that their own communist heroes – Che Guavara, Castro, Chavez and Maduro – were wont to adopt the same fashion, although normally to a far darker purpose than Spain’s constitutional monarch.

Alexander's Andalusian town
Alexander’s Andalusian town Credit: getty

Along with the announcement of prolongation, they spoke of a loosening of the lock-down. For example, one can now exit one’s habitation to purchase a “necessary” pizza from the takeaway, rather than just its equally “necessary” frozen cousin from the supermarket. Personally, this writer finds this hardly a loosening of the manacles. And if anyone doubts the reality of those restraints, the view from the balcony of the Spanish Marines questioning anyone leaving buildings on my street is quite clear.  Continue reading →

My column in The Telegraph: Will the Spanish summer be too hot for the coronavirus?

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For the original article, available to subscribers only, please click here.

 

DAILY TELEGRAPH

Will the Spanish summer be too hot for coronavirus?

Alexander Fiske-Harrison
8th April 2020

Predictably, the left-wing coalition that governs Spain has extended our confinement to quarters. This is done in a singularly Spanish manner: no outdoor exercise, with police or armed forces personnel checking your grocery receipt to ensure you did not dawdle on your way home. With 50,000 fines for breaching the rules in Madrid alone, the government seems to have found a way to raise some of the money they lost putting our economy into what they call “hibernation.”
This is, of course, the same government that defied all medical advice and allowed a third of a million people to march arm-in-arm through the streets of Madrid on International Women’s Day last month. Inevitably, hospitalisations in the capital quadrupled within five days, and the course was set for the present contagion.

Alexander's Andalusian town
Alexander’s Andalusian town Credit: getty

However, after 24 days of climbing the walls and running around the apartment – some 40 miles covered in 1,600 laps of a small two-bedroom flat – the data finally seems to show the curve is not only flattening, but beginning to descend. Here in our little town of Jimena de la Frontera, the voice of hope can be heard, in part because of what many regard as the bane of the town: its summer. Continue reading →

My column in The Telegraph: A postcard from Spain, where the Marines have arrived to enforce our draconian lockdown

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For the original article, available to subscribers only, please click here.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

A postcard from Spain, where the Marines have arrived to enforce our draconian lockdown

Alexander Fiske-Harrison
20th March 2020

The Marines rolled into town on Friday to ‘support’ the police and the Guardia Civil. Admittedly they arrived in olive green pick-up trucks, not Humvees or 4-tonners, and were only kitted out with 9mm pistols strapped to their thighs, not full assault rifles, but those who questioned my last postcard from Andalusia, where I spoke of “martial law in all but name”, should be under no illusion about the Spanish style of lockdown.

As I predicted, last week the government extended our fortnight of house-arrest to a full month, and this week they instituted even harsher measures, putting the economy into “hibernation” in the government’s terrifying phrasing. Continue reading →

Bulls and Horses, Horses and Bulls…

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Famed ‘Torrestrella’ bull-breeder – and founder of the Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art – Álvaro Domecq Romero, Spain’s number one matador Juan José Padilla, author Alexander Fiske-Harrison, photographer Nicolás Haro, and Don Álvaro’s favourite pura raza, ‘Pure Spanish’, stallion at Los Alburejos in 2009 (Photo: AFH personal collection)

It was sad to see confirmed in the press the rumour I heard from the Núñez del Cuvillo family that Álvarito Domecq has sold his legendary ranch, where he not only bred the famed Torrestrella – ‘Star Tower ‘ – bulls, so named for the ruined castle overlooking his estate, but also bred his pura raza Española horses – what we call ‘Andalusians’ in English – and founded one of the most important Schools of Riding in the World. Mind you, €20 million is not a bad price for a house in rural Spain.

Meanwhile, I have been working on some other bull and horse projects, which will come out through Polo Andalusia and Bullfighting Andalusia in the next few weeks. Along with a book and documentary film project on which more at The Last Arena blog in the same time frame.

Oh, and a visit to the House of Deputies – the House of Commons or Congress of Spain – although not as the Spanish newspaper ABC is suggest to promulgate a “Law Fiske-Harrison”!

¿Se imaginan una Ley Fiske-Harrison de Teo García Egea para derogar la Ley Rhodes de Pablemos?

The full article is, in Spanish, available here:

https://www.abc.es/opinion/abci-ignacio-ruiz-quintano-ley-rhodes-202002120018_noticia.html#

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Seville in September

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Alexander Fiske-Harrison in front of the Cathedral of Seville (Photo: Samantha Mullins)

Having spent the early part of the summer writing the second edition of the Wallpaper* City Guide: Madrid for Phaidon Press, I thought it worth reminding people that I did the same for their guidebook to Seville in 2014.

These guidebooks tend towards the modern – unsurprising given that Wallpaper* magazine is design led – but I have always found a way to include establishments which aren’t defined by their youth, but by their quality.

Seville – where I have been coming for 20 years – has its finest month in September, especially this year with the 20th Biennial of Flamenco opening on September 7th in la Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza, the great bullring – the oldest of its kind in Spain – and running shows throughout the month – some for free – everywhere from the grand Teatro Lope de Vega and the Royal Gardens of the Alcázar Palace to the Church of San Luis de la Franceses to Café Alameda.

AFH and Padilla (Photo: Paloma Gaytán de Ayala y de Queralt)

Then, on the 29th, in that same ring, the most famous bullfighter in Spain, the one-eyed Juan José Padilla, is fighting his last ever bull as a professional. And this is no washed up matador making a last stand, he was ranked number one in Spain when he made the decision to retire last year, and has triumphed across the country on his final tour. (In Pamplona when I saw him he was extraordinary.)

I’ll write more about this further down this post – he is a personal friend and mentor after all – but to make it easier, I’ll say here that, tickets for that Saturday’s corrida are available to purchase and print online from the English-language version of the official site of the bullring by clicking here. (Tip: you want to sit as close to the centre of the ring, i.e. the sand, as possible, and preferably in the sombra, ‘shade’, or sol y sombra, ‘sun’ that becomes shade as the evening progresses.) The other matadors that day and the next are all extraordinarily talented – and ranked in the top ten for what that’s worth.
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On BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme today: me.

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Back in London from updating the Wallpaper* City Guide Madrid, when the BBC sends me a message saying only “we’d like to talk to you about poshness”.

It turns out that one of the former members of the flagship ‘Today’ programme team on Radio 4, Steph McGovern, had said in an interview – in response to a question on the gender pay gap no less – that social class was an often ignored contributing factor to inequality in the work place.

So, their research team trawled the internet and came across a piece I’d written for The Spectator a couple of years ago headlined (by the editor) – “[James] Blunt Is Right. Being Posh In The Arts Is Career Suicide.” It is online here.

So it turns out that my debut on the Today programme is not for my travel writing, not for my forthcoming book The Bulls Of Pamplona (with chapters by John Hemingway, Ernest’s grandson, and Beatrice Welles, Orson’s daughter, and a forward by the Mayor), nor the book I am just prepping to research on wolf conservation, reintroduction and how they made us human just as we made them into dogs – provisionally titled The Land Of Wolves – but instead because I was sent to an expensive boarding school.

Oh well. The one thing I can say without reservation is that what Ms McGovern’s complaints are, with a six figure salary at 35, she is certainly being paid more than this Old Etonian freelancer at 41. For this interview, I don’t get a dime. (At least they’re sending a car.)

Anyway, in case anyone is interested, below is my most recent interview – and product placement – on the wolf project. Already been out to the last great virgin forest in Romania, and to revisit Paul Lister’s reintroduction site in the Scottish Highlands with the great biologist Prof. Doug Smith, next stop the site of Doug’s own reintroduction, Yellowstone Park…

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

@fiskeharrison

SPOKEsman // Alexander Fiske-Harrison: Always carry a blade…

 

P.S. Blunt, Bryant and Brando

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Further to my post below, I just published this in The Spectator … http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/culturehousedaily/2015/01/blunt-is-right-being-posh-in-the-arts-is-career-suicide/ I wonder whether anyone cared about the background of Welles (family of money), Brando (poverty), Nicholson (poverty) or Ordóñez (family of bullfighters). AFH