A bullfight?

Toro Piscine - see all the young men/boys taunting the bull.

Here is who they are trying to impress.

Rumba Catalane - Gipsy Vent des Suds

July 23, Abeilhan


Tonight is the start of the Feria here in Abeilhan. I read up on these events on the web today. This is a frequent summer event in the south of France (Languedoc) village. The main event is the Toro Piscine. I was puzzled by this title on the ads for the event since that would mean bull swimming pool. The bulls are from the Camargue (and the event idea is based there) The Camargue bulls are smaller than their Spanish cousins. The best thing of all – the bulls don’t get hurt. They apparently are well–loved and cared for by their owners and spend most of their time grazing on the Camargue and doing you know what with the lady cows.

Although I am going to the finale event on Sunday with Suzette and Roger but I went down tonight to check it out.

A small portable ring is put up. A kid's-type portable swimming pool full of water is placed in the center. A bull is released into the ring. Young men/boys (and Sharon tells me last year girls did it too) climb into the ring and tease the bull enticing him to chase them. They chase the bull around, he chases them, and very often the kids and/or the bull fall into the swimming pool. The bull has rubber tips on his horns but this is obviously still pretty dangerous.

The Toro Piscine was quite a spectacle. It was young men, my guess 16 – 25 y/o running around teasing the bull. There were quite a few different bulls – each one spent about 15 minutes in the ring. The bulls were pretty impressive – snorting, kicking up the sand, charging at break neck speed. The young men were mostly pretty agile. They would entice the bull to chase them and then run for the side of the ring, grab one of the bars, around jump to safety. Later I saw a few of them limping but they looked pretty good in the ring. Every so often one of the young men would jump into the swimming pool and “hide out” for awhile. I didn’t exactly “get” what that was about. On and off the bull would get pretty pissed off at the swimming pool and lift it in the air with its horns or run through it.

Note: I’ve heard some of the ex-pats here talk about these French bullfighting events as being animal cruelty. From what I’ve seen I’m not sure that is exactly justified. The bulls like to charge, snort, and kick up sand – I think that is what they do with each other left to their own devices. They don’t get killed which sure is a lot better than what happens to them in Spain. Certainly the Spanish Corrida is more sophisticated and has a lot more “theater”. But here you have a bunch of yahoo kids showing how brave and agile they are and a bull seems used to this activity and the end of its day gets a good meal and a nice place to sleep. It’s hard to be too outraged by this.

There was excellent music during breaks from the toro piscine. I know you’ve all heard of the “Gipsy Kings” group that plays concerts in the USA. Well I’ve been to those concerts and I love them. However, their music style is indigenous to the Camargue and there are many groups that sound very much like them. The are French Camargue gipsies and have a very specific musical style. Anyway, the group tonight was really good and sounded about as good as the gipsy kings except there were only two guys playing guitar and singing and one guy on an electric keyboard. But nevermind, it was awesome music. The crowd at first was much more interested in drinking and eating but by the end of the musical entertainment a large contingent was dancing, the ones that were good at it were obviously very influenced by flamenco.

I just hung out, tapped my foot to the music, and took some pictures. When I left I noticed that in the empty bull ring the local 7 – 12 year olds were practicing their leaps onto the fence of the bull enclosure. In a couple of years they will be in the ring. One of them I recognized - Suzette's grandson. The bulls were apparently resting up in their truck/corral for tomorrow’s event.