Las Arenas, Barcelona’s old bull ring, was also a sight to behold, with its Neo-Mudéjar façade. It’s now a shopping mall.
I’d only ever gone to one bull fight In my life, during a visit to Madrid in 2004 thereabouts. I was staying at the Palace Hotel Madrid, and the concierge had procured the tickets for me in advance.
But the experience was a real eye-opener for me because, as a foreigner, we’d only been exposed to the parts involving the matador and the bull in their “dance of death”, as portrayed on TV or the movies. No one told me about the picadors on horseback with their lances, nor the protracted stages, with their bugles, which a bull fight ritually goes through. That day when I watched the bull fight was the only day I skipped dinner, as I felt rather queasy afterwards.
But, I must say, I rather preferred Madrid’s rich, greasy Castillian cuisine much more than Barcelona’s lighter Catalonian flavours.
