No visit to Spain would be complete without a visit to a bullring. We found just the perfect one to visit--the one in the beautiful town of Ronda. It is the oldest bullring in Spain (although Seville claims that its bullring is the oldest one), constructed at the end of the 18th century. Actually, scratch that. Here is what one of the official sources tells me: The bullring in Sevilla is considered older having commenced construction in 1761, and was completed in 1785, compared to Ronda’s commencement in 1779 and completion in 1784, though purists agree Ronda’s bullring should be entitled to the crown since it was first to stage a corrida. However, in May of 1784 during the first inaugural corrida to be held in Ronda’s Plaza de Toros, part of the stand collapsed forcing its closure until repairs could be made. (From Ronda Today website).
This bullring is open to the public as a museum, but it also hosts real bull fighting events and gathers crowds.
We checked out audioguides to help us learn more about the bull fighting tradition.
The most memorable stories were the ones that ended tragically, unfortunately. It's also amazing how important this tradition of bull fighting is to the Spanish.
We saw the stables where they keep the bulls before the "show" and wandered around the rows of spectator seats.
One of the crazy stories was the one about a famous toreador who was killed by a bull sadly and then was buried in that very spot by the wooden fence on this ring. Possibly this one?
Let's just imagine Robert is wearing a fancy toreador embroidered cape and is doing cool brave moves.
Kind of like Mark is.
Katya's version of "toreador".
This one just makes me laugh.
Our visit to the bullring lasted about an hour. The sun was still high in the sky but it was about 6 pm. We walked a couple blocks over to the New Bridge which makes Ronda famous as well. Its dramatic views are especially fascinating looking up from the valley in the bottom and we were hoping we'd have time to hike down there, but unfortunately we decided against it.
Instead we were noticing crowds of people gathering on the main street, all dressed up for another festival of some sort. A guy at the ice cream shop explained to us it was a historical celebration for Ronda and that the parade would start soon, around 6:30 pm. We got some ice cream, walked around a bit...the parade was still not starting. We had to remind ourselves we were in Spain and that everything pretty much had a very relaxed schedule. Robert found a spot for the kids to watch the parade that was close to where we parked the car and I went to search for some sort of quick dinner. While I was in the nearby park looking for food at the stalls, the parade finally began. A live orchestra, horse, donkeys, Smurfs, toreadors--everyone was walking down Ronda's main street. I grabbed some mini hamburgers and "sausage sandwiches" and we ate them outside watching the parade.
As the parade was coming to an end, we thought we would outsmart everyone by getting to our car quickly and exiting the city. We were mistaken, however;) We did get to our car, exited the parking garage and...had to wait for almost an hour before we could drive out of the city as our one-way street was blocked by partying people and parade still going strong. We sort of gave up, finished our dinner in the car and sat in the car watching people celebrating around us:) Looking back now, I am thinking we should have just come out of the car and joined the Smurfs in their merrymaking (hey! I know that word!).
It was already dark, like 10 pm when we had to drive through the mountains back to our friends' house. We were tired from our full day but happy we managed to see such beautiful places.
Lyana.
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