I enjoyed your article. Some interesting points in your piece, along with the usual mistakes and misperseptions.

Firstly, and most importantly, the corrida, which is not bullfighting but a correographed dance, is not a sport. I suppose people have pointed that out to you before, but it should have been said in your piece. There is no score kept; the winner is a given; how it is performed is the point, not who "wins" -- sort of like how a Mozart concerto is performed, not whether the pianist will, in fact, play the piece. Saul bellow once said, "Art is tranquility in the midst of chaos." That is exactly what the corrida represents to those who find it fascinating and important. It should not, and probably won't ever be eliminated, despite poeple such as yourself, who don't understand it. Bruce Shoenfeld wrote a book about it titled "The Last Serious Thing." Check it out.

Secondly, the average age of people who attend may be closer to retirment age than to those entering the job market for the first time, but then so too is the average age of anyone interested in the arts -- the ballet, the opera, even painting and sculpure. That the corrida will pass within a generation or so is remarkably naive for a man I assume is bright and certainly well-written. It's been around since the 16th century and outlasted various royal bans and political movements, like the recent one in Catalunia. Bulls have been used in ritualized encounters in an awful lot of countries for an awful long time (i.e. cave paintings in Northern Spain and Southern France, frescos in Greece, etc), The bull is clearly a totemic animal.

I admire how you handled the surprise encounter of seeing with your son something so striking on TV. That he was less impressed by it than something as prosaic as a football match isn't very surprising. He is a child. That you don't understand the difference between sport and art is more surprising -- even though you are Canadian.

The Spanish have an understanding of life and death that is dramatically dissimilar to that of most British, Canadian and American. That probably explains why the corrida persists. That many Spaniards don't like it, follow it or appreciate it is certainly no more an argument for banning it the spectacle than would be banning opera, where death is only symbolically dealt with or burning Sylvia Plaths poetry or Shakespeare's plays.

Killing something -- anything -- still troubles me. It is a very powerful subject, to be sure. But, I find the ccorrida the most powerful and impressive performance anywhere.

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