A Load of Spanish Bull: A Provocative Guide to Bullfighting

by Mark Colenutt

The bullfight is the most immediate image most foreigners have of Spain, but it is not a fight. The Matador is a name most have heard of and yet the Spanish do not call him that. It is an event that stirs passions and causes heated debate and yet this happens in the main beyond Spain's frontiers. The Spanish maintain that the majority in attendance at the Corrida de Toros are tourists, for who the experience was in fact reworked to make it more 'acceptable'. The bullring is the last remnant of the Roman games and has found favour in the New World and a very different variant in neigbouring Portugal. Great aficionados such as Hemingway and Orson Welles waxed lyrical about it. The French hispanophiles have done much to proclaim its merits and attractions, thereby forming the romantic view held by those fascinated with Spain's fiesta nacional. This brief guide then will faithfully instruct those keen to learn of this cultural pilar without which, rightly or wrongly, Spain would be less present in our collective imagination.

74 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2013

About the author

Born in Plymouth, Devon I was educated at Blundell's School and then at St. Mary's College, Strawberry Hill, London, which was once Horace Walpole's beautiful residence. Upon completing my degree I took off to Malaysia and New Zealand with two friends before returning one last time to the UK capital before I boarded the plane that would eventually carry me to my adopted homeland of Spain.

After a year and a half in the Spanish capital I decided it was time to leave and seek colour and adventure in the Andalusian south. I settled in Seville, which had been a place that had fascinated me from a very young age and I was not disappointed. Eleven years later and it was time to move on again, this time returning to the north but still within Spain.

By this time I had now completed two books and was engaged in a third, imagining a fourth and wishfully thinking a fifth.

At present I live and work in Girona, which is a charming, laidback, green part of the peninsula, idyllically sandwiched between the Pyrenees, France, Barcelona and the Mediterranean.

Not surprisingly, I have produced a collection of books on Spain over the years in The Hispanophile Series. The series ranges from literary criticism in the form of my Handbook to the Legacy & Odyssey of Don Quixote, a provocative guide to Bullfighting 'Spanish Bull' to a city guide in 'Old Seville - the City of Eternal Youth' and even a book of photography and the first in the novel form of a paperback, hence the format: 'photoback', entitled 'A Vision of Seville'. Further details can be found at www.thehispanophileseries.wordpress.com

I have also written a non-fiction history title about the British Raj 'Holocaust in the Raj: A Concise History of the Great Indian Famine, 1876-78'.

Added to the above, I publish a series of YA mystery adventure novels, The Chester Bentely Mysteries, under the pen name MJ Colewood. The first book 'The Last Treasure of Ancient England' was published to coincide with the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings. Two more books in the series have been completed an will soon be released. More can be found on the website: www.mjcolewood.com