Body count soars in Spanish bullfighting’s summer of blood | Toronto Star

Body count soars in Spanish bullfighting’s summer of blood | Toronto Star: "Francisco Rivera Ordonez stood in the centre of the bullfighting ring, dressed in a shimmering “suit of lights,” just as his father had 30 years before.
Ordonez and his father shared more than their profession as matadors, however. Like his father, Ordonez went by the nickname Paquirri.
And like his father, Ordonez was about to be gored.
Ordonez stared across the dirt ring toward a 450-kilogram bull, blood dripping from the banderillas already embedded in its hulking black shoulders. With a flick of his wrists, Ordonez beckoned the beast towards his bright pink and yellow cape.
But at the last second, the bull veered away from the cape and into the matador’s body, its 30-centimetre-long horn burying itself in Ordonez’s abdomen.
And just like that, another Paquirri spilled his blood alongside the bulls.
As horrified onlookers in the Spanish city of Huesca gaped at the Aug. 10 bloodshed, a group of men rushed Ordonez out of the ring and to a hospital. Among them: a one-eyed bullfighter named Juan Jose Padilla, his eye patch a result of his own goring four years before.
For bullfighting fanaticos, the goring of men like Ordonez, his father or Padilla are grim but legendary moments in an ancient and blood-soaked tradition.

For opponents of bullfighting, however, Ordonez’s injury could be equally historic.
That’s because the goring of yet another Paquirri is stirring old questions about the sport, but in an age — and a country — that is increasingly against the practice of killing bulls for pleasure.
“The beginning of the end of bullfighting?” asked newspaper El Diario after Ordonez’s injury, noting that two Spanish regions have already outlawed the sport.
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