Bullfighting

Men, women and children gathered before dusk Saturday behind the Portuguese community center in Artesia. They packed the bleachers that circle the dirt ring with its high wood walls painted red. The three-day holiday weekend Festa da Bola would be filled with soccer, laughter, food. But on this evening, the main attraction was a bullfight. It was billed as a "bloodless bullfight" -- in which the animal is not killed in the ring.

A 14-year-old Spanish bullfighter renowned in Mexico but too young to practice his sport in his native country, was in critical condition Monday after being gored by a bull in the city of Aguascalientes. Jairo Miguel was injured Sunday when he attempted a risky maneuver before 2,000 people in Aguascalientes, about 260 miles northwest of Mexico City, according to local media reports.

A young matador returned to a Barcelona ring five years after quitting at the peak of his career, enduring a terrifying near-goring to win standing ovations in a Spanish city known for strong sentiments against the sport. A sellout crowd of 20,000 watched as Jose Tomas, 31, performed in his turquoise and gold suit. At one point, he was briefly pinned by a bull but rolled away unscathed. Scalpers reportedly got more than $5,000 for some tickets.

The well-coiffed Portuguese matador, muttering provocations in his native tongue, sizes up his weighty opponent's slavering mouth and sloping horns. In his hand he flashes his weapon: a bandarilha tipped not with razor-sharp darts but with nonlethal Velcro. The bull makes no distinction. Spectators' voices drop to murmurs. Overhead lights sparkle off the matador's gold sequins, and the smell of lingui?a (sausage) perfumes the dusty air.

MADRID -- State-run television has quietly yanked live coverage of bullfighting from its programming, ending a decades-old tradition of showcasing the national pastime out of concern that the deadly duel between matador and beast is too violent for children. Televisi?n Espa?ola's first broadcast in 1948 was a bullfight in Madrid.

Angostura, hulking and black, with the number 12 branded into his side, probably doesn't know he's green. He is one of Spain's legendary "fighting bulls," and his benefits to the environment constitute a new argument used by aficionados to defend bullfighting, a life-and-death pageantry entwined with Spanish national identity and a bloody inspiration through the ages to painters and poets from Goya to Hemingway.

Ready to charge Bill Torres at Griffith Park on a Saturday afternoon is a man clutching a bar barbed with two bull's horns. Torres, 65, holds his ground, feet together. "Hey, toro, toro, toro, hey," Torres teases. His adversary, Mario Orlando, 43, of Hawthorne rushes at a cape Torres is holding, turning the horns toward the cape as Torres skillfully maneuvers it out of the way. Orlando returns for pass after pass, and Torres sends him by with a series of practiced flourishes of the cape.

"Foreign Bulls Head for the Middle Kingdom." "Spanish Matadors Pack Their Bags for Beijing." "Local Promoters Salivate Over the Prospect of Bloodthirsty Crowds." The headlines said it all: Bullfighting was coming to China. But a funny thing happened on the way to the bullring. In a country known for its often-brutal treatment of animals and its anything-goes capitalism, a public outcry halted the project in its tracks.

Several hundred curious spectators watched as China staged its first bullfights Saturday, complete with matadors from Spain and bulls from Mexico. "It's really something different," said city government worker Yu Liang at the event in a soccer stadium in Shanghai's northern suburbs. He then called, "Be careful!" as a bull made another pass at matador Guillermo Alban. Beijing called off a similar event earlier this year in the face of protests. Shanghai went ahead, with some changes.