Word: papas
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...Papa, were you to do a Mr. Jordan this season and go to Madrid, how confounded you would be. Last week the annual Fair of San Isidro was at its peak. Yet two of Spam's best matadors were not even there, although that 16-day burst of bullfighting is the World Series, Davis Cup competition and The Ashes of cricket all folded into one. El Cordobés and Palomo Linares had defied Los Siete Grandes, the seven biggest ring owner-agents, who henceforth intend to control the sport by setting fees and scheduling matadors. For that...
...just as well, perhaps. San Isidro was such a bust that scalpers outside the Plaza Monumental were hustling one another. Could you comprehend, Papa, that this Chartres of the taurine religion was filled only once in 16 days, and then only because three top matadors were crowded together in undignified fashion on the program? Other days, sprinkles of faithful filled the arena instead, with strident three-syllable screams of "Novillero!" (Novice) hurled at inept performers. Or, in ultimate insult, they turned their backs on the orange sand to wave their tickets in rage at the corrida president...
...inevitable, you see, Papa, has finally overtaken the fiesta nacional. You and Sidney Franklin and the other gringos were always so mesmerized by the mystique of blood and sand that you ignored what Spaniards understood: above all else, bullfighting is box office. For a time in Spain's new and vigorous consumer society, the box office was busier than ever. With 20 million foreign tourists a year and television beaming corridas to as many as 15 million more people (instead of the mere 23,663 that can shoehorn into the Plaza Monumental), the bullfights have become a $25 million...
...have begun to catch on. Alarmed by the falling attendance, Minister of Tourism Manuel Fraga Iribarne is calling for "a re-evaluation to retrieve bullfighting from crisis." Without some drastic changes soon, Spain's most famous spectacle may eventually disappear. You said as much yourself 37 years ago, Papa: "There are two things that are necessary for a country to love bullfights. One is that the bulls must be raised in that country and the other that the people must have an interest in death." You never foresaw a new and prospering Spain that would be more interested...
...didn't really matter. The crowds came for the music and excitement whether they knew him or not. There was a noisy tribute to this anonymous brother just as there had been for the great trumpeter "Papa" Celestin several years before. "I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons...