Word: spain
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
Catering to Ignorance. How could there be enough good bulls to go around? Spain now has 312 bullrings, some in areas like the Costa Brava and Costa del Sol, which were never part of the sport until tourists appeared. Last year 3,660 bulls were sold to corridas at prices of up to $1,000. To satisfy this demand, breeders fattened bulls in pens on fishmeal and soybean extract instead of allowing leisurely grazing. This process builds fat, not muscle, and animals so topheavy that they stumble and fall before they are weakened with picas and banderillas and finally sword...
Time for Reevaluation. Under such circumstances, the matadors have lost their pride, and their skills have grown dull. A few, like Linares before his banishment, may still be offered $7,000 for one fight. Most of Spain's 193 active matadors, however, have grumblingly accepted 25% fee cuts in return for comfortable bulls and a guaranteed minimum number of appearances. At the same time, they have reduced the ritual you loved so much to a modicum of spasmodic passes. The capes that once came alive in flashing veronicas across the sunlight are seldom used today...
...become so bad that even the tourists and the women 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...
...music adviser to the Philharmonic. Next season he will share its podium with five younger guest conductors - all of them potential candidates to succeed Bernstein. They are America's Lorin Maazel, Hungary's Istvan Kertesz, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos of the National Orchestra of Spain, as well as two men who once served as Bernstein's assistants: Japan's Seiji Ozawa and Claudio Abbado of Milan's La Scala...