CLASSY PERFORMANCES: THE PERFORMANCE OF CLASS IN THE ANDALUSIAN BULLFIGHT FROM HORSEBACK (REJONEO)

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Acknowledgements

This article is based on research that was funded by grants from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Adelaide, the Walter & Dorothy Duncan Trust Fund and an Australian Postgraduate Award with stipend. I am grateful to all the humans and animals who shared their lives with me during fieldwork in Andalusia and Spain, as well as to Dr Mike Wilmore, Dr Rod Lucas, Prof Garry Marvin, Prof Adrian Franklin and Prof Drew Dawson for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Special thanks to the two anonymous reviewers, the editor and the Editorial Collective of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies for their insightful comments. The section titled “diversity in economic capital” contains some material adapted from Thompson (“Narratives of Tradition”).

Notes

1. One article evaluated the magazine coverage of rejoneo (Haro de San Mateo).

2. A corrida de rejones con toros involves the use of bulls four years and not exceeding six years of age.

3. A corrida de rejones con novillos involves the use of bulls two years and over and not exceeding four years of age.

4. Corridas held in portable bullrings erected for special events or ferias.

5. For a more detailed discussion of rejoneo and gender than this paper allows, see Thompson (“Cojones and Rejones”).

6. Paseíllo is the diminutive of el paseo from the verb pasear for a walk or a stroll.

7. Dressage movements such as piaffe and passage where the horse trots “on the spot” and “in slow motion”, respectively.

8. Alta escuela is the Spanish translation of haute école , a French term for high school training which is commonly used in equestrian discourse to refer to the advanced classical training of horses involving various “airs above ground” (Tucker; see Helmberger).

9. Douglass refers to the footed corrida as a “plebeian spectacle” (“Toro Muerto, Vaca Es ” 255)

10. For a detailed description of the corrida de toros , see Marvin (especially chapter one).

11. See Marvin for arguably the most sustained discussion of contemporary rejoneo , Campos Cañizares for an exploration of bullfighting from horseback during its seventeenth century “heyday” and de la Plata for a consideration of bullfighting in Jerez de la Frontera from the corridas caballerescas of the fifteenth century until bullfighting in the twenty-first century.

12. For a more detailed exploration of the intertwined histories of mounted and footed bullfighting, see Thompson (“Narratives of Tradition”). In that paper, I discuss the significance of rejoneo being constructed by rejoneadores as the “oldest and the newest” form of bullfighting. This is consistent with Shore's observation that “central to [the maintenance of elite status and authority] is the way elites mobilize history, tradition and ‘heritage’ to shroud themselves with the veil of legitimacy and to define the social and political boundaries of inclusion and exclusion” (16). However, I illustrate that this mobilization can simultaneously be effected by the wider community to emphasize the negative connotations of “elitism”.

13. This construction may also be strengthened by rejoneadores performing unpaid, to raise money for charity (see Abarquero Durango) or performing for significantly lower amounts than footed bullfighters.

14. There are various ideas of what constitutes the señorito class intersected once again by various ranking categories and criteria. For an overview, see Lipuma and Meltzoff.

15. At the time of writing, there were 13 bodegas in Jerez de la Frontera, of which all but three were within walking distance of the city centre. In fact, a walk in most directions beyond the main plaza s requires passing massive warehouses brandishing the names of famous sherries, wines and port. Names such as Bodega Garvey, Sandeman and Williams y Humbert are a reminder of ties with England through investment in the sherry trade. For a discussion of the most successful sherry houses in Jerez and their international business relations, see Fernández-Pérez.

16. As a member of the Republican Party, Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928) was well known for his progressive and anticlerical opinions (Jiménez García “Vicente Blasco Ibáñez En Jerez”), for which he served almost two years of hard labour.

17. La Bodega was first published in English as The Fruit of the Vine (1919).

18. Blasco Ibáñez′s signature is on one of the sherry barrels at the bodega of Gonzáles Byass in Jerez de la Frontera.

19. For a discussion of the role of alcohol in the construction of the lower class in La Bodega, see Fuentes Peris.

20. At least not until the Jerez de la Frontera Cine Club Popular organized a special projection in 1994 of a version of La Bodega restored by the Filmoteca Española.

21. Rather than because of the poor quality of the film itself which was criticized for the “defectuosa sincronización de los números musicales insertados en el melodrama al que había sido reducido la novela social de Blasco Ibáñez” (“La Bodega” 15).

22. For a consideration of how alcohol consumption and non-consumption creates identities amongst sports fans, see Thompson, Palmer, and Raven.

23. One fanega =0.5 of a hectare = 1.4 acres (D.D. Gilmore 19).

24. Totalling 2000 hectares (4000 fanegas ), the Domecq landholdings Los Alburejos and Camila , for example, are 20 times larger than the minimum amount of land required to define one as a señorito in Fuenmayor (D.D. Gilmore 19, 53–54) and 40 times larger than the minimum requirements of a latifundio according to Fuentes.

25. DYC Whiskey was incorporated into the group in 1991 and Bodega Terry in 1992 (“Domecq Tres Siglos” online).

26. Both located in El Puerto de Santa Maria (which forms part of the so-called sherry triangle with Jerez de la Frontera).

27. See Brandes for a more detailed, although somewhat dated, account of the relationship between nicknaming and community size.

28. However, as noted by Foster, “nicknames can be used to express not only friendship and enmity but pecking order as well” (120).

29. At the same time that rejoneo was becoming more financially accessible to riders, it was more cost-effective for event organizers. At the end of the 1980s, organizers found that staging a corrida de rejones had a greater return than footed bullfighting because the bulls are often cheaper and rejoneadores and their cuadrillas (teams of assistants) are paid less (de Cossío 2000, vol 2: 110).

30. One strategy is to use the unexperienced horse as a parade horse during the paseíllo (performance given before the bull enters the plaza ) to familiarize it to the atmosphere of the corrida before it is required to face the bull in that environment.

31. See also Casey and of course Bourdieu (Distinction ) who attend to the lived experience of class.