Bullring
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A bullring ( Spanish Plaza de Toros , Portuguese Praça de Touros ) is used for bullfights , which in Spain are carried out as the ritualized killing of bulls , while in Portugal the bull leaves the arena alive. There are also several buildings of this type in the Spanish-Portuguese colonial empire - the arena of Mexico City is the largest with around 45,000 seats.
history
While bullfights took place once or twice a year in inner-city squares or in wooden arenas (e.g. Plaza del Coso (Peñafiel) ) in many places until the early 20th century , the growth of the cities and the increasing number of events took place There is a growing need for buildings specially constructed for this purpose. The oldest known stone arenas in Spain date from the 18th century and are in Béjar (Old Castile), Saragossa (Aragon), Ronda ( Andalusia ) and Tarazona (Aragon).
architecture
A bullring is mostly round, not unlike an ancient amphitheater , with a diameter of about 45 to a maximum of 60 m; the buildings themselves can have outside diameters of over 100 m. However, there are also octagonal examples (e.g. in Tarazona). While the early arenas, based on the house fronts of inner-city squares, were still lined with balconies, these are completely or partially omitted in the later buildings. The actual fighting area and the spectator area are usually separated from each other by a wooden palisade. This has a kind of skirting board so that the torero can jump over it when fleeing from the bull; in rare cases, however, the bull also succeeds in overcoming the palisade, which causes panic among the spectators.
There are often three categories of seats available for the spectators: the cooler shady places (sombra), the cheaper places in the sun (sol) and the places that are in the sun at the beginning of the corrida and are overshadowed during the fight (span .: sol y sombra, port .: sol e sombra). In some arenas, like the one in Ronda , one of the oldest and most beautiful in Spain, or in the traditional Praça de Touros do Campo Pequeno in Lisbon , all the places are covered; in others the inner part is exposed to the effects of the sun and (less often) rain.
Others
In Spain in particular, many arenas have a butcher's shop, their own horse farm, a bull pen and an infirmary. The meat of the dead bulls is cut up in the butcher's shop and can later be bought in the surrounding meat shops (carnicerías) and supermarkets. The proceeds are often used for charitable purposes.
In Portugal, the arenas have stables and an infirmary, where the veterinarian examines the bulls after the fight and releases them for slaughter or return to the breeding farm.
