Málaga As Seen By Pinterest

{Conversation Partner Reflection 4}

I wanted to see what Aitana’s hometown looked like in pictures so I searched it on Pinterest with her.  I knew it was going to be gorgeous because it’s Spain and she lives near a beach, but wow.

It kind of puts Fort Worth to shame, as much as I love my hometown.  I pointed to the coliseum in the center and asked her about it.  Apparently it’s for bullfighting.  Because Spain.  I asked her if she has ever seen a bull fight, and she told me that she hasn’t.  In fact, she is against the whole “sport.”  I had never thought about the violence of bullfighting, mostly because I never really thought about it outside a fictional realm of movies and books. 

As a national tradition that draws natives and visitors from all over the world, bullfighting is also one of Spain’s biggest controversies.  It consists of a sequence of three parts where the bullfighter or matador progressively injures the bull then ultimately kills it.  It is basically a celebrated form of animal cruelty.  However, not everyone is against the lucrative industry of bullfighting.

Ernest Hemingway wrote about the bullfighting industry and called it an art, a tragedy, and a business.  “To what extent it is an art depends on the bulls and the men who are hired to kill them, but it is always a tragedy and it is always a business.”  In the article he describes Spanish bullfighting in great detail of each aspect and defends the bullfighting business.  Hemingway wrote in The Sun Also Rises, “Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.”  He also wrote a non-fiction book called Death in the Afternoon, which was published in 1932.  It emphasizes the magnificence of bullfighting and elaborates on the nature of fear and courage in the coliseum.  Apparently, Ernest Hemingway was passionate about bullfighting, among other things.

Here is a picture from Pinterest of a street in Málaga, Spain where lots of shopping and nightlife takes place.   Málaga is also the birthplace of Pablo Picasso, and there is a Picasso Museum.  So I’ll just add that to the list of reasons I want to go to Europe.  Picasso and Hemingway knew each other through Gertrude Stein.  Basically it’s all connected. 

Aitana tells me she misses her home and is looking forward to returning to Málaga for Christmas break.  Her mother just added a new dog to her family, and she is excited to meet him.  The weather there is a lot tamer than Texas with our excruciatingly hot summers and icepocalypses.  In winter it about 17 degrees Celsius, which is approximately 62 degrees Fahrenheit. 

When Aitana first came to the United States to study, she didn’t know any English.  Now after almost three semesters in the Intensive English Program, her English is nearly flawless.  One day I hope to visit a country where I don’t know the language and be immersed in the culture and eventually become a fluent speaker in a second language.  After scrolling through pictures of Málaga I’m convinced that Spain would be a beautiful place to begin my ventures.