When a matador faces half a ton of horned, lethal beef in the bullring, more than his life is at stake. Spain's "fiesta nacional" (national festival) is also a billion-dollar business.
The protests of animal lovers have done little to abate Spaniards' enthusiasm for the bloody spectacle.Last year 51 million people -- including King Juan Carlos, cabinet ministers and luminaries of the booming Spanish business world -- saw 29,000 proud "toros bravos" (wild bulls) killed in the ring or charge through the streets in Pamplona-style fiestas.
They paid $760 million for the privilege and Juan Manuel Moreno, President of the National Union of Bullfight Businessmen, said that figure should rise between six and eight percent this year.
This is good news for the 170,000 people whose livelihood depends on the "corrida" (bullfight) -- the farmworkers and breeders who lovingly rear the bulls, the matadors who kill them and their teams of assistants and agents and the businessmen who run the bullrings and other spin-off industries.
A top matador can charge between $20,000 and $40,000 per corrida while star Juan Antonio Ruiz, known as Espartaco, can demand more than $75,000 a fight.
Espartaco's earnings last year were estimated to be almost $4 million.
"You don't earn a lot, considering what you are risking," said the 27-year-old Espartaco, who has been the king of Spanish matadors since he was carried out of Seville's La Maestranza bullring on the crowd's shoulders in 1985.
Espartaco says that each time he faces a bull he fears for his life, but he does not take the same risks with his earnings, which are invested safely in real estate at home in Andalusia.
"It has cost me a lot to earn that money, lots of blood and sweat, so I am not going to play around with it," he said.
Out of his earnings the matador must pay his team of two mounted "picadores" and three "banderilleros" who help him in the ring and spectacularly run up to the bull's horns and stick flagged spears in its back to prepare it for the kill.
Only a handful of Spain's 200 or so matadors command such star rates. Many others -- along with the 500 "novilleros" (novices who fight younger bulls) and 800 matador's assistants -- must find other work outside the March-to-October season.
Moreno said many of the businessmen who contract matadors to appear at their rings, which in most cases are leased from the town or city authorities, are themselves failed or frustrated bullfighters.
Moreno swirled the red cape briefly in his youth before swapping the spangled, tight-fitting "suit of lights" -- which can cost $2,000 -- for a business suit.
"I wanted to be a bullfighter, like all Spaniards do," he said. "Normally the businessmen in this game are frustrated bullfighters. It is more romanticism than business."
At the Union of Fighting Bull Breeders, Jaime Sebastian de Erice said most of the 240 professional breeders were also driven by love of the fiesta rather than love of money.
"In the great majority of cases there are no profits," he said. "Most of the bullbreeders are aficionados and the greatest benefit they get out of it is their enjoyment of the fiesta."
A first-class four-year-old bull, of which six are usually killed per corrida, costs the bullring some $7,000 while the three-year-olds for the novilleros cost about $4,000. Erice said it can cost more than that to rear each bull.
Only a handful of businessmen dominate the industry, acting as agents for the best fighters and running the rings. The biggest in the arena is Manolo Chopera, who runs 15 rings in Spain, France and Latin America.
The world's top site is Madrid's Las Ventas, a 1920s red-brick ring in Moorish style which seats 32,000 people. To bullfighters and their devotees it is know as "The Cathedral."
Its current lease, which runs until 1993, is held by Toresma SA, a company controlled by the Lozano brothers, Eduardo, Jose Luis and Pablo, a former matador. The company shares the profits with Madrid authorities.
As well as the journalists who cover the corrida for the culture pages of the newspapers, television and radio, the bulls provide a living at the rings for countless vendors of food, drinks and posters, small plastic bulls and fancy banderillas.
"A lot of people eat around this business," said Moreno.
Some people take that literally. Once the bulls have been dispatched, their bloody carcasses are unceremoniously dragged across the sand to a ringside slaughterhouse and carved up for sale at markets specializing in their meat.
Selling for about $3 a pound, the dark red cuts of beef --cheaper and supposedly richer, tastier and free of hormones --are the last rung in a business worth nearly $1 billion a year -- unless you want to buy a stuffed bull's head to adorn your living room.