Madrid reacting with the forceful protection of bullfighting as an art form is an example of the survival of the old values.

I was a bullfighter. I'd like to see the tradition continue. I'm sorry that Catalonia is robbing itself of a tradition that belongs in Catalonia.

For me, bullfighting was this very spiritual engagement with power, with power and death. You're pitting yourself against a force that's stronger than you and then you're winning or losing. It's power, a power play.

I don't believe that anyone connected with bullfighting would deny that what happens in the ring has an element of suffering and perhaps cruelty to it. So then it comes back to whether the suffering and cruelty is justified by its place in a tradition that has deep roots in the culture. At present, the view in Catalonia apparently is that it does not.

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how the change in values makes the survival of the old values, where they do survive, all the more striking. There are pockets of the old bullfighting world that exist more or less intact, both in Spain and elsewhere.

I'm good at killing, I'm known as a bullfighter who kills well, and that I can kill well, that I can compete technically with my male peers in my technique in killing, gives me satisfaction.

I never took pleasure in seeing a bull die. Relief, but certainly not pleasure.