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

Bullfighting is anachronistic - you enter into a bullring and you're leaving behind the values of the world outside the ring. I suppose that what I would want to acknowledge is that perhaps the tension, the crucial tension, isn't necessarily between the view of bullfighting as a tradition versus as an art form, but between the values inside the ring and the values outside the ring.

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.

Acting requires focus, too, but acting doesn't, you might say, demand focus. When you're in the ring you don't even have to think about focus because the danger is so imminent. Imminent. You train and you prepare and then the adrenaline kicks in and drives you into focusing intensely. You'd better focus, right? Or else you'll make your exit on a stretcher.

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.

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

In one era the majority puts its faith and sympathy with the bullfighter, in another with the bull.