Animals are complicated and so is the animal-rights opposition. It's hard to read motives in animals, and hard to read motives in politics.

If you fear something, walk into it.

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.

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.

My own experience has taught me not to underestimate the power of those who protest against cruelty. I'd also say that there may be a tendency to view the animal-rights opposition in somewhat distorted fashion as a new development, as the product of a very recent enlightenment about the rights due to animals.

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

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.