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By Root 781 0

as a horrifying spectacle, a display of cruelty, a sacrifice held as a national festival in which the so-called ‘moment of truth’ was nothing more than the ‘art of killing’. It was during the summer holidays, the city was a kind of ocean liner with all hands on deck. Sada set out with a pile of leaflets protesting against the maltreatment of animals. It was a radiant day in Ensanche Gardens. A perfect synthesis of nature and civilisation. There, at the entrance, was Lino’s old merry-go-round, revolving in time to the Marseillaise, the harmonica so worn down it sounded as if the horses were snorting. ‘And off I went.’ Allons enfants! Children in sailor suits playing with a hoop. Couples walking arm-in-arm under the magnolias. And Sada fell to imagining what would happen. The shows of support. The voices of encouragement. About time, lad. It was about time someone denounced such carnage, such barbarism. He thought to himself, Give me a seed and I’ll change the world. He believed the will could move mountains as Lino moved the roundabout, the children their hoop and those with the ball a planet. Perhaps he could bring about such a wondrous change all by himself. It must have occurred before in the history of humankind. We know the wars that took place, but how many men and women managed to stop one? You never know. He imagined his father in the café early the next day, unaware of the previous evening’s commotion. Sada Senior unfolds the newspaper and finds the following headline plastered across the front page:

ALL BULLFIGHTS IN CORUÑA CANCELLED

And below, the details:

A triumph of civilisation. A boy’s protest yesterday shakes the city. The authorities heed the public outcry against cruelty to animals.

‘And off I went,’ said Sada, ‘straight to the crowded terrace of Alfonso’s Kiosk, where the pleasant atmosphere suggested a state of grace among the citizens and consequently a brave acceptance of civilising proposals.’

Suddenly he saw the face he was looking for. His Touchman. The link in the chain that would spread the immense anti-bullfighting wave, the unstoppable current, which that same afternoon, by the decree of fate, would reach the governor’s office and force him to cancel such an infamous event. The chosen one, in his white linen suit, had a kind appearance. Sada walked confidently towards him and Touchman noticed that the boy had recognised him as a superior being. And it was so. He smiled when he saw it had to do with bulls. It must be a programme. Or some advertising. But Sada observed a sea change as he continued reading. Not just in his face, but in all his being. He seemed to emit the odour of a resinous liquid. The piece of paper was burning in his hands. Metaphorically to begin with, without a flame, as if he’d lit it through the stunned magnifying glass of his eyes. Then he asked one of his companions for a lighter and really did burn it.

The man was a bullfighter, Master Celita, and topped the bill for the next bullfight.

‘You remember Bela Lugosi in Dracula and the terrifying light in his eyes? They showed it not long ago in the same place, Alfonso’s Kiosk. Well, that was how Touchman looked,’ recalled Sada. ‘It’s as if he’s never moved from there and is waiting for me to this day.

‘A particular feature Celita had was a slight limp. So he wasn’t brandishing a sword, but a terrible stick. Is there anything more frightening than a child being pursued by a lame matador with a thrusting-stick? Give me a bull any time!’

Since then, he’d been watching his back. In a state of permanent alert. He’d acquired the visual field of a woodcock, the wood’s guardian, with eyes in the back of his head. ‘I feel destiny running after me,’ said Sada. ‘A lame destiny with a wooden sword or sabre. That’s how things are in Spain, ever on the lookout for the matador. I should have been a descendant of the blessed, a child of the generation that advocated a federalist Utopia. My mother taught me to walk to the music of Le Temps des cerises and all my life I heard my freethinking father tell his friends, “Don’t ever let