The future looks bright for Spanish bullfighting

In one of my local bars, in the Andalucian town of Antequera, there’s a poster on the door advertising bullfighting classes for kids. Aged between about ten and fifteen, I see these students practicing every week in the bullring, taking turns to play the bull by pushing around a pair of wooden horns attached to a single wheel – a specially-made device that looks like a weaponised unicycle.

Some of these kids, no doubt, dream of bullfighting glory, of becoming one of a very small number of bullfighters, or toreros, who are paid tens of thousands of euros per bullfight. Others, perhaps, are not so keen, and are pushed into the lessons by family members who once dreamt of becoming toreros themselves. It is to this latter group that the protagonist of a new documentary called The Boy and the Suit of Lights (El Niño y El Traje de Luces) belongs.