Letter from Abroad

American reporters who want his views on integration, Orval Faubus, and the liberation of Little Rock, may not know where to find him, but around Spain you can’t turn the corner without running into the senior Senator from Arkansas, J. William Fulbright, here on his first visit. Last Sunday he was at the Plaza de Toros, for his first bull fight. He briefed himself by reading three books, and arrived understanding everything. (Let us hope he briefed himself on Spain by reading something besides Claude Bowers and Herbert Matthews.) His host was Ambassador John Davis Lodge. Six brave bulls perished at the hands of one brave matador, one not so brave, and a third who clearly thought better of this whole bull-fighting business early in the afternoon, very soon after the first bull mistook Paco’s derrière for Paco’s cape, and gave him a severe jouncing. Never did a bull receive so wide a berth as, at the hands of Paco Jimenez, the bulls received in Madrid, on Sunday, September 22, 1957.

Next Sunday Luis Miguel Dominguín will fight. He is the hero of Madrid, and of international femininity. It was he, playing the role of the young challenger, who egged the immortal Manolete on, in Linares in 1947, to a suicidal feat of bravery. The great but aging Mexican, Arruza, has also been fighting this summer, but on horseback. His family drove the bargain: you can go back to your damned bulls, but as a rejoneador— you don’t get off that horse. Even so, he has triumphed. go all the time to the bull fights,” an admirer of Arruza, for whom there is only one matador, said yesterday. “But when Igoitis necessary not to think of Arruza, Because if I do, I hate the bullfight.” Dominguín, who will get twenty thousand dollars for his appearance on Sunday, is an ardent patriot. He refused to fight in Mexico until the authorities replaced the flag of the Republic with that of the existing regime, in the Plaza. If he has any sense, he will dedicate a bull on Sunday to Senator Fulbright. Or will no one whisper to him that between Senator Fulbright and the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee there stands only a nonagenarian?

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

American reporters who want his views on integration, Orval Faubus, and the liberation of Little Rock, may not know where to find him, but around Spain you can’t turn the corner without running into the senior Senator from Arkansas, J. William Fulbright, here on his first visit. Last Sunday he was at the Plaza de Toros, for his first bull fight. He briefed himself by reading three books, and arrived understanding everything. (Let us hope he briefed himself on Spain by reading something besides Claude Bowers and Herbert Matthews.) His host was Ambassador John Davis Lodge. Six brave bulls perished at the hands of one brave matador, one not so brave, and a third who clearly thought better of this whole bull-fighting business early in the afternoon, very soon after the first bull mistook Paco’s derrière for Paco’s cape, and gave him a severe jouncing. Never did a bull receive so wide a berth as, at the hands of Paco Jimenez, the bulls received in Madrid, on Sunday, September 22, 1957.

Next Sunday Luis Miguel Dominguín will fight. He is the hero of Madrid, and of international femininity. It was he, playing the role of the young challenger, who egged the immortal Manolete on, in Linares in 1947, to a suicidal feat of bravery. The great but aging Mexican, Arruza, has also been fighting this summer, but on horseback. His family drove the bargain: you can go back to your damned bulls, but as a rejoneador— you don’t get off that horse. Even so, he has triumphed. go all the time to the bull fights,” an admirer of Arruza, for whom there is only one matador, said yesterday. “But when Igoitis necessary not to think of Arruza, Because if I do, I hate the bullfight.” Dominguín, who will get twenty thousand dollars for his appearance on Sunday, is an ardent patriot. He refused to fight in Mexico until the authorities replaced the flag of the Republic with that of the existing regime, in the Plaza. If he has any sense, he will dedicate a bull on Sunday to Senator Fulbright. Or will no one whisper to him that between Senator Fulbright and the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee there stands only a nonagenarian?