9 d'Octubre y Corrida de Toros

One of my best friends Yilmaz came to Valencia to see me and the beautiful surroundings. Between 8 and 10 of October we spent an unforgettable weekend together in Valencia.

In the beginning, we did not know that the ‘9th of October’ is very important historic date for the ‘Comunidad de Valencia’. The Kingdom of Valencia was formally created on ‘9 de Octubre, 1238’, so every 9th of October they celebrate that day. We found opportunities to watch celebrations almost all the time during the weekend. The main parts of the celebrations were fireworks. I am used to watching fireworks at night time but here it is not important, they also like watching that kind of show in the day time. And it was really so noisy, I think a celebration should be noisy like that. I can truly say I liked that part of the weekend.

I did a lot of things together with Yilmaz, we saw the old and new parts of the city, we went to some museums, we hung out at nights and everything was great but I will talk about the special event between 17:30 – 20.30 in 9 of October, Sunday. There was an important event in ‘Plaza de Toros de Valencia’. We went to a bull fight with Yilmaz and Yusuf. Before we entered in the Arena, I saw the protesters as they were protesting the bullfight event, they was against the killing of the toros. We passed in front of them and went to the Arena to watch the bullfight. I am not sure about the accuracy of the information but I have heard that 80% of Spanish people are against bullfighting. But I was seeing at the news and sometimes different kind of TV shows, I always wanted to go and watch live this event in Spain.

The bullfight took like 3 hours and there were 3 main matadors. It was good, the matadors were young but capable but unfortunately we did not see any bulls´ ears. I learnt that in the arena that there is a tradition in bullfighting, that if people like the performance of the matador and the committee give their permit, they cut off the ear of a bull.

After all we enjoyed the Sunday night and Yilmaz left on Monday afternoon. I am so happy because I could spend time with one of my best friends in Valencia; It was like a dream for me.