Tonight I have been experiencing Portuguese culture. The Portuguese have been in California since the late 1880’s and established large communities in the Central Valley in the early 1900’s. Most of the dairy farmers in the San Joaquin Valley in the 1900’s were from the Azores.

This is the time of the year for Portuguese festas and they traditionally include a corrida de toiros or bloodless bullfight.

I will only post a few pictures of the bullfight tonight as just ended about 20 minutes ago. I am waiting for my pictures to download from my camera so won’t have time to sort through them.

For more details about Portuguese-style bullfights you can visit the following posts from last year:

Bloodless Bullfights

Portuguese-style Bullfights

The forcados in action.

The matador puts the bull through many passes before placing a velcro tipped stick on a pad on the back.

The cavaleiros ride beautiful, well trained horses and also place velcro sticks on the bull’s pad. The horse and bull are very fast and it is hard to get a clear picture.

Here the matador is positioning a bull with a cape.

There were two different squads of forcados. They are also known as suicide squads.

Would you let a bull run at you and then try and grab it by the horns?

Steven