The daring of Martincho in the ring at Saragossa, plate 18 from The Art of Bullfighting

Francisco de Goya was an enthusiastic bullfighting aficionado and even claimed to have been a torero (bullfighter) in his younger years. Yet it is unlikely that he meant this print series to be seen only as a fan’s outline of the history of bullfighting in Spain. In the early 19th century, when Goya published these prints, bullfighting was a politically charged activity. It was seen either as bread and circus (or pan y toros [bread and bulls], as a reformist tract put it), meant to keep the populace distracted, or as an expression of Spanish nationalism—a spectacle imbued with patriotic fervor.