1. 1. Certainly, Vargas Llosa’s enthusiasm is understandable, as it is his view of this verdict as a global “victory,” since nowadays bullfighting is legal in just eight countries (Colombia, Ecuador, France, Mexico, Peru, Portugal, Spain, and Venezuela) across the world, and many indicators show that this number will be even smaller in the near future. Nicaragua banned bullfighting in 2010 and Panama in 2012. In Spain, the Canary Islands banned bullfighting in 1991 and Catalonia in 2010. For the controversy in Spain, see Brandes (2009) and Mosterín (1985).
2. 2. Vargas Llosa has advanced similar reasons in favor of bullfighting in several other pieces (see Vargas Llosa, 2004, 2010a, 2010b, 2019). He also signed a manifesto in defense of this practice in Peru. Another prominent signatory to that document was Diego García Sayán, who at the time was the president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (see “Manifiesto por la libertad y la diversidad cultural,” 2012). For historical details on Mr. Vargas Llosa’s fondness for bullfighting, see Campos Cañizares (2011, 2012).
3. 3. For statistics on the approval and disapproval of bullfighting in Spain, see María et al. (2017).
4. 4. The Yawar Fiesta depicted in the eponymous novel written by the Peruvian indigenista author José María Arguedas (1941/1985) does not include a condor in the bullfight. In this fiction, the bull, a symbol of the oppression, is killed by native people using dynamite.
5. 5. For a historical exploration of the antibullfighting movement after the United States won the majority of Spain’s empire in 1898, see Chapter 6 of Davis (2016).