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In the regular corrida six bulls are killed (20 minutes to a bull) by three matadors working alternately with their own subordinate team of picadors and banderilleros. When the bull first comes in he is played by banderillero and matador with capes. Then the mounted picadors enter, the bull charges them, often kills the horse but always gets a wound in the shoulder-muscle from the picador's lance. Next, four pairs of banderillas (barbed wooden shafts) are stuck into the top of the bull's neck by the banderilleros or, with musical accompaniment, by the matador himself. Then the matador takes the bull alone, plays him with the muleta (red cloth), kills him with a sword. If the crowd approves a matador and his suertes (manoeuvres), there are rhythmic chants of "Olé! Olé!" A bad performance brings a shower of cushions and curses. Says Hemingway: "Now the essence of the greatest emotional appeal of bullfighting is the feeling of immortality that the bullfighter feels in the middle of a great faena and that he gives to the spectators. He is performing a work of art and he is playing with death, bringing it closer, closer, closer, to himself, a death that you know is in the horns because you have the canvas-covered bodies of the horses on the sand to prove it. He gives the feeling of his immortality, and as you watch it, it becomes yours. Then when it belongs to both of you, he proves it with the sword."
Hemingway has seen hundreds of bullfights, all the best contemporary matadors, regards himself as an authority. He gives his frank, often violently stated opinion of all of them: the late Maera who killed one of his last bulls with a dislocated wrist, after five tries; the cowardly Cagancho who is wonderful with a bull he trusts, wretched with all others; Rafael El Gallo, famed for his final appearances and for his shamelessness in refusing even to try to kill a bull who looks at him in a way he does not like; the late great Joselito who killed 1,557 bulls, was gored badly three times, killed the fourth time; the almost crippled Belmonte (retired), "greatest living bullfighter"; Villalta, brave but "awkward looking as a praying mantis" with a difficult bull; Ortega, at present one of Spain's most acclaimed matadors, whom Hemingway characterizes as "ignorant, vulgar and low"; Lalanda. "unquestionably the master of all present fighters"; Freg, the Mexican veteran who has 72 wounds, has been given extreme unction five different times.