Let’s play a little word association game. Bullfighting. What does it make you think of?

You probably thought of a majestic bullfighter twirling a bright red cape in front of a charging bull.

Or maybe you haven’t even seen that and could only picture the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs and the bull become friends.

What you probably didn’t picture was a bull gushing blood from its nose and mouth before it collapses and dies. Nor did you probably picture a dead bull leaving a bright red trail across the sand as three horses drag it out of the stadium.

I went to my first bullfight this weekend, and I knew what to expect. I am a huge animal lover – I get squeamish from seeing pigs hanging from meat hooks, but I felt that I had to see a bullfight myself since it is such a famous part of the Spanish culture.

I had learned all about the “art” of the fight in my culture class. Yet it still couldn’t prepare me for the shock of watching men tease and torture bulls before killing them.

Three matadors killed two bulls each night I went. It starts out with letting one bull out into the ring.

Understandably, the bull is extremely angry, and it runs around charging at anything that moves or even the walls for lack of anything better.

I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the bulls; they just looked so confused as five or six of the matador’s assistants waved bright pink capes at them until they charged.

I wanted just one bull to sit down and refuse to play their little reindeer games.

Next, some other men come out on blindfolded horses and stab the bull in the back with long lances, apparently trying to simultaneously weaken the bull and make it even more dangerously mad.

Then some guys run at the bull and jam long, decorated, barbed sticks into the bull’s back.

By this time, blood is steadily flowing out of the bull’s back. When the matador finally comes out to begin the next session of bull torture, his cape and suit get spotted with blood as the bull charges by him.

The funny part of this whole process is the matador himself. I am convinced – and this is not my feminist streak coming out – that bullfighting is left over from some ancient masculinity-proving ritual.

One of the matadors I saw had this tendency to stick his pelvis out repeatedly at the bull. The matadors also yell and gesture at the befuddled bulls before they proceed to stab them.

After they’ve stuck the bull in the heart with a massive sword, they gesture and trash talk to the bull as it’s wobbling around in its last few moments of life.

When the bull finally topples over and lays there shuddering and twitching, the matador struts around the arena.

He hopes to convince spectators to award him with the morbid prize of the bull’s ears and perhaps even the tail if he was really good.

After seeing a bullfight for myself, I have to side myself with the group of Spaniards who profess bullfighting to be barbaric and cruel torture. If a person cut off any other animal’s ears before it had died or stabbed it in the heart for sport, they’d be facing jail time.

I don’t buy the “bullfighting is art” defense, either. The method of killing a living creature is not an art form. If that were true, Jeffrey Dahmer would be a Picasso.

That bulls are bred for the fight and live the life of luxury before they are ritually slaughtered also is a ridiculous argument. I think I’m living a pretty plush life while I’m here in Spain, but that doesn’t mean I should be killed at the end of my time here.

At the bullfight I attended, the spectators truly saw that bullfighting is not as glamorous as they try to make it.

One of the matadors apparently stabbed his bull in the lungs instead of the heart.

The bull let out this pathetic moo, and then blood poured out of its nostrils and mouth.

It stumbled around for several minutes, obviously suffering and in pain, while it bled profusely.

I guess killing a bull when massive amounts of blood are spilled is a faux paus because that matador didn’t get even one ear.

Death isn’t a pretty or easy thing, and I think anything that strives to make it seem that way is more than a little sick and disturbing.

Despite many protests against the tradition, bullfighting is not going to disappear any time soon. Many Spanish people don’t like the sport, but they accept it as being a part of the culture.

To me it’s interesting how Spaniards view the spectacle. Although Americans call the bullfighters matadors – which means killers in Spanish – Spaniards call them toreros, which is derived from the Spanish word for bull. This is the token example of how the culture downplays the actual killing of the bulls.

It’s ironic to me how so many other Spaniards adore bullfighting.

Spaniards abhor the death penalty and the way people’s rights were tossed out the window during Franco’s dictatorship, but those feelings don’t extend to the treatment of animals.

On one of the most famous streets in Barcelona, pets in dirty, crowded cages are sold from shady vendors. PETA members would have a hard time making any leeway for animal rights here.

Matadors are put on a pedestal in Spain. I could tell you all about the bullfighter Jesulin’s illegitimate child and ex-girlfriend, but I don’t know much about the Spanish president except for his name.

The level of idolatry of the sport comes second only to the national passion, soccer.

It made me take a hard look at what cultures choose to idolize because of tradition.

The bullfight was difficult at times for me to watch, and I still see a certain level of sadism in it. But it’s something that I needed to experience to have a deeper understanding of the Spanish culture.

Amie Van Overmeer is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Rock Rapids.