We visited during the Fête de la Madeleine, one of nine summer festivals, all of them involving bull games.
“People here have the bull passion; they are mad for bulls,” local official Lina Castro said. “They love to play with them, so, when we celebrate, for whatever reason, we have bulls.”
The Fête de la Madeleine commemorates an ancient fair that, for 400 years, was the largest commercial market in Europe (turnover in one week equalled the entire annual revenue of the port of Marseille). Beaucaire’s grand mansions and sumptuous public buildings testify to the fortunes made before the fair ended in the early 19th century.
But, on to the bulls
The course began to the recorded strains of a fanfare from Carmen, as nine or ten young men, dressed in white, paraded onto the floor of the arena to salute the judges. Then the first bull entered.In turns, players -- called raseteurs – charged at the bulls and, using a small apparatus of dull hooks (a crochet) fitted over their fingers, grabbed for attributs -- bits of ribbon and string -- tied to the animal’s horns.
The players have 15 minutes to snatch all the attributs. Then the animal retires. A bull has only six or seven, 15 minute outings in an entire season. In between, it's pampered and allowed to roam, semi-wild, in the Camargue.
The bulls are small but very lively, keeping the players on their toes – or off them, actually. Once a raseteur makes his pass at a bull, he takes off at speed, the bull in hot pursuit. Hitting the barrier wall running, the raseteur seems to run up it, taking the wall in two or three vertical strides, before launching himself off the top and flying into the safety railing about eight feet away.
The bulls don’t give up easily. That day, a bull named Pilot jumped over the barrier wall again and again, in and out of the ring. The last bull – there were six in all -- named Nuage, understood how to hook his horns between the wooden boards of the barrier to take it apart. The crowd loved them both.
Meanwhile, at the Manade...
Back at the Manade des Baumelles, the ranch on the Camargue plains, the difference between the local games and the culture of the corrida(Spanish bullfighting) is underscored in a talk given by Sylvie Linsolàs, the manadier’s wife.“We do this because it is our passion. We are shepherds on horseback,” she says, describing the 150 manades of the Camargue devoted to the rearing of local bulls. Camargue bulls are said to descend from the prehistoric bulls of France. “It is a completely different breed than the Spanish bulls and a completely different world,” in which it takes time and patience to develop a star.
“We study our bulls on their first outings; what will the young bull do in its first sortie?” At five years, she explains, the bull develops its personality. If, it isn’t a star by then, it doesn’t earn much. But a bull with charisma increases the fame and reputation of its manade.“Then,” she says, laughing, “it becomes Seigneur du Camargue, Lord of the Camargue.”
Grooming the starlets
Outside, Monsieur Linsolàs has manoeuvred today’s bucking starlets into a high walled pen. He and the gardians balance on boards over the pen. The gardians dress the animals in tassels and rosettes. The ones allowed to run free in the streets, have their horns wrapped in twine to blunt them.As a last touch, Monsieur Linsolàs sprays each animal with a fragrant bug bomb to keep down flies and insects. Even for bulls, it seems, personal grooming is a vital ingredient of stardom.
