Where do the characters authors create come from? I have no answer to that question. What I do know is that they become so real to their creator that sometimes it is difficult to let them go. This happened with some of the minor characters found in "The Last Summer", Eduardo’s seven cousins whose father, Don Ramón, was a breeder of fighting bulls.
At the end of “The Last Summer” Eduardo returned to live with his mother in Galicia and the old mare he had grown to love, Gaviota, went back to Don Ramón who bred two foals from her, a colt and a filly.
“Dancing Horses” continues the story of Gavilán, the colt foal, and how Gaviota lived on, greatly loved until she died of old age. It also tells the story of three of the cousins whose lives are impacted in different ways by the casual “adoption” of a homeless war orphan.
While writing this book I was well aware that bullfighting is a very contentious subject, totally incomprehensible to most people, while being deeply imbedded in the Spanish psyche and culture regardless of whatever view individuals might hold on the subject. "Rejoneo" - engaging on horseback with a bull - is very different from its most commonly known form, and the bull suffers less.
I wonder if the bull himself were able to give an opinion on the subject, whether he would choose a four year life of luxury, followed by twenty minutes of challenge when the adrenaline rush makes him impervious to pain, and when he might even be fortunate enough to survive the ordeal if he impresses with his bravery, or at least leave a glorious record of his name in the annals of tauromachy - or whether he would go for being separated from his mother at birth, spend eighteen months being fattened up for slaughter and dying ignominiously in fear, surrounded by the smell of death while queueing up for his turn and with no chance of defending himself, no one ever knowing or caring that he ever existed.
I do not like the bullfight and would not choose to attend one. I do have admiration for the tremendous skill of the “rejoneador” and the amazing courage and ability of their beautiful horses.
Having said this, “Dancing Horses” was not written to defend or decry bullfighting. It was written to satisfy my own desire to find out, as it were, what happened to the Casares family and their horses when the civil war was over. I hope they will all be as real to my readers as they were - and still are - to me.
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