Bullfighting in the Philippines

This book sheds light on the very obscure Philippine branch of a celebrated Iberian tradition that has linked Spain and the Philippines for over four centuries. It pairs the pioneering work of the Spanish writer Wenceslao E. Retana (1896) with recent academic research to demystify bullfighting as practiced in the farthest colony of Spain.

Although the forty-eight years of American occupation caused the taurine art to decline eventually, it found a Philippine resurgence under the championship of Pres. Ramón Magsaysay, who, in celebrating the tenth anniversary of the republic, startlingly foregrounded the performance of a doubly marginalized figure—that of an American woman bullfighter—at the last Filipino fiesta de toros.