| Summary: | During the Franco era (1939-1975), an especially dark period in Spain’s history because of the oppressive and repressive nature of the regime, Spanish people were forced into silence. Traumatised by the fratricidal civil war, people retreated into themselves, tight-lipped and fearful. Little research has been conducted on the potential of the bullring to be turned into a subversive means of expression. As a public space, the bullring was an arena that the dictatorship attempted to instrumentalize, but that gradually escaped the control of the authorities. Careful analysis of media documents dating from the Franco period reveals how the bullring could become an oppositional space. Viewed in this light, the toreros had the capacity to nourish dreams, including that of freedom.
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