For the first time in 35 years, organizers cancelled the remainder of Spain’s San Isidro Bullfighting Festival in Madrid.  It’s because two of the half-ton beasts gored or trampled all three matadors scheduled to appear at the Las Ventras bull-fighting ring.

“Deslio” was the first bull to upset his matador David Mora.  The 532 Kilogram bull wasn’t fooled by Mora’s pink and yellow cape, knocking him flat to the ground and picking the man up with his horns and tossing the guy around like a rag doll. 

“The somersault was horrific, shocking, chilling, impossible for the human eye to witness yet evident to the mind,” wrote bullfighting correspondent Antonio Lorca in the El Pais newspaper.

The bullring’s surgeon said Mora’s femoral artery was severed and he needed a blood transfusion during a two-hour operation.

A second matador, Antonio Nazare, finished Deslio off with a sword, but then he had problems with his own scheduled opponent, “Feten”.  The animal plowed Nazare through the sand, tearing up the man’s knee.  Finally, a third torero, Saul Jimenez Fortes, came in to kill Feten – but not before the 537-kilogram bull left him with three gore wounds, each about 10 centimeters deep.

People horribly wounded, bulls killed for defending themselves – who wants this?  Apparently, a dwindling number of Spaniards.  A 2010 survey in El Pais showed the majority, 60 percent of respondents, opposing bullfighting in Spain.