Toros y Flamenco

The idyllic Spanish town — of Madrid — brought to you by Red Bull!

"Oh, lovely Spain! Renown'd romantic land!"

— Lord Byron

Bulls and the flamenco... the Hollywood Atlas version of Iberian countries (mostly Spain with possible addition of elements from Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar and southern France).

You know, that place where all the women dress in tiered skirts, and all the males in chaqué, where the landscape consists of mountains, red dry hills and beaches, and every night (because there's siesta all day anyway) passionate Tall, Dark, and Handsome toreadors with roses in their teeth escape from stampeding bulls while playing guitars, and equally passionate Spicy Latina Gypsies with roses in their hair, daggers in their garters and fans in their hands throw oranges at them while dancing flamenco. ¡Olé!

If you don't know why this trope fails that much at Geography, you should know that the Running of the Bulls (celebrated on the week beginning the 7th of July on the day know as "San Fermín" and ending on the midnight of the 14th of July) is celebrated only in Pamplona. The "Feria de Abril" (April Fair) where women actually dress with tiered spotted skirts and men wear chaqués is celebrated only in Seville. The distance between those cities is over 600 miles, the former being at the north, and the latter being at the south.^note And bullfight tradition is not extended the same way across all Spain. On its northernmost regions is usually less or even far less extended than in central or southern Spain, even if you can find plenty of bovines there - for their milk and meat. Not to mention that younger generations tend to either ignore or vilify the practice and see it as outright animal cruelty due to it involving slowly killing the bull in most cases. The running of the bulls tends to be much more accepted though, as unlike bullfighting it doesn't involve the death of the bulls. Yet in fiction, both seem to happen at the same time and place.

Also, Spain is not only dry semi-desert — the northern strip between Catalonia and Galice is mostly standard European temperate forest, and the many, many high mountain ranges all across the country make it so that the vegetation and landscape can change pretty drastically even between short distances.^note  In fact, according to the other wiki, Spain is the most climatically diverse country in Europe

Additionally, the Running is often portrayed as featuring hundreds of bulls on a murderous stampede. In Real Life, though, there's generally no more than fifteen bulls, released in groups of four to six, and they're often surrounded by a larger crowd of people, including a group running around them to keep them following the right path. Bonus points if the work even decides to portray the correct path they follow, or simply has them rampaging freely through any of the city's streets and wreaking havoc.

Meanwhile, the music department will invariably and uniformly consist of Flamenco, or something aiming to sound like Flamenco, with Spanish guitar, castanets, tap-dancing and "deep song". In Real Life, this music style originated in Andalusia and the city of Seville in particular. Elsewhere in Spain, it is practically a niche genre associated with Roma people^note Almost half of Spain's Roma live in Andalusia and Andalusian immigrants and their descendants.

Also, this Iberian country is always Spain. Portugal? What's a Portugal?

Toros Y Flamenco is one of the most popular origin countries for a Latin Lover.

See also Latin Land, which shares many elements with this trope, due to strong historical and cultural ties between Iberia and South American countries, and Spaghetti and Gondolas and Ruritania, for the stereotypical versions of the other parts of Southern Europe. Sometimes confused or amalgamated (by hack authors) with South of the Border into Spexico due to the same strong historical and cultural ties plus the similar climate. The association of bulls with these countries falls under National Animal Stereotypes.

Sometimes coincides with It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans, when a visit to Pamplona (or any other town in Iberia if the author is particularly lazy) is destined to happen exactly on the week of the Running of the Bulls.

In Real Life Spain this trope is known as una españolada^note Which is "Spanish", plus the the suffix -ada ("español" + "ada"). This is the normal construction in Spain for referring to national stereotypes in general. For example, for referring to American stereotypes, it would be "americanada" ("americano" + "ada"). or the even more derogatory España de pandereta ("Tambourine Spain").^note Which is also used in debate to criticize the social and/or politic ordeals associated with Spanish culture.

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Examples:

Advertising

• This commercial for EDS, with the running of the squirrels. Compare with the real thing. In Real Life, Pamplona is a moderately large sized city in the comparatively humid North of the country.
• Inverted by this Spanish beer ad that moves the running to the Big Applesauce and replaces the bulls with bison.

Anime & Manga

• Surprisingly averted by Antonio aka Spain in Hetalia: Axis Powers; while there is official art with him in a matador costume, the traditional stereotypes about the country are barely touched (he is still depicted as a siesta lover, though) and his personality is less of a Latin Lover and more of a Nice Guy.
  • However, in his drama CD released on December 8th 2010, the first verse mentions bullfighting and flamenco almost immediately.
  • He is often associated with tomatoes, which is a trope in Japan because of the popularity of Buñol's annual tomato fight there.
• Like every other national and ethnic stereotype, this trope is alive and well in Mobile Fighter G Gundam. "Now representing Neo Spain, Matador Gundam!"
• The Spain arc of Ashita no Nadja has Nadja working her ass off to learn how to dance Flamenco, befriending an embittered matador, attracting the ire of the matador's bailaora New Old Flame as she returns into his life suddenly while having plans to use the guys's affection for her... and, in a subversion, it shows her meeting up with Keith and mistaking him for his twin brother Francis in the Alhambra of Granada, a place that doesn't really follow the stereotypes above.
• Spain team in Medabots; the medafighters are dressed as bullfighters and the Medabots themselves are bull-centaurs wielding arm swords and wearing bulletproof capotes as capes. Although the one shown fighting proves to be tough, it is somehow defeated when Warbandit shoots one of its horns broken.
• Played with in Hana no Ko Lunlun. Around four episodes of the series happen in Spain, but only one involves the toros y flamenco stereotype. (Another even takes place in a desertic area, which can be either Bardenas Reales, Monegros or Tabernas.) In a further subversion, Lunlun had to disguise herself as a bullfighter to save herself and her companions from a bull, instead of meeting/befriending/helping a matador.
• Also played with in Montana Jones when the gang goes to Granada. The main trio hears a deep noise. Montana says that it reminds him of a bison stampede. Alfred says that there aren't bison in Spain, so it must be a bull run. Melissa says that the bull run happens in Pamplona, not Granada. Then a bull herd runs on them... because the bad guys made it panic and run in their direction.
• Mostly averted in Kujira no Josephina (Josephina The Whale). Since the series is based in a children's book by a Spanish writer, it depicts the Madrid of the years after World War II in a more realistic light - as possible as it can be through the eyes of a pre-teenager and his Imaginary Friend, of course. In fact, one of the most important episodes towards the end (when Santi meets his soon-to-be girlfriend Celia, takies the definitive steps towards teenagehood and leaves Josefina behind) takes place in El Escorial, an historical residence of Spanish royalty that is located in a town near Madrid.
• In One Piece, the island of Dressrosa seems to follow this trope pretty closely, albeit in an affectionate way. Luffy even gets to ride a rampaging bull.
• Nasu: Andalusia no natsu ("Eggplant: Summer in Andalusia") has the main character giving a military salute to a gigantic Osborne bull and Andalusians singing about Andalusia being an "infertile land" - Andalusia may have a small desert in its eastern fringe, but the general region is the breadbasket of Spain (and a good chunk of Europe). Other than that, the film largely avoids the trope as a result of choosing a local road bycicle racer as protagonist.

Comic Books

• Asterix in Spain plays with the trope. There are "aurochs" (bulls), and Asterix acts like a matador when he fights with one, but most of the setting is traditional roman cities, no much different than the ones in other comics. There is a band of gypsies and Obelix dances flamenco, however. Partly justified because Asterix is set in 50 B.C. (so it's not like making 21st century cities look like 18th century ones). Doesn't excuse the fact there are gyps... ahem, "nomads" and flamenco hundreds of years before any of them arrived in Spain (but then again, this is Asterix we are talking about).^note Strabo and Roman sources like Juvenal or Pliny actually talk about the puellae gaditanae, women from Gades (today's Cádiz) or otherwise in the Baetica who were famous for their dances two centuries BC, even using metal castanets (crusmata baetica). We kid you not.
• Daredevil:
  • See this comic in which the hero participates in an illegal bullfight with lions (so... lionfight?..)
  • Daredevil also fought a villain called the Matador very early in his career. This culminated in a battle DD won by butting the Matador with his horns. Matador's Start of Darkness is as priceless. He was once a corrupt matador that drugged bulls with sedatives hidden in banderillas because he was afraid of them. This ended when Bruce Banner witnessed it and turned into the Hulk ("The bull has no chance. This is not sport!"). After being exposed as a coward, Matador decided to exact revenge on mankind... by becoming a criminal in New York City. Uh?
• In a Captain America special from 1994, set in Madrid in 1943 , Cap saves a woman dressed in red who has tragically fallen into the bullfighting ring by hitting the bull's head with a random round-shaped advertising prop thrown to him by one of his fans.

Films — Animation

• In Toy Story 3, Buzz Lightyear is reset to Spanish mode. Besides speaking Spanish, he immediately becomes a jealous Latin Lover who dances Flamenco. A Flamenco-ized version of the franchise's song "You've Got a Friend in Me" is sung by the Gypsy Kings.
• The Road To Eldorado's first scene is in Barcelona (though there was no real reason why) and features a rampaging bull (because, again).

Films — Live-Action

• Discussed and lampshaded in Spanish film Death of a Cyclist. Rafa is playing the piano, helping entertain visiting American investors. He's asked what's next, and he snarks (in Spanish), that it'll be something "Spanish" like "Olé olé torero." Sure enough, the next scene shows a flamenco dancer with a mariachi band entertaining the Yankees.
• There is a sequence taking place in this kind of Spain near the beginning of Mission: Impossible II, where they managed to mix Pamplona's Running of the Bulls with Seville's Easter processions, Valencia's Falles, and about any other Spanish cliché. Also, Anthony Hopkins tells Tom Cruise that "the people are burning the saints to worship them", which is completely false; the already mentioned Falles DO burn figures, but not of saints, and in Easter processions figures of saints are taken out, but NOT burned.
• Tom Cruise does it again in Knight and Day, with running of the bulls scenes shot in scenic Seville, which neither honors San Fermín nor has a running of the bulls (and is in the other point of Spain from the location in which they are ran). Most of the sequences were shot in Cádiz, making even more misplaced visually.
• Parodied in the classic Spanish film Welcome Mr. Marshall!, in which the people of a small Castilian village decide to give themselves an Andalusian makeover in order to impress the Americans in charge of distributing Marshall Plan funds.
• The surreal 1959 movie Thunder In The Sun has 19th century French Basques killing Indians in California with Cesta Punta and dancing Flamenco each night. It gets worse.
• The 1956 adaptation of Around the World in 80 Days has a stop in a stereotypical Spanish town where Passepartout (played by Cantinflas) sees a flamenco dancer and start dancing with her imitating a matador. This impress a sultan that pushes him to fight one of his bulls in the arena the next day. He (Cantinflas himself does comical bullfighting in Mexico bull arenas at the time) complies with comical effects.
• Featured as part of a Culture Equals Costume spoof of the United Nations' Security Council in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. The Spanish representative is seen conversing with a matador and a tonadillera, just like the Japanese is flanked by a sumo wrestler and a geisha and the British is seated next to a beefeater.
• The 2001 Masterpiece Theatre version of The Merchant of Venice, and, likely, the Trevor Nunn stage production it was based on, has the Prince of Aragón show off with a flamenco dance step with fitting music to boot. Given that Aragón is in Northern Spain and has zero flamenco tradition, this was about as accurate as portraying someone from Alaska as a ten gallon hat-wearing cowboy.
• (Mostly) averted in the Peter Sellers comedy The Bobo, where Barcelona is shown as a bustling modern city. Still, Sellers plays a (singing) matador, and there's an extended scene in a flamenco club (with a startlingly intense performance.)
• In the original script of Vicky Cristina Barcelona Juan Antonio was a bullfighter, but the Catalan public broadcasting company, which was one of the producers of the film, told Allen to change it and he became a painter, a profession more associated with Catalan culture. Catalan moviegoers were also disappointed that the local characters only spoke Spanish and English and had rather stereotypical Spanish names.
• The Indian film Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara used all the stereotypes but unlike most Hollywood films, they made an effort and the running of the bulls scenes were shot in the same streets of Pamplona where they're actually done. The main theme song, Señorita, does it for the flamenco part.
• The Jackal's Love Interest is a female Basque terrorist with the very Italian name Isabella Celia Zancona (or Zanconia). When she is introduced to Koslova, she replies "She is Basque, isn't she? They say Basques live by the vendetta. If they hate someone, it's to the death. It's the same way when they love." Paraphrasing a Spanish critic, "At this point a woman in the audience, probably Basque, uttered a loud "Menuda CHO-RRA-DA"."^note "What BULL-SHIT"
• City Slickers opens during the annual Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, which the protagonists get caught up in.
• The Running of the Bulls is parodied as "The Running of the Jew" in Borat. Althought it's supposed to take place in Kazakhstan and it was shot in Romania.
• Jean-Claude Van Damme's The Quest features a fighter representing the unarmed martial arts of Spain. However, instead of a folk wrestler or a lucha canaria stylist, the film presents a cocky guy dressed like a cantaor de flamenco who does random bullfighting poses during the matches and fights with spinning kicks (he is even played by a practitioner of Taekwondo, which is the least Spanish thing expectable when talking about martial arts).
  • Said Taekwondo fighter, Peter Malota, is actually Albanian and wears a belt with the Albanian flag as a homage to his country. We are lucky the movie takes place in The Roaring '20s, only a decade later a Spaniard with a black eagle insignia would have a rather particular connotation.
• An interesting subversion happens in Tekken (2010), whose producers thought Miguel Caballero Rojo's street-fighting style wasn't Spanish enough, so they changed it for a Basque martial art named Zipota. However, in real life, Zipota is completely unknown in Spain and is widely considered to be a fraud made up by its Texan promoter.
• In Murder Mystery, Nick's idea of a perfect European vacation is to book a visit to a small Spanish village where they show how to cure ham. When they see their bus, the tour operator has a guitarist and a Flamenco dancer entertaining the tourists before they get in.
• Delusions of Grandeur is set in XVII^th century Spain, mostly in Madrid. There are actual scenes of tauromachia and flamenco dancing.

Literature

• As explained by Art historian Jonathan Brown (see Quotes), the main Trope Maker, at least in the US, is Washington Irving (through his Christopher Columbus^note Same that started the "Columbus sailed west to prove the world was round" myth and Tales of the Alhambra, among others) and the Trope Codifier is Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which culminates with fiesta week in Pamplona. The second is probably the author most likely to be named in a foreign work set in Spain after Miguel de Cervantes (George Orwell if said work is political).
• Prosper Mérimée's Carmen (published 1847 and based on a story from 1830), and especially the 1870 opera by Georges Bizet, is one of the oldest examples of this trope.
• Dan Brown claims to have studied art history in Seville. The university of Seville says it never had an art student named Dan Brown, and any similitude between the Seville and Spain of his books and the ones in reality is purely coincidental.
  • The Da Vinci Code describes Oviedo, the historical capital of the Kingdom of Asturias, as a village where missionaries build churches with their own hands. The only Spanish character in the novel is one such missionary, who is of course also a member of Opus Dei intending to keep The Masquerade by all the means possible. Real Life Oviedo, by the way, is very different.
  • Brown is at it again in Origin, presenting again a Spain in the firm grip of the Catholic Church (and the Catholic Church as being rubbed wrong by the revolutionary new concept of biological evolution) - or worse: the Palmarian Church. The villain carries a gun fashioned into what can only be described as a comically sized rosary, wich he then uses to block a door; a presumed average cop pursuing him, apparently too stupid to realize that he can just remove it by hand, is compelled to ask God for forgiveness before shooting it. The Spanish monarchy is very much in absolute power, being divided between an ultra-Catholic king in his deathbed that is secretly controlled by an Evil Chancellor bishop, and a liberal heir apparent (in all the early 19th century sense of the word).
• Tom Clancy's Op-Center: Balance of Power (which wasn't really written by Tom Clancy but by a ghost writer like the rest of the series) has the Ethnic Scrappy Spaniards who are constantly characterized with the worst stereotypes about Mexico^note A gringo's idea of Mexico anyway, and the whole "ethnic tension" that serves as motif of the book is said to rely on racial grounds with no linguistic or cultural differences whatsoever. The book goes as far as to claim that you can tell a Castilian apart of a Catalan because of his darker face. Special nod goes to Luis García de la Vega, the "Interpol chief" in Madrid:
  Luis was a dark-skinned, black-haired, bear-large, two-fisted Andalusian Gypsy who taught flamenco dancing in his spare time. Like the dance style, the thirty-seven-year-old Luis was spontaneous, dramatic, and spirited.
• In the play A Shot in the Dark, the Spanish chauffeur Miguel Ostos is described as a bullfighting fan and a passionate and jealous lover. Unfortunately, he's not in the play's Dramatis Personae because it's a murder mystery and he's the victim.
• Discworld:
  • Turns up, complete with running of the bulls, in Witches Abroad. Unfortunately the whole thing is misunderstood by the witches, and after the sight of a small blonde woman walking right through the crowd of bulls as though being trampled to death is something that happens to other people and taking the wreath off the lead bull, the townsfolk decide just to have a flower festival instead.
  • Earlier books sometimes mention the "Quirmian bullfighting dance". Since Quirm is "generic Romance country" and usually closer to being France, there's some confusion as to why the dancers shout "With milk!" ("au lait".)
• David Hewson's Semana Santa (aka Death in Seville) is a thriller about a Serial Killer acting in Seville. During the Holy Week. Inflicting the same wounds, and with the same tools, as a matador on a bull during a bullfight. In vengeance for the same thing happening to people in a secret prison during the Spanish Civil War. The book also mistakes the Giralda and the Torre del Oro, and treats the Holy Week and the Fair as if they were the same event.
• Sidney Sheldon's The Sands of Time grabs this trope hard in the first line of the prologue and doesn't let it go until the end of the epilogue, 400 pages later. Colorfully-costumed gypsies traveling in wooden wagons are a common sight in 1970s Segovia^note We only have a couple mentions that Franco died the year before as hints of this; otherwise, the prologue and epilogue push the idea that the book is set in the modern day (1988 at the time it was released), and the description of the country is consistently between Hemingway's For whom the bell tolls and Mérimée's Carmen., everyone is a fan of El Cid, the only source of entertainment is bullfighting-related,^note With special mention to the version of Pamplona's Running that opens the book, where the bulls knock down statues and chunks of buildings. the only dance is flamenco, the only meals are chorizo, gazpacho and paella, and the only thing resembling political activism is done by the Catholic Church (which is portrayed as the mortal enemy of the Francoist dictatorship and every Spanish government of the past 300 years except for the Second Republic). The main plot follows four sexually repressed Hollywood Nuns as they ride shotgun with a group of alluring Lovable Rogue ETA terrorists, traveling through the Guadarrama mountains while killing fascists and being cheered on by the people, Zorro-style.
• The Spain expy in the Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard, Zingara, is named after the Roma people, renowned by its chivalry, and has its capital in the city of Kordova.

Live-Action TV

• There is a hilariously wrong episode of MacGyver set in the Basque Country (Spanish dub of the beginning here).
• Caroline in the City: In "Caroline and the Secret", Richard and Julia throw a party before they begin an European vacation. The party is attended by "José", a not quite tall, but dark and handsome Spanish matador that pronounces his name like an American ('oh-SAY!!). In his debut scene, he makes several lewd coments about Julia to Richard, despite fully being aware that she is Richard's wife, and then introduces himself with "I'm 'oh-Saay. I fight the bull." Before the party is over, he is in Richard and Julia's bed having sex with a waitress. Caroline mistakes the woman for Julia, tells Richard, and he travels to Spain to confront 'oh-SAY! in the following episode "Caroline and the Bullfighter", which is made of this trope:
  • Animated cutscenes to Madrid and Pamplona covered in palms, even though palms can only grow in either with the work of a dedicated gardener.
  • A Madrid hotel room (in El Famoso Hotel de Madrid, «The Famous Hotel of Madrid») that looks like a California beachfront home and must go out of business in Madrid's winter.
  • Extras speaking in Mexican and Puerto Rican dialects.
  • A hotel maid singing "España, España, Olé".
  • Such thing as a "Bullfighter Bar" down the street, decorated in bullfighting pictures and Francisco de Goya paintings where "all the bullfighters (in the city? Country?) are". Every single one of which is dark-skinned, black-haired, named 'oh-SAY! and dying to hit on an American woman.
  • The Running of the Bulls described as a "Rite of Spring". It takes place in July. The characters also arrived in time for one running, despite being in Madrid first (over 240 miles away), during daytime, runnings taking place at 8:00 AM, and the fact they returned to the Big Applesauce in under 24 hours.
  • Pamplona covered in multicolored flags, the only ones that are real being actually the national flag of Barbados.
  • Richard describing Spaniards not listening to him as "so much machismo".
  • A hospital hall lighted with chandeliers. As if a reference hospital in a provincial capital could not have electricity. Other props in this scene include an electric fan out of business (in a town almost on the Pyrenees that rarely gets temperatures over 30ºC) and a massive wall crucifix.
• The episode "Barcelona, May 1917" of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Curious case as it was written, directed and starred mostly by British people, and in turn features a lot of British stereotypes about Spain instead of American ones: paella, Cordobese hats, a duel at a bullring, a small jealous husband with moustache and an omnipresent bullfight tune every 5 minutes. Oh, and once the cheating is revealed to be a forgery, the small jealous husband decides to share a drink with the guy that he was going to kill a second before. ¡Fiesta!
• The episode "Faux Fox" of Relic Hunter has Sydney and Nigel in a rush to meet a professor in a Spanish university because according to them, siesta time will begin in 20 minutes and then the whole country will start napping.
  • Despite actually being shot in location around Seville, the scenes of Sydney and Nigel travelling to Seville were shot in a 19th century tourist steam train. In real life they would have either flown directly to Seville, or to Madrid and then taken the high-speed train to Seville, but God forbid 21st century Spain being shown as being in the 21st century.
  • The reason the Spanish Crown Jewels got lost in the first place? The courier carrying the instructions to locate them was killed by a jealous Andalusian innkeeper after he caught him sleeping with his wife.
• The Running of the Bulls is parodied in the Brass Eye episode "Animals" with the "Running of the Wasp", complete with footage of a crowd of people ostensibly running away from a wasp.
• The Path to 9/11 filmed the scenes set in Madrid (and every other non-American location for that matter) in Morocco. The only attempt to make the scene feel "Spanish" is having a couple of extras dressed as nuns in the background and another playing a Spanish guitar in a corner.
• In the Season 5 premiere "Dishpan Man", The A-Team is tasked to solve a hostage crisis by unspecified terrorists in Barcelona's airport. The episode avoids the most full-blown version of the trope if only because it is painfully obvious that it was filmed in the same California location as any other episode, and with the very same props to boot. Nevertheless, the area still seems devoid of any civilization and the A-Team saves the day by using practical effects to create fog, which is treated as something shocking that never happens in the area◊ because the climate is "too warm". The absurdity is topped in the third act by the terrorists' demanding to fly to Gavà, which is a town right next to the airport in real life.
• In the E-Ring episode "The General", the stock establishing shots of Madrid are interspersed with statutes of Catholic saints and the music consists of Spanish guitar and tap-dancing-like sounds despite the case being about an American general kidnapped by Basque terrorists in Madrid. This general is (inexplicably) held in an apartment next to the M30 motorway that looks like a pre-industrial farmstead from the inside.
• The Highlander episode "Duende" has MacLeod dueling with another immortal for the love of several generations of Spanish Flamenco dancers ("duende" is the word for "talent" in Flamenco music parlance).
• The episode "El Toro Bravo" of Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, starting with the title itself. Two killers involved in the bullfighting business see themselves as a master and apprentice matador when they "bullfight" foreign tourists who disrespect the bulls or the festival itself during the Running of the Bulls of Pamplona. And the police can't catch the killers sooner because everyone in Spain is a sucker to the Catholic Church and old names, even after they have fallen in disgrace in the most nonsensical way possible. Throw in some bizarre references to Don Quixote and Basque nationalism, techno-Flamenco in the beginning and bullfighting-inspired music at the end, and more Spanish flags and 1950s Bull Run posters than you can hang on Westworld's Mexican village set, and you have your Spanish episode.
• The first time Alias went to Spain ("Parity"/"A Broken Heart") was pretty jarring. Sydney infiltrates a Madrid mansion by posing as a party guest with a long, dyed red mane, long, revealing red dress, a black and red fan and an explosive disguised in a 5 pesetas coin (from the 1980s... two years after Spain switched to Euro). She uses the explosive to cause a distraction and steals a Medieval codex from a security room, whose information sends her to a Baroque church in Malaga. All while a Flamenco-inspired version of One-Woman Wail thunders in the background. They wished up a bit in later seasons, either keeping the stereotypes in the places they are actually from (a Flamenco show in Seville, an expat's country villa somewhere in Andalusia, a nightclub in Ibiza) or making the Spanish locations so generic they could be anywhere (a dock, a hotel, a bio-weapons research lab...).
• Empty Nest: In "Harry's Excellent Adventure", Harry travels with his brother to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls. They hang in a very narrow and typically Mediterranean whitewashed alley, drinking tequila, until the bull herd suddenly runs on them unnanounced and they have to flee. On the wall behind there is a poster announcing a corrida with Gitanillo de Triana and Manolete, two bullfighters who died on the arena in 1931 and 1947, respectively.
• The Middle: Nancy hosts 'perfect' Foreign Exchange Student Esteban, a Tall, Dark, and Handsome aspiring chef who makes a dish from a different part of Spain every week including "Tapas from Barthelona". His Regional Riff is Flamenco-ish, of course.
• In The One (2021), Grace is surprised to learn that two Spanish women in their 30s are married because she "thought the Catholics weren't down with the lesbians." Spain legalized gay marriage in 2005 and has one of the highest acceptances of homosexuality in Europe. The One came out in 2021 and is set 20 Minutes into the Future.
• The White Princess confuses the Alhambra of Granada with the Alcazar of Seville, and has Catherine of Aragon and the Spanish court dancing Flamenco to receive the monarchs of England - two centuries before Flamenco even existed.

Tabletop Games

• The James Bond 007 role-playing game module Goldfinger II - The Man With Midas Touch takes the heroes to Pamplona during the Running of the Bulls, where they are doused with pheromones that make them an irresistible target to the bulls and then dumped into the Running of the Bulls as part of a Death Trap.
• According to the Cyberpunk 2020 splatbook Eurosource Plus, Spain is seen in Europe as a country with the usual stereotypes: flamenco -the tourist version, the real one being extinct-, bullfights -very popular, with some toreros being more famous than politicians-, and bandits -since an unemployment salary for the farmers of southern Spain was suppressed-, while ignoring it is the European country with the highest number of University graduates.

Theatre

• Invoked in "My Little Castagnette", in The Desert Song.
• The ballet The Three-Cornered Hat has a prologue set in a bullring for no better reason than to provide one half of this trope. Manuel de Falla's music amply fulfills the other half.
• Bizet's Carmen.
• In Cesare - Il Creatore che ha distrutto, Cesare Borgia plays with this against The Bully Henri, the head of the French students in their university in Italy, who is insulting Spain. Since Henri is so dumb, Cesare plucks a red cape off the shoulders of his friend Giovanni de'Medici, and bullfight parody ensues.

Video Games

• Vega's stage in Street Fighter II (and Vega himself, for that matter). The catch? That stage is set in Barcelona, one of the least Toros Y Flamenco-esque cities in Spain. Of course, one can easily find a tablao if desired... but it's as representative of the city in itself as ceili dancing. Vega's Super SFII Turbo ending includes a peek into his Big Fancy House. It actually looks as if it was straight-up lifted from Granada's Alhambra◊.
• Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! has the unforgettable Don Flamenco. Besides his name, this fighter likes to comment about everyone's hair, thinks he's very beautiful, dances flamenco (some dance the game designers thought looks like flamenco, anyway) with a rose between his teeth and has a girlfriend named Carmen. And the entrance music is from Bizet's opera — specifically, "The Toreador Song". The Wii game not only retains these characteristics, but adds to them by showing him in a bullfight during his intro cutscene, adding a rose print to his trunks, having him swear his love to Carmen nonstop during his fight, and gives him dialogue in actual Spanish (a trait shared with all other boxers from non-English speaking countries).
• Harry Potter: Quidditch World Cup: The Spanish team members are dressed as bullfighters, their stadium is a bullring and they SCREAM!!!, don't talk.
• The level "Black Velvetopia" in Psychonauts which, in typical Tim Schafer absurdist style, combines Toros Y Flamenco with tacky black velvet paintings, neon &... high school gym class. Capped off with a Bullfight Boss battle, of course. Somewhat justified in that the level is not an actual place, but rather a representation of the mind of a Latin-American former wrestler with a combination of OCD, chronic depression and deep-seated insecurity issues relating to an incident in high school.
• The Spanish team in Backyard Soccer is called Los Toritos.
• While the Kingdom of Sapin from Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War is presented as a modern and advanced nation, some of the usual Spanish stereotypes still creep into its portrayal. The main female character from Spain is a modern day Ace Pilot with the callsign "Espada" (which means sword), who works as a teacher of flamenco (groan) after she quits in the armed forces. And yes, she wears a rose in her hair while teaching said dance (groan) and is presented as a romantic, melancholic woman (groan).
• The Regional Riff of the Spanish civilization in Age of Empires II: The Conquerors (though only in the original Age of Empires II as the Definitive Edition completely recompose the theme to sound less flamenco) is distinctively flamenco-ish, despite the fact that the game ends around 1600 at the latest, yet the first mention of flamenco dates only from 1774. Also, and as informative as it is, one can't help but think that the History section of the game dropped the ball when they devoted most of it to what is more exotic to non-Spanish players, Muslim Spain - which would fit more in the 'Saracen' civilization part - rather than the Christian kingdoms that the game's Spanish civilization is meant to represent. Castile and Aragon are only mentioned when the text deals with the conquest of Granada and no mention whatsoever is made of Asturias, Leon, Navarre or the Catalan counties (or Portugal, see Real Life).
• Rome: Total War has "bull warriors" as an Iberian elite troop. While the bull is a common motif in Ancient Iberian art, there is zero evidence that such unit or their fancy helmets with bull horns sustaining a solar disc ever existed.
  Bullshit Warriors is a better name for these tough Spanish warriors. Nowhere outside of Rome: Total War have these warriors existed.
  — Rome Total War: Truth or Fantasy?
• 0 A.D.: The Iberian civilization's gameplay music is far too modern, dominated by guitars and trumpets. Of course no actual Ancient Iberian melodies have survived, and the few musical scenes represented in Iberian art show instruments common in the Ancient Mediterranean like lires and flutes. The Iberian units and buildings also used to have Spanish names in the first versions of the game before the programmers switched to Basque, which is at least a non-Latin derived language (the actual relationship between Basque and the poorly understood Ancient Iberian language(s) is debated; on the other hand, the game's Iberians are a stand-in for all peoples in the ancient Iberian Peninsula, including the Iberians but also Celts, Celtiberians, proto-Basque/Aquitanians, Lusitanians, Tartessians and Balearics).
• At his debut in Tekken 6, Miguel Caballero Rojo, the Spanish representative in the King of Iron Fist Tournament, dressed in bullfighter-inspired attire. The resulting backlash over the blatant employment of a national stereotype (something Tekken usually doesn't rely on, unlike Street Fighter where it's part of the point) made Namco change his standard outfit in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, to something more akin to the street brawler he is.
  • Miguel is canonically from Buñol, a popular tourist destination in Japan because of its annual tomato fight. Buñol is a figthing location in the games, with people throwing tomatoes at each other in the background while the players kick the snot out of each other.
• Fatal Fury has Laurence Blood, Krauser's Dragon and highly stereotypical bullfighter. His stage in 2 and Special is in the middle of a bullfighting arena in Barcelona, with a Pamplona-esque continuous stream of rushing bulls on the background preventing players from changing planes. Also to make sure we know it's Barcelona, the Sagrada Família Basilica can be seen just outside the arena in the distance.
• In the Grand Theft Auto knock-off Wheelman, set in Barcelona and starring Vin Diesel, Vin's contact in the "Catalan underworld" is a skilled thief moonlighting as a Flamenco dancer for no seeming reason than the fact that she's Spanish. She looks very much like a Hot Gypsy Woman stereotype, which would have some verosimilitude, but it is unknown if this was the developers' intention or they were going for a Spicy Latina. There is also Flamenco-inspired music, a couple of missions in the bullring La Monumental (although it's closed down for reform in the game), and Vin drives a tanker truck brand "Toro de Lidia" at one point.
• Franco Gerelt of Star Gladiator is a honorable 24th century matador who is forced to fight for the Big Bad after he kidnapped his wife and daughter and surgically placed a bomb in his body. His weapon is a laser rapier.
• Shin Megami Tensei has Matador, the arrogant and aptly-named zombie-demon-pirate-bullfighter. It is implied that he was a human matador who died in the arena. His top attacks are called "Golpe Andalucia" and "Red Capote".

Web Animation

• In Arfenhouse: The Movie, for reasons not clear, the characters are transported to a crudely-drawn "SPAYN!!" at the time of "TEH RUNNIN OV TEH BUHHS" (a herd of Pringles cans).

Western Animation

• Walt Disney's Ferdinand the Bull short (And the book it was based on).
• The Mickey Mouse (2013) short "Al Rojo Vivo" takes place during the Running of the Bulls. It also includes another Spanish festival, La Tomatina (the one where they throw tomatoes at each other), which takes place in a different town (Buñol) and at another time of year.
• In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "When Mice Were Men", the Rangers travel to Spain, to a place named "Tramplonia" to be precise, to visit an old friend of Monty named Don Quijole. He tells them about an evil bull who stole all the other bulls to ruin the Running of the Bulls festival. The Rescue Rangers construct a mecha-toreador to defeat the evil bull. This is where the picture of the article is from.
• In an episode of Jackie Chan Adventures, the bad guys tail Jackie to Pamplona, and end up getting caught up in the Running of the Bulls. Everyone has to run for it except the Shendu-possessed Valmont, who the animals avoid like water around a rock.
• An episode of the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon features the Running of the Bulls... in Lisbon. Which of course, looks like your stereotypical Spanish town, apart from the mentions of them being in Portugal.
  • Of note is the Running of the Bulls being interrupted by people carrying Holy Week Pasos, except they have bull and matador figures instead of saints; the fact that there seems to be a treeless desert outside of "Lisbon", and that the cathedral and bullring look like dead-ringers for Madrid's La Almudena and Las Ventas, respectively.
• One episode of Totally Spies! has the spies going to Spain. Not only is Madrid placed much higher on the map, the city seems to have come out of the 19th century, and obviously there are bulls.
• Sylvester And Tweety Mysteries has one episode where Granny and her pets go to Pamplona and Sylvester has to constantly run away from bulls. Bonus points for also getting the festival's name right.
• Family Guy: In "Peter's Got Woods," Peter makes Brian go to a PTA-meeting at James Woods High School in his place and Brian is surprised to find Quagmire there, despite being single and (presumably) having no children (let alone ones who attend that particular high school). Quagmire points out that he's had sex with women all over the world and that he very well could have kids in their twenties—then the episode cuts to "Madrid, Spain," represented by a Spanish colonial villa in what appears to be a desert, where a woman (speaking in an surprisingly good Spaniard accent) berates a man who looks like Quagmire (but with a ponytail and a Cantinflas 'stache) for coming home so late. Before leaving again, the man goes on a much-less-well-accented Spanish rant ending with "I'm going to go see a bullfight!"
• Largely averted in The Simpsons.
  • The one episode where bullfighting is a plot point ("Million Dollar Abie") is because the Old Hispanic Guy convinces Springfield to transform the local football stadium into a bullring, and Spain is not mentioned once (though the last scene is a clear Shout-Out to the Running of the Bulls).
  • The chairman of the IOC in "The Old Man and the C Student" is never said to be from any country, but he is a tan Caucasian with black hair and beard and speaks in a Castilian accent. When the stereotypical French Jerk representative throws wine at him, he throws wine back. At the time the episode was first aired, the position had been occupied for almost 20 years by Juan Antonio Samaranch (who looked nothing like the guy).
  • In "Waverly Hills, 9-0-2-1-D'oh" Homer and Marge go to a Tapas bar (with a sign reading "Not how the Spanish really eat" over the door). Marge defines eating tapas as "waiting for a meal that never arrives."
  • The Couch Gag in "You Don't Have to Live Like a Referee" has the family running from a couch stampede through the streets of Pamplona, complete with San Fermín kits.
  • In "YOLO", Homer gets again in touch with his childhood penpal — Eduardo from Barcelona. He read Homer's letters while sitting in one of the very bell towers of the Sagrada Familia and sent Homer a photo of himself dressed as a bullfighter. He speaks in a Castilian accent (a Catalan one was probably asking too much) and is religious but also a womanizer ("Eight wives, two hundred children!"). He also takes Homer to Springfield Tapas ("Formerly Chintzy's Small Portions", perhaps the reason there is a picture of two tacos on the wall) and his scenes are accompanied by guitar and castanet music.
  • Bart, being the poster child of the Book Dumb trope including Global Ignorance, believes that Toronto is in Spain.
• The Spanish player in Hurricanes is named Toro Contrais. Though human, he has stereotypical bull-like attributes, being large, bulky, broad-chested, raven-haired and overconfident in the field, and he hails from Pamplona. In one episode he was expelled from the team and he made career as a luchador named "The Masked Matador".

Real Life

• On the issue of Portugal being considered part of Spain, it is interesting to note that prior to the union of Castile and Aragon in the late 15th century, "Spain" was a purely geographical term applied to the whole Iberian Peninsula, and Portugal (which had been independent since 1143) thus was considered as Spanish as any other Iberian kingdom (John II of Portugal was in fact angered when Ferdinand and Isabella called themselves monarchs of Spain for this very same reason), not to mention the dynastic union of Spain and Portugal under Philip II and his descendants blurred the waters even more. It wasn't until the Portuguese rebellion in 1640 that independence was restored and that being "Spanish" became a foreign notion to the Portuguese. Therefore, don't ask a Portuguese person if they are Spanish, it's very poor form.
• There are three things you can expect any Spanish euro store to have (even moreso if frequented by tourists): a stuffed bull, a sevillana dancer doll, and a Mexican hat. There is at least some justification to that, as those Mexican sombreros are descendants of the broad-brimmed hats worn in Andalusia, but they look nothing like their ancestors.^note Most common of these, sombrero cordobés, is actually the hat that Zorro traditionally wore — a medium-sized hat with the flat circular brim and the low cylindrical crown. The Mexican hat, with its tall conical crown and enormous upturned brim probably descended from another variant, sombrero de catite.
• It should be noted here that the usual depiction of the Spanish countryside as the classical depictions of southwestern North America, with a similar climate (and dotted with towns of whitewashed buildings), has its exceptions not only on its mountainous regions but also mainly in the form of the northernmost Spain, whose considerably wetter and milder climate gives it lush landscapes similar to those of Great Britain or Ireland. In Galicia and Asturias, the similarity with the British Isles even exists at a geological level. As a result, the traditional architecture there is also dominated by grey stone walls and black shale roofs, not at all white lime and red tiles.
• Already in the 1860s, the French writer Jean-Charles Davillier complained that there weren't as many mantillas and gypsy dancers in the Spain he visited as previous travel literature had led him to believe.

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