Sports, 3rd prize
The Boys and the Bulls
Nikolai Linares
19 February, 2017
Three 16-year-olds get ready to train with real bulls at a bull ranch in Albacete, Spain, where they have traveled especially for the experience, from Almería, 350 kilometers away.
Bullfighting has long generated controversy and is declining in popularity, even in Spain, yet across the country boys still dream of stardom in the arena, and attend bullfighting schools to learn the requisite skills. At the Escuela Taurina Almería, a bullfighting school in Almería, Spain, boys aged 10 to 16 practice three times a week. The minimum age that boys may participate in a proper corrida, with a live bull, is 16. In February 2018, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child urged Spain to ban children from attending bull fights or bullfighting schools. Proponents say that bullfighting is part of Spain’s national fabric, an art form that encourages striving for the best.
Nikolai Linares
Born in 1983 in Elsinore, Denmark, Nikolai Linares lives and works as a photojournalist near Copenhagen. Nikolai Linares graduated from the Danish School of Journal...
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