|  After dinner everyone gathers in the village square to watch the Flamenco dancers. I am of course the best dancer there is but I like to look at how the other girls do their thing and I know that they will always drag me up to dance because of my beauty and personality and my passion for the dance.
It was on a night like this that I met my first love. His name was Paulo and he was a bullfighter. He has the most beautiful blue eyes and black hair that you have ever seen and he loved to perform the death defying feats of bull fighting. The only trouble was that he had a blue cape. He was not the most successful matador in the world but he was the best looking and so the audience was mostly women on the days that he was fighting. Paulo was a showman and he certainly knew how to get the crowd up on their feet. But this backfired on him one sultry afternoon in Seville. Paulo was in the ring for a show by the Young Matador Association. He was the third matador to enter the ring and the crowd were looking forward to a good show. The first two young matadors had been taken away on stretchers after a particularly nasty bull had managed to maim them with his horns. Paulo wasn’t worried as he knew that with a flick of his cape and a flutter of his eyelashes that the bull would be won over and that the crowd would be screaming his name. Paulo entered the arena and women in the stands started to flutter their eyelashes and their fans in anticipation of a great show. Paulo strode around the arena swirling his blue cape as the bull was let loose and charged towards Paulo with thunder in his steps. The ground shook as the bull ran faster and faster, head dipped and horns at the ready to impale Paulo’s beautiful bronzed body. The crowd gasped in unison as the bull got closer to Paulo and just at the precise second that Paulo was about to pull his cape away and let the bull run past him, the bull screeched to a halt and rolled over on its back in submission. The crowd went wild; Paulo had won over the bull! Such a feat had never before been seen and Paulo was a national hero. His fame only served to make his ego and vanity bigger as the days passed and it was with a big head and an arrogant stare that he entered the bullring in Madrid. Once again, Paulo swaggered around the ring with his blue cape held at this side. The bull ran into the ring and charged. The audience leapt to their feet in anticipation of the famous move that Paulo was about to make. Paulo smiled wildly as he swept the cape away at just the right second and … caught himself in the eye, fell over and was trampled by the bull. I never saw Paulo again. His whole attitude changed after he came out of the ring bruised and blinded by the cape. His adoring audience turned against him, angry that their hard earned pesetas had been wasted on a flouncey fake like Paulo. He went to live in the hills around Majorca and became a pianist. He might well be out of my life but whenever I return to Spain and spend time in the hills I remember Paulo and my summer of romance with him all that time ago… | 