The Aesthetic Journey of Neo-Mudejar Bullring Architecture: From Madrid to Uruguay, Venezuela, and Colombia

Thirty-five years passed between the inauguration of Madrid’s former bullring (1874) and the project for the Real de San Carlos bullring in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay (1909). This temporal distance reflects a process of aesthetic transmission that was originated in the Madrid bullring: it was the first building to establish, through its façade, Neo-Mudejar as a representative style of Spanish nationalism, due to the patriotic connotations attributed to bullfighting and the rediscovery of medieval Mudejar architecture. Later applied to South American bullrings, this article explores the transfer of the Neo-Mudejar aesthetic bullring model in Uruguay, Venezuela, and Colombia. The architectural analysis of the selected examples will allow us to find a dependence on the Madrid prototype, marked by formal and visual referentiality.