Joaquín Rodrigo Vidre, 1st Marquis of the Gardens of Aranjuez (November 22, 1901 – July 6, 1999)
Joaquín Rodrigo, composer of Concierto de Aranjuez
En Aranjuez con tu amor.
Junto a ti, al pasar las horas o mi amor 
Hay un rumor de fuente de cristal
Que en el jardín parece hablar
En voz baja a las rosas
Dulce amor, esas hojas secas sin color
Que barre el viento
Son recuerdos de romances de un ayer
Huellas y promesas hechas con amor, en Aranjuez
Entre un hombre y una mujer, en un atardecer
Que siempre se recuerda
Oh mi amor, mientras dos se quieran con fervor 
No dejarán las flores de brillar
Ni ha de faltar al mundo paz, ni calor a la tierra
Yo sé bien que hay palabras huecas, sin amor
Que lleva el viento, y que nadie las oyó con atención
Pero otras palabras suenan, oh mi amor al corazón
Como notas de canto nupcial, y así te quiero hablar
Si en Aranjuez me esperas
Luego al caer la tarde se escucha un rumor
Es la fuente que allí parece hablar con las rosas
En Aranjuez, con tu amor
Version 1
To pass the hours together with you O My Love, there is a sound in the garden of the crystal fountain that appears to speak below the roses. sweet love, these are dry leaves, without colour, that drift in the wind, they are memories and romances of the traces of a yesterday and promises that you make with love in Aranjuez between a woman and a man in a sunset that is always remembered.
O My Love, between those fervently in love, they will not leave the blazing flowers or forfeit peaceful world nor the heat of the earth. I know well that there are hollow words without love, that waft in the wind that no one listens to with attention, but Oh, my love there are other words which sound to the heart like notes of the wedding song, and these are the words I would wish to speak, if you await me in Aranjuez. soon the evening falls, and one may hear the sound of a fountain there that seems to speak with the roses….
Version 2
When it so happens that you chance to pass these hours with me, O My Love, below the murmur of the crystal fountain among the roses, it seems to me I hear in the sounds made by the dry and withered leaves bereft of colour that drift in the wind, the voices of memories and romances from days gone by, the traces of the past and the dreams of a yesterday and promises that were made between two lovers in a sunset now long since lost to time.
O My Love, the utterances of those fervently in love will not desert the blazing hues of flowers, nor will they leave the peaceful heat of earth. Well I know too, that there are words, hollow and loveless that waft in the wind – but these are such that they go unheard by us, and unattended –
But O My Love, there are other words that sound to the listening heart like the notes of a wedding song – and such are the words I long to speak to you.
So wait for me in Aranjuez soon as the evening falls, and listen there to the sound of the fountain that seems to speak with the roses…
Aranjuez, 
Un lugar de ensueños y de amor
Donde un rumor de fuentes de cristal
En el jardín parece hablar
En voz baja a las rosas
Aranjuez,
Hoy las hojas secas sin color
Que barre el viento
Son recuerdos del romance que una vez
Juntos empezamos tu y yo
Y sin razón olvidamos
Quizá ese amor escondido esté 
En un atardecer
En la brisa o en la flor
Esperando tu regreso
Aranjuez,
Hoy las hojas secas sin color
Que barre el viento
Son recuerdos del romance que una vez
Juntos empezamos tu y yo
Y sin razón olvidamos
En Aranjuez, amor
Tu y yo
Aranjuez, a place of dreams and love 
where the sound of crystal
fountains in the garden
seem to whisper beneath the roses
Aranjuez, today the dry
leaves without colour
which are swept by the wind
are just reminders of the
romance we once began,
and that we’ve forsaken without reason.
Perhaps this love is hidden in a sunset 
in the breeze or in a flower
waiting for your return
Aranjuez, today the dry
leaves without colour
which are swept by the wind
are just reminders of the
romance we once started
and that we’ve forsaken without reason
Uncredited English translation found on the internet.
Then a slightly more poetic version.
Version 3
When it so happens that you chance to pass these hours with me, O My Love, in the low murmur of the crystal fountain among 
the roses, it seems to me I hear in the sounds made by the dry and withered leaves bereft of colour that drift in the wind, the voices of memories and romances from days gone by, the traces of the past and the dreams of a yesterday and promises that were made between two lovers in a sunset now long since lost to time.
O My Love, the utterances of those fervently in love will not desert the blazing hues of flowers, nor will they leave the peaceful heat of earth. well I know too, that there are words, hollow and loveless that waft in the wind – but these are such that they go unheard by us, and unattended –
But O my Love, there are other words that sound to the listening heart like the notes of a wedding song – and such are the words I long to speak to you.
So wait for me in Aranjuez at that place where when the evening falls, one hears the sound of the fountain that seems to speak with the roses.
For a long time now, I have wanted to feature Mari Paz Vega, a bull-fighter from Malaga, in a post, but I held myself back due to the controversy which typically surrounds any discussion of bull-fighting. Today I feel like overcoming that hesitation.
Throughout my life I shared the feeling of repugnance and horror many people feel at the idea of bullfighting, of a spectacle where an animal is killed in public, to the accompanying cheers and applause of a blood-thirsty crowd.
Then I saw Mari Paz Vega, and this was my initial reaction:
I only caught the tail end of this magnificent episode of P.O.V, (a title meaning “Point of View”, a series featured on Public Television) and it made something in me fall into a thrilled silence, and the hair on my body stand up.
I learned something totally unexpected about myself.
Until today I loathed the sport of bull fighting. If I heard or read about a matador being injured or killed, something in me exulted, but watching Mari Paz I witnessed my previously fixed attitude fall away and 
transform itself into a transfixed fascination with the gestures and expressions of this heroic female engaged in her life and death drama. I don’t know if mine is an obvious case of gender bias, but I suspect not. I truly feel that when a woman does something to claim her authentic self, as this woman did, that she herself, as well as the thing she claims, is transformed. I know I will not chose to watch a male matador in the arena, but now I think I understand how male aficionados of this sport feel… and perhaps I can forgive them and their folly.
Yes, this may be a brutal sport, and the bull may be pitied for his injuries and the loss of his life. But after tonight’s experience I am less willing to judge. Watching a beautiful woman engaged in acts of elegant bravado, and transforming a sacrament of machismo into something different, fiercely beautiful and operatic opened my soul.
Mari Paz Vega
In this clip one heart-stoppingly sees the frightening risks involved. There is scant room for error. The degree of courage and calm needed to execute this ballet, and the consequences of making a mistake, demand that natural fear – the fear of injury and death, be confronted and conquered moment by moment. The absolute grace inherent in such an act cannot be impugned. There is no protective gear for either combatant in this encounter, and both have the chance of getting out of it alive – or not. The lethality of the context of the arena, and the bravura displayed by Mari Paz within its confines, shouts out to me of a transgressive Lesbian sensibility, which for me is undoubtedly a part of its appeal , and I make no claims here for any sense of objectivity: nor do I apologise.
The act of machismo, loved and admired by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, perhaps the most famous American aficionado of the corrida, involved man against bull, but I can find in myself no place that resonates with that phenomenon. I ask myself, how my reaction to Mari Paz could be different from watching a male matador, and my answer to myself is highly complex and subjective. It is found, I think in the contemplation of female power and grace – in witnessing a woman who confronts herself, who confronts real and present danger,
along with the weight of centuries of male tradition, in an arena where hitherto men claimed an exclusive presence for themselves.
Notwithstanding its pre-patriarchal origins of bull-vaulting, the Tavrokathapsia (seen on the frescoes in Knossos) of ancient Crete, where girls and boys performed in the bull-ring, and where no sacred bulls were killed, its modern equivalent involves the shedding of animal blood. Blood-shed and agility dance together in the corrida. In the world we know, men have always dominated: bravery and valour has always been a male preserve. Here Mari Paz is a largely unwelcome interloper who makes the time-honoured claim for herself. That alone is sufficient to make me want to stand up and applaud.
The song “En Aranjuez con tu amor” has traditionally been associated with a matador and his lover. The dominant poetic impression which arises in my imagination when I hear this song, is something I have always referred to myself as “the ghost in the garden.” This is the uncanny, unseen presence one sometimes feels in the pregnant silence of a garden where wild nature is the dominant spirit. It is beautifully evoked in Tomasso Lampedusa’s renowned novel of pre-risorgimiento Sicily, “Il Gattopardo” – “The Leopard.” The presence in that garden is of the death of History – and of course there is also the body of a dead soldier among the over-blown French roses with their scent of voluptuous decay, and the marble fountain with its covering of algae, desultorily pouring out its reluctant trickle of water in the hot Sicilian night.
In “En Aranjuez con tu amor” the shadow of death is present – the death of old leaves and flowers, the death of love and lovers of the past and the incipient death of the lover from whose mouth the words of the song unfold. Love and death are the two sides of a single coin, and when they are found mingled together in a poem, or the words of a song, a genuine homage is paid to the full weight and value of the power and mystery of life itself. The bull-ring is the garden transformed, and with its usually covert side in full display.
For the vociferous critics of bull fighting, who say they object to animal cruelty, I have a serious question: How do they feel when 
they stick their forks in a steak, or get their meal handed to them through the window or over the counter at a fast food restaurant? Do they consider the indignities and cruelties suffered by the animals they eat? Do they know what goes on in feed-lots and slaughter houses? Do they know how ‘beef-cattle’ are raised? How veal is procured? If they do, and still eat beef even as they inveigh against the cruelty of the bull-ring, I would aver they are being hypocritical.
The bull who enters the bull-ring is in a sense a pampered animal. He has demanded and received the care and respect of the people who raised him right up to the moment of his death, which he encounters in the full spate of heat of passion and aggression. He has almost nothing in common with the tortured and exploited servile animals who are sacrificed merely for the satisfaction of our meat-eating appetites and the pleasure of our taste-buds. Political correctness can only go so far. So to my mind, the only people who can raise a seriously valid and respectable objection to the corrida are non- meat- eaters, vegetarians and vegans.
About Mari Paz Vega:
Fabienne Williams
Mari Paz Vega: bullfighter
The fear, says Mari Paz Vega, never goes away. In fact, the world’s premier female bullfighter says that standing alone in front of an animal 10 times her weight before a crowd ready to boo every inelegant move becomes even more tense as time goes by. ‘As you get more experience you become more aware of the responsibility and what the bull can do to you,’ she says. ‘But conquering the fear is one of the most beautiful things about being a torero.’
Vega became a matadora de toros in 1997 when she was 22, after an apprenticeship fighting younger bulls. To do so, she took part in a special corrida where she had to face a four-year-old bull weighing more than 459 kilos. Vega was the first woman to perform the coming-of-age ceremony in a Spanish bullring and one of only six to do so anywhere. ‘I was very proud,’ she says, comparing the day to a first communion or a wedding. ‘You don’t know if you are going to be up to it, until 
you do it.’ Her sponsor for the occasion, an established matador who ceremonially introduces the newcomer, was Cristina Sanchez – the trailblazing female bullfighter, who graduated the year before in France. Sanchez retired in 1999, irritated, she said, at being denied the chance to participate in major events by colleagues unwilling to share billing with a woman.
Vega persevered, consolidating her star status not in Spain but in Latin America (particularly in Mexico and Venezuela), where she says the bullfighting world is less sexist than in Spain. But the 32-year-old’s ambition remains to perform on the most important stage in the bullfighting world – the San Isidro festival in the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid.
‘I have proved now that I am just another torero and that I deserve the opportunity,’ she says. ‘They know now that Mari Paz Vega is still here. That she is a professional. That this was never just a game.’
But it did begin as a game, playing at bullfighting with her five brothers when she was growing up in Malaga. Their father had tried, and failed, to reach the big leagues himself and worked as a mozo de espada – a valet figure within a matador’s team of assistants.
Despite her father’s warnings that a hard and risky life would be even more difficult because of her gender, Vega became obsessed with the sport. Her mother’s death when she was 14 only added to her determination, as did the injuries she sustained – she was gored in the leg in 2000 and fractured a femur the following year when she was trampled. ‘Everybody says you are not a true matador until you’ve been hurt,’ she says. ‘You have to find out whether you are capable of getting over it and getting back in the ring.’
Bullfighting chat rooms lament the way she has been marginalised on the Spanish circuit. Women have made occasional 
appearances in the bullring since the 18th century, even at times when it was against the law for them to compete. Today there is only one other active female matadora – Spain’s Raquel Sanchez – and a handful of apprentices.
Vega insists there is nothing to stop a woman taking to the ring with as much skill as a man and she laughs at the idea of separate events for men and women. Physical strength plays a part, she concedes, but it doesn’t determine who triumphs. ‘What we want is equality,’ says Vega. ‘We all kill the bull.’
theinkbrain 