When I reported on the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, I made a point of going over to the Plaza Monumental to see the bullfights. How I found the 2-3 hours of waking daylight to escape to the corrida, during a Summer Games … I don’t clearly remember.

It was my first afternoon at the bullfights, and remains my last. It’s not like you can drop by for some picador action in just any country in the world.

Now, it develops that I can’t go back for bullfights in Barcelona because the region of Catalonia, of which Barcelona is the capital, has banned the sport, as this New York Times story notes.

Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about this.

Certainly, bullfighting falls under the generic heading of cruelty to animals. I would imagine, however, that bullfighting proponents might suggest that a slaughterhouse that fearful cattle are led to is a no more dignified ending for a bull, though it might be quicker.

Morality aside, I clearly remember what a gripping spectacle it was. The color and the pageantry and the careful, ancient ceremony involved in it. I certainly can grasp how Ernest Hemingway became a bullfighting aficionado, which led him to write one of his best books, “Death in the Afternoon.”

I wrote a column about my 1992 visit to the corrida. Back in the pre-internet era. So I can’t get at it right here and now. But I was very happy with it. I did it in Hemingway style (I liked to think), which at that time was more influenced by my avid reading of the entries in the “Bad Hemingway” contest once held in Los Angeles annually. Anyway, I associate that afternoon at the ring with “column I wrote that I liked!” Doesn’t happen all that often.

A couple of gory realities of which I was not aware, before watching six bulls come out and go down … the precise method of killing a weakened and exhausted and bleeding bull. (I think this had been shielded from American audiences, who could remain ignorant if they didn’t make a point of finding out.)

That would be the sword thrust into the neck, from above, severing the spinal cord and resulting (at that point) in pretty much instant death. The matador does not carry the sword for the whole bullfight. Only when he feels the bull has been weakened does he fetch it from someone behind the protective barrier, and then he conceals it in an edge of his red cape, almost like a stick used to fan out the cape. When he gets close to the panting bull, then the sword comes out.

This is one of the key moments in a bullfight. A skilled matador gets it right and, bang, a chapter is closed. A less-skilled one needs several chances, and the spectacle of the sword banging off bone is unseemly and not easily forgiven by aficionados.

I also was not entirely clear on how the bullfighter pushed a bull to exhaustion, and it seems to be at least as much about bleeding (from spearing) as it is the matador running the bull around. (Though I’m not sure bulls are created to run for any length of time.)

Without question, the guys in the ring are taking tremendous risks, which seems to involve bravery, yes. Bulls are enormous, massively powerful animals with sharp horns, and many matadors have died in the ring or suffered fatal wounds.

I suppose that puts bullfighting in the small subset of sports in which it is accepted that death (for people) is part of the calculus of the pursuit. The other overtly lethal sports would be motor racing and boxing, and I have often criticized both sports for their acceptance of deadly outcomes. For people.

It seems a little curious that no one seems to be pushing hard for the elimination of those two. Perhaps because no animals are involved.

I’m glad that bullfighting in Catalonia was banned by the local government, and not by some outside force. For someone not part of the region to declare that “you can no longer do what your Latin ancestors did for hundreds or thousands of years” … that’s a call we outsiders are not fit to make.

It remains possible to see a bullfight in most of Spain, and particularly in Madrid. If you are not squeamish and have no major moral/ethical issues with which to deal, I recommend you go, next time you’re is Espana.

Bullfighting may disappear sooner than later. It already is gone, from Barcelona’s Plaza Monumental.