Putting all the pieces together from the analysis of Picasso’s earliest bullfighting works and general trends through his artistic career: the redefinition of the horse as the “human” personality in the bullfight, the redistribution of emphasis on the bull/horse conflict as opposed to the bull/matador engagement, and the illumination of the horse as a tragic figure in this fight, creates a unique and powerful interpretative angle to look at Guernica from. Viewing Guernica in the absence of the matador in the Guernica adds to the allegory of the attack on Guernica as the matador can be best interpreted as the Spanish Government. The Spanish Government was clearly not there for its people as it allowed the Nazis to raid the town, much like how the innocent steed is ridden into battle and then unknowingly sacrificed for the entertainment of other humans and the tradition of the bullfight. Also, by removing this “human” aspect to the theme of the bullfight in the painting, it simplifies the emotions and reactions associated with the bull and the horse as they are both animals and do not deal with the psychological complexities and politics of human beings. By taking out the politics of the situation, the painting really becomes about the earth-shattering clash of good and evil without the ambiguities of governments and rising Facism. How ingenious was Picasso to relate the conflict with animals to emphasize the “inhumanity” of the situation!
Picasso portrayed the horse in the Guernica in relation to bull to connote and play on the themes of domestication, innocence, and sacrifice. By portraying the bull fight untraditionally, the horse takes on the central figure as the powerfully victimized. Author Hershcel B. Chipp of “Guernica: Love, War, and the Bullfight” describes the rhetorical reasoning behind straying way from the traditional bullfighting relationships. Chipp states:
In avoiding completely the man-bull contest, the most meaningful and hence most emotionally charged episode, and instead of choosing the bull-horse encounter, Picasso provides a context which, precisely because it lacks ritual significance, offers vaster potentials for the expression of wider meanings. The pathos of the suffering horse lends itself to the subject of the suffering victims of Guernica, just as it had served to express states of suffering in Picassos own years of personal conflict. (Chipp,106).
Chipp’s view provides context for Picasso’s specific choice of arrangement in the Guernica of the horse as the central figure literally in the limelight of the light-bulb, and the bull hidden the darkness of brutality. The bull is the least engaged member of the scene, as he watches out from the shadows. Marrero describes the bull in the Guernica as he “triumphs over the work desolation and chaos, wherein the cry of being sacrificed to the cruelty of the world rings out,”(Marrero, 67). The weeping woman with the dead child wails while looking up at the distanced and shrouded figure of the bull. This idea of “being sacrificed to the cruelty” rings true to the sacrifice of the town Guernica, because in fact, Franco “sacrificed” Guernica rhetorically instead of a damaged city or one that had been heavily involved in the civil war because it would not give the same results as a city that was untouched by war (“Guernica-1937”). In other words Franco was making the statement that if any rebel groups stood against him he would turn the Fascist Nazis on them. Using the domestic and innocent qualities of the horse in the context of the bullfight, the best interpretation of the horse is then the helpless and innocent population of Guernica. If the horse is a metaphor for the town of Guernica, then the allegory is complete: the bull is a symbol for the brutality of war, the absent picador is the absent protection of the Spanish government, and the horse is the defenseless and innocent town that is sacrificed thoughtlessly by the picador. Picasso’s unique view of the bullfight procures an intensely logical and vivid interpretation of Guernica.
The bull and the horse in Guernica, when analyzed reveal the same ethos of the bullfights of the early pastels except with a final perversion to demonstrate the gross tragedy of the situation. Initially, in Picasso’s first sketches of the Guernica seen in the Study V (1937) , 
Picasso drew the horse and the bull engaging in a fight, but chose to keep them separate in the final masterpiece (Chipp, 103). This could be attributed to the fact that he was trying to say that his conflict was not any ordinary bullfight; there was betrayal and mass destruction of members in the pictures not intimately connected to the bullfight. It is as if the bullfight has been perverted to reflect the war-like situation. In the wake of this battle between the matador and the bull a town was destroyed. The horse takes on the identity as a sort of “casualty of war” or collateral damage in this warlike and brink of death dance with a bull.
Images
Above:Pablo, Picasso. “The Guernica” 1937. Internet. 18 April 2005 .
Middle:"Corrida : la mort de la femme toréro" 1933. Musee Picasso.
Below: Pablo Picasso. “Study V.” 1937. “Guernica: Love, War, and the Bullfight. Art Journal. (1973).Vol 33. Issue 2: pg 100-115.