Hallucinogenic Toreador displays Dali's wife's distain for bullfighting, which remains a very popular Spanish tradition. In contrast, Dali had a passionate love of bull fighting. Gala herself appears in the upper left hand of the work looking disapprovingly on the scene. The work is biographical and reflects on Dali's life and native Spain. Dali was in is 60s when the work was completed and the work features the bullfighter Manolete, the most famous bullfighter of his day, who was killed in a bullfight at the age of 30, reflecting Dali's concerns with his own mortality. This is a truly momentous symbolist work, complex and bright.

Set in a bullfight arena, the key content includes:

The gadflies of St. Narciso, patron saint of Catalonia. This forms the cap, hair net and cape of the bullfighter.
A pool of the bull's blood and saliva is used to symbolise a bay with sunbather on an inflatable mattress.
The green tie of the toreador makes a visual twin of the shadows of Venus' clothing.

The dead bull outlines a mountain landscape, likely to be in the Cape Creus region around Port Lligat. Dali used this type of landscape in several other paintings, it is from an area in which he spent plenty of time, both living and also working in his nearby studio.