If on May 1, 1992, La Maestranza and bullfighting all mourned the death of the banderillero Manolo Montoliu, thirty-one years later, on the same day and in the same setting, an April Fair ended, to which the description of historic does justice. , both for the quantity and the quality of the triumphs in it achieved in the fourteen festivities that made it up, plus the previous one on Easter Sunday.
And among the many winners, a name above all, Morante de la Puebla, who on April 26 became a bullfighting legend, after cutting off two ears and a tail from a bull owned by Domingo Hernández, an event that made For fifty-two years, bullfights on foot had not taken place in the arena of Baratillo.
If it's about numbers, here they go: twenty-six cut ears (plus two on Easter Sunday); a tail; three ears in celebration of rejones; three laps around the ring to the bulls; four Puertas del Príncipe and four full of “no locations”. No goring.
A numerical balance that, in this case, I would say – ear more, ear less – coincides with the artistic assessment of what happened in La Maestranza “the one with the golden sand, the one with the baroque arches and the dark doorway” (lyrics of the pasodoble that accompanies the gangs in the paseíllo).
A name above all: Morante de La Puebla, who if he had no luck on Easter Sunday, already on his second afternoon (one ear) advanced what would come forty-eight hours later, sublimating bullfighting, since it opened cloak until the final thrust, to go out again, twenty-four years after his first time, through the Puerta del Príncipe. After three days he left his mark again and cut off another ear.
Morante is a living history of bullfighting, since diverse bullfighting converges in it, but not to imitate them but to recreate them. And the prodigy arises.
But – we said – together with the genius of La Puebla, there were other bullfighters and also bulls (from El Parralejo, Victorino Martín, Domingo Hernández, the debut of La Quinta or Miura, which, as is tradition, closed the Fair) to highlight.
Added to that of Morante are three other Puertas del Príncipe: Roca Rey, whose claim ran out of seats in its three paseíllos and who once again demonstrated that, popular pull aside, he is a powerful bullfighter and in constant technical and artistic evolution; Tomás Rufo, who revalidated that of the previous year, the first as a bullfighter, cutting off three ears from Jandilla with a strong Castilian flavor bullfighting; And the rejoneador Guillermo Hermoso de Mendoza who, despite his youth, already honors such a great surname.
But there are more proper names among the winners. One of them, Daniel Luque, already definitively established at the top of the ladder; also Emilio de Justo and Ginés Marín; Alejandro Talavante, closer and closer to rediscovering himself and, in a somewhat lesser tone, Álvaro Lorenzo. With them a reappeared El Cid, who returned through his jurisdiction with that of Victorino Martín. And Manuel Escribano who, marginalized by the companies, cut off two ears from a Victorino bull and one that could have been two from another from Miura, there is nothing.
With the April Fair over, bullfighting now looks to Madrid and a San Isidro Fair that – hopefully – endorses what happened on the banks of the Guadalquivir, in front of Triana.
