The Matador

DOMINGO LÓPEZ ORTEGA

A BULLFIGHT is not a ballet in which the essential can be achieved in purely visual and aesthetic terms. It has a predetermined end, and if the beauty of the performance does not effectively contribute to and lead up to this end, the bullfight is pointless, no matter how much applause it may elicit from the spectators.

Aficionados will easily remember having seen corridas with faenas of twenty, thirty, or forty passes, at the end of which the bull is as vigorous as ever, the matador being pressed back against the palisade, puncturing at random and often hitting the bone, and only with extreme luck transpiercing the bull. How is it possible that after such a number of beautiful passes, the bull should still not have submitted? The answer is very simple: executing passes is not the same thing as fighting bulls. A torero can be frightened of a bull — that is only human — but if he has done twenty or thirty passes with it, it means that he has forgotten his fear, and in such a case, if he has not subdued the bull, it is because he has not given himself the pleasure of fighting well, which is a pleasure that even the beasts enjoy.

It is most curious to hear aficionados lamenting the present state of the bullfight. I would say to them, How can you be surprised at this? Do you think this situation has come about by spontaneous generation? No, it has come about through a gradual development, and the aficionados bear a heavy responsibility for it. The error, to my way of thinking, goes back some thirty or forty years.

I consider the aficionados guilty because they have been inconsistent in their convictions, and this probably because they have been the partisans of different matadors, but never, or almost never, conscious of the classic rules for the exercise of the art, rules which can be reduced to three, parar, templar, and mandar — that is, halting the bull, calming the bull, and dominating the bull. Most people imagine that to do these things all one has to do is to wait for the bull to charge, without the bullfighter’s having to move. This is an error, for if the bullfighter stays put, he cannot calm the bull down, still less dominate it. It is at the beginning of the bullfight, when the bulls have the greatest strength, that they should be halted, calmed down, and dominated, and it is a curious thing that today, when, according to so many aficionados, matadors are fighting better than ever, very few bulls are fought with the cape. And why so? Very simply because the bullfighters are not following the great precepts of the past; they do not fight, but instead they execute passes, a great number of passes.

When an aficionado visits a cow-testing corral, as often as not he tries his hand at a little capework. I have had many experiences of this kind with aficionados. I had a friend who wanted to be a bullfighter and who kept insisting that I take him to fight some young bulls. I knew that he could not be a bullfighter — among other reasons, because he was already nearing forty, which is a bit old to embark on this profession. I managed to convince him that to become a bullfighter at his age he had to do something unusual which no one else had ever attempted, and that it was essential that he carry out exactly what would be announced on the posters.

“Now, listen,” he says, “how am I going to be announced on the posters?”

“As El Torero Sonámbulo — the Sleepwalking Bullfighter.”

“And what must I do to fit this odd title?”

“Very simple, you must fight with your eyes bandaged.”

“What?” he says. “Blindfolded?”

“Sí, señor. Isn’t your heart in this? With this, you’ll become the most popular man in Spain.”

Somewhat uneasily, like Saneho Lanza, he asks me: “But you think this is possible?”

“But, hombre, of course!”

“All right, if you say so, I’ll take your word for it.”

Without further ado we went out to the corral. I bound up his eyes, despite his reluctance, and when the young steer was ready, I led my friend into the ring and said: “When I tell you to, move the muleta, and go on doing so until I tell you to retire.”

It turned out just as I had foreseen. He executed five or six passes — or rather, the young steer made five or six charges at the cape — the bullfighter was delighted, the onlookers amused, and I had proved my point that executing passes is not the same as fighting a bull.

In recent years I have seen several young men who set out with great possibilities, but they failed to follow the classic rules. They had the right build, the proper courage, zest, and ambition. But the ready applause of the fans, combined with the pecuniary rewards, undermined them. They found it easier, not unnaturally, to take the less painful road.

The situation we are in today has come about because the aficionado has lost his knowledge of bulls, and the masses have not cared whether it was a bull, a cat, or a hare. The art of the bullfight is rooted in the danger presented by the bull. It this danger is removed — at any rate, for the person who is near the bull — the art of bullfighting no longer exists. The beauty, the nobility of the bullfight reside in the bullfighter’s experiencing, though also overcoming, the feeling that this is no joke and that he is not in the ring to hurt the bull by teasing it. It is then that the torero really lives and can create the sublime, spinechilling moments of his art.

We bull breeders make a grave mistake in that we do not look facts in the face and admit that it is unnatural that the bull be brave in just the way we want it to be for the bullfight. As it grows up, its defensive instinct develops, for it must learn to defend itself in fights with its own companions. This is the danger presented by bulls that have passed their fifth year. This is the period when their intelligence and sense, and thus their manias and vicious habits, are developed to the full, making them correspondingly more difficult to fight.

We bull breeders are apt to start from the mistaken assumption that all bulls charge, but this is anything but the fact. Bulls constitute a whole world of different characteristics and behaviors. Many bulls have to be taught to charge, and for this reason the bullfighter often has to make the bull feel that he is afraid of it — that is, he must run away from it in order to build up its confidence. This is one of the most important things in the bullfight. The torero should know that bulls are also fought by running away from them, something which is far more complicated than it might seem at first sight.

I spoke earlier of the complex world of the bulls. This complexity is due to their lack of selection, because we have not yet obtained the completely brave bull. The many cross-breedings that have been tried in the stock farms have resulted in a diversity of characteristics. The proof of this is that in those stocks which have preserved a more or less pure pedigree, the bulls are less differentiated in temperament than in the time of Pedro Romero.

Here was the titan of the bullfight. Imagine yourself killing close to six thousand bulls without a single one of them lifting you off your feet! And it must be remembered that the bulls Romero had to face displayed a bewildering variety of reactions, for in those days selective breeding was unknown. With this extraordinary variety of bulls, Pedro Romero managed to carve out a great career that no one has surpassed in the history of the art.

Following him, the great Francisco Paquiro succeeded in vanquishing all sorts of bulls with the precepts he received from Romero. This bullfighter attempted everything that was humanly conceivable, from pole vaulting over the bull, and jumping between its horns, right through the entire gamut of the bullfighter’s art. He did it all with an almost reckless intrepidity in the face of the most fearful physical conditions. But, as the bull is always stronger and more valiant than any human being, no matter how valiant or strong he may be, when the bulls began goring Paquiro he had to fall back on Romero’s methods, which he had practically abandoned in the vain belief that he could improve upon them.

In a small book on the art of bullfighting Paquiro said that many splendid maneuvers were being lost, and it is curious to note that in describing how they should be effected, he was preoccupied, above all, with their splendor, irrespective of the bull. On the other hand, focused primarily on the bull, Pedro Romero offered rules for how the muleta must be held with relation to the bull, so that the animal is really fought. The strange thing about the bullfight, compared with other arts, is that it is through the classic rules that one reaches the deepest romanticism, perhaps because the bullfight is simply that — pure romanticism.

We thus find ourselves in a peculiarly critical moment for the future of this art. The real aficionado is in a minority, so browbeaten that he has almost come to believe what the mass keeps repeating on all sides: that today the matadors are fighting better than ever in the ring, even though they fight less with the cape and kill worse and worse. I say the moment is critical because, if an end is not put to the present state of affairs, the art of bullfighting will be lost entirely.