San Isidro Fair: The bulls (and the public), a ruin | Culture

A bullfight of the very prestigious iron of Adolfo Martín was announced and the whole thing was precipitated by the cataract of disability and lack of caste. A ruin. The square was filled, more than 21,000 people, according to the company’s data, and their carousing behavior would disturb any fan who was there. Another ruin.

The celebration was sliding along the annoying paths of a suffocating heat, the drowsiness produced by boredom and the bitterness of failure when a few drops began to fall on the fourth bull, heralded by large clouds that foreshadowed what happened. And suddenly the bullfight changed color.

Ángel Otero nailed a brilliant second pair of banderillas, skillfully avoiding the bull’s clipping that put him in serious trouble. The rain increased, and there was a rout on the lines, because no one had come with a protective umbrella.

Ferrera took the crutch, made a couple of clean strokes with his right hand and heard long, excited waves that did not even remotely correspond to what was happening in the wet sand. When the echo of the last commotion still lingered, the bull collapsed along its entire length and the depressing scene of the subaltern pulling its tail to encourage it to regain verticality was experienced. Some then shouted “bull, bull!”, while the bullfighter tried to take advantage of the class of his opponent whose strength failed again and again. The animal was very noble, and some blows of the muleta turned out to be clean, but not exciting, as the out-of-tune olés tried to express. As a good bullfighter of his time, Ferrera extended the task unnecessarily amid persistent rain, with the stands empty and the spectators taking refuge in the stands and barrages.

When they announced the departure of the fifth, Escribano prepared to cross the ring to stand on his knees in the middle and receive the bull with a long exchange, a luck that he had already repeated in his first, which stopped him before the match and put him in trouble. On this occasion, he was lucky and was even able to draw three very acceptable veronicas on a cheeky and astifino bull, as soft as the others. As in the other, he placed banderillas with his usual job and uneven execution, and began the muleta task with a pass changed from behind, moments before the bull collapsed while the public, emboldened by the rain, which fell with force, he sang the visitors of the bullfighter. There was a somersault without consequences, which increased the intensity of the olés to the half muletazos that the bottomless bull allowed a dedicated bullfighter. The thrust fell behind, but handkerchiefs appeared at the top of the square – the rest of the spectators had fled – the request was majority, but the president did not grant the trophy and rightly earned a noisy fight.

He calmed the storm in the sixth, many returned to their seats, and Garrido also earned some olés in his graceful Veronica sketch. That animal was noble and it charged humiliated, but it was as outcast as its brothers, and although there were clean and estimable muletazos, the resulting impression is that, despite the exaggerated spirit of the stands, the bullfighter’s work did not take off.

The bullfighters could do nothing in their first bulls, sad as mourners at a third-rate funeral, without strength and without caste.

A bullfighting debacle that the majority of the public wanted to mask with an exaggerated triumphalism that only added more ruin to what the bulls brought.