The numbers are dizzying: 89,000 murals for facades, 500,000 for shop windows, four million small format posters, hundreds of thousands of entries and 1,300,000 hand-on programs Today’s run during 2025 in 429 bullrings, to which we must add banners for streetlights, marquees, vinyl, advertising photographs of the bullfighters, calendars, books, magazines…
Practically all of everything that is printed in the world of bullfighting in Spain, France and Portugal is made by the company Grupo M&T Impresiones, based in the Jaén town of Baeza, and which has 20 workers during the bullfighting season.
“We bought white paper and stained it,” says Manuel Torres, who at just turned 82 years old still supervises the daily work of the project that he created back in 1980 and that today is in the hands of his children, María and Manuel.
On October 1, the businessman was awarded one of the Jaén, interior paradise awards, awarded by the Provincial Council “for being a reference in design and printing in the bullfighting sector and a leading figure in the promotion and defense of bullfighting in our province.”
During 2025, it developed 1,300,000 hand programs on ‘today’s bullfight’ for 429 bullrings
Manuel Torres is an undoubted bullfighting model; His company provides services to all first-class places, with the exception of Pamplona and Seville; to the vast majority of second and third positions, and to a large list of clients in France and Portugal. At his age, Torres continues to travel to the different fairs – he says that in 2025 he has seen 64 bullfights – and controls the design of the works that come out of his company.
Certainly, the M&T Printers Group is a bullfighting monopoly that the businessman from Jaén justifies “in the formality, seriousness and speed of an initiative created to never fail those who demand our services.”
He says that he has been a follower of bulls since his childhood, influenced by his mother’s hobby; “And from a very young age I was very curious about posters, drawings, texts…, so while my friends collected football cards, I liked old posters.”
It all started in 1974. On August 17, a bullfight was held in Baeza in which Antonio José Galán, Niño de la Capea and Paco Bautista were announced. And Torres had the idea of making and photocopying a handwritten typewritten program with the biographies of the bullfighters, titled Today’s run. And, as he confesses, “that had a huge impact.”
The success of that rudimentary program was the seed of the printing project that he would launch with a partner in 1980; By then, Torres was already an official of the Ministry of Tourism, and he combined his profession and hobby until the signage claimed all his energy as the clientele and the interest of bullfighting businessmen in new designs and formats increased.
Manuel Torres’ offer soon caught on in the sector, and after demonstrating his efficiency in smaller positions, in 1989 he signed a firm contract with the Las Ventas company, which was the best guarantee for the growth of his project.
Since then, all the bullfighting paper distributed in the Madrid bullring is made in Baeza; even the sheet with the drawing of the bulls and the groups for each celebration, although that is printed in the capital for reasons of time. “We are very recognized in the bullfighting sector,” says Manuel Torres; “We try to be professional, convey confidence and go beyond the mere printing of paper.”
The businessman explains that they offer exclusive designs and texts to clients who do not have a specialized department, and they even seek the necessary advertising to reduce the cost of the programs for each celebration.
And he says he is very satisfied with the latest work that has come out of his workshops, a commission from Plaza 1, the manager of Las Ventas, titled Eterno 12, a two-volume case ―Antoñete in memory y Morante in history― which collect in 250 photographs what happened in Madrid on October 12 at the tribute festival to Antoñete and the farewell to Morante’s bullfighting, which he left on his shoulders through the Puerta Grande.
At her side, her daughter María expresses her surprise at the unexpected and early rise of the work related to the first fairs of 2026 – Olivencia, Illescas, Fallas… – and hopes that the conversations she has with the new businessman of La Maestranza, José María Garzón – very satisfied, according to her, with the services provided in the other places she runs – will bear fruit, so that the signage Sevillian is also printed in Baeza, dependent until now on a local printing press close to the Pagés company.