San Fermin Fair: Cripples and Weaklings | Culture

Someone has made a serious mistake today in Pamplona, ​​either the Casa de Misericordia, which bought the bulls, or the breeder or the authority that approved them. This was not a bullfight for the so-called Feria de Toro. And it is no excuse that there were problems with goring in the corrals. There must be a plan B before the unpresentable bulls go out into the ring, except for the fifth bull, which was beautiful in build but not suitable for this cycle. And if anything else was missing, the six of them behaved tamely on horseback, they bent their hands excessively, and their nobility was marred by dullness and a lack of breed and zeal. In two words, a crippled and squalid bullfight that ruined the good intentions of three bullfighters who shone for their disposition and their desire to triumph, which was not possible due to the poor play of the bulls, and also due to the poor handling of the steels.

Debut and farewell would be the correct judgement for this line of artistic bulls, accustomed to triumph, which has shown that it had no bulls for Pamplona, ​​and those that have come have left the prestige of the house in the dust.

With them, three bullfighters have been announced who are among the so-called figures who need to triumph in this bullring with so much echo: Talavante, because he has not quite broken through the year with the overwhelming force that was expected; Luque, because he was unlucky in Madrid, and Ortega because he needed to revive his status as an artist that he demonstrated in the already distant April Fair.

But it was not possible. And all three of them really tried, but their efforts were dashed by the very poor condition of the bulls.

Talavante, for example, has had two tame bulls in front of him tastelessthe first one very uncast and useless, and the other one poor, with which he tried to justify himself with loose passes, all of them insipid, and he did not win any trophy despite the fact that he received the second one with two faroles in the third, began the faena with the muleta on his knees and finished it with manoletinas. Well, no; he had to settle for two standing ovations.

Luque came for everything, ready to make a resounding impact on the table of his proven mastery. He fought in a fair fight against terrible elements, a first noble bull without any caste, with which he had more than enough and from which he stole some meritorious passes in a long bullfight that he finished with tight bernadinas; but he killed badly and flew away a more than possible trophy. He also lengthened the bullfight with the fifth, the most serious bull of the bullfight, tame like the others, uncertain and lackluster, with which he risked his life in a committed and courageous work, far above the roughness of his opponent.

The finalist was Juan Ortega, who was making his debut in San Fermín, and from the first moment he seemed intent on watering the square with some brushstrokes of his artistic concept of bullfighting. He was not able to give a single cape pass (the entire bullfight, loose and distracted, prevented bullfighting in the first third), and with muleta in hand, he gave three graceful passes in the third, which had a hard time charging, and some initial passes helped by bass in the sixth. At least he was able to show his dedication in an atmosphere at odds with inspiration, between the out-of-time beats of the music band, which plays for no reason, and the noisy singing of the sunny stands, sated with food and drink at that point in the film.