“Bullfighting involves an act prohibited to any other artist. It reveals and publicly exposes the enigmas of its creative spirit before an animal that questions its creation to the point of death.” This is what teacher Luis Fco. Esplá writes in the latest issue of the Magazine “Quites”, published by the Diputació de València.
Roca Rey and Leguleyo agreed with him in the bullfight at the Fallas Fair this afternoon in Valencia. Because the bull, with all his bravery, compromised the artist to the limit and he knew how to respond to the challenge, putting his life on the board.
Leguleyo was named after the brave Jandilla bull and the public asked for a pardon for him, a reward for his torrential bravery expressed in a muleta task that returned to Roca Rey his credit, somewhat blurred (not at the box office, two consecutive sell-outs at his claim) of great figure.
Leguleyo ate the Peruvian bullfighter’s muleta and the series followed one another, full of dominance and bond. Attacks with fixity, humiliation and length and absolute conjunction between bull and bullfighter in batches of up to seven or eight muletazos, with control in the square and in a crescendo that culminated in passes from python’s chest to tail.
The emotion went from the ring to the laying like a shock, handkerchiefs were waved asking the bull to return to the peaceful life in the pasture and perpetuate the seed of his bravery there, but the tenant of the Box, with a mustache gesture, said none. The attack came, “Leguleyo” gave up his life in the media and they gave him a posthumous tour of the ring without both ears, which he walked around Roca Rey amidst clamor. The regulators will say that the bull did not earn the pardon as it passed by the horse, two entries barely without punishment, and perhaps, seen this way, they will applaud the user. It won’t be me, still excited about a bull that honored his lineage.
Roca Rey didn’t have enough with what he had already achieved and with gayola he went to receive the one who was closing the afternoon to have a long exchange, which was followed by verónicas and tight chicuelinas.
Trumpet at full lung, Diana in flower heralding great moments, and a toast from Roca Rey to chef Quique Dacosta.
Starting statuaries, the Band that starts with an excellent pasodoble “La Concha flamenca” crutch on the right hand and a couple of substantial series, the same thing that happened when he changed hands and piton. The bull gave up in the face of so much dominance and threatened to split, but Roca pulled him out of the querencia and continued doing his thing, filled with bullfighting, finishing off with tight luquesinas. The square was dyed white (that of the pillows, as handkerchiefs are hardly in style anymore) and the ear was of justice, thus rounding off an afternoon of, that’s it!
José María Manzanares led the shortlist and cut off an ear of his first, whom he bullfighted with the trademark packaging of the house and killed with this blow in the luck of receiving that in itself was already a prize. Neither he in his second turn nor Alejandro Talavante in his, despite his determination and some passages of the respective fights, had a chance of victory because the bulls, the necessary material for the work, took his side.
The chords of València sounded while Roca Rey was carried in the wings to the streets of the city in celebration and in such a way to the hotel, so that everyone could see the hero of lights while the memory of a brave bull remained in memory. Which gives meaning to “the most cultured festival in the world”, to which poets sing and painters paint.
