José Tomás, owner of his destiny, returns to dress in lights this Sunday, June 12 at the Coso de la Alameda in Jaén, to a full plaza and alone against four bulls from three different herds.
Miguel Hernández, born in Orihuela and died in the Francoist prisons, poet and communist, wanted, in his childhood, to be a bullfighter, a hobby that he always maintained (his poems are full of bullfighting symbology “to glory, to glory bullfighters! ”) and left his mark -but not his signature- on several biographies of bullfighters (Lagartijo, Tragabuches, El Espartero…) included in the first four volumes of “el Cossío”, a bullfighting bible that bears the name of its creator José María de Cossío of whom, although in the ideological antipodes, he was a friend.
Miguel Hernández and his “Andaluces de Jaén” have been sung by Paco Ibáñez for half a century. And Jaén, land of olive trees, bulls (there are several bravo herds that graze in its meadows) and bullfighters (José Fuentes, Curro Vázquez or Curro Díaz, among the most recent) claims all eyes, bullfighting or not, this Sunday 12 June to the powerful influence of José Tomás. An ad hoc poster by Miquel Barceló –already normal- illustrates it.
For several years now, each (re)appearance of the Galapagar bullfighter is an event that transcends the strictly bullfighting and the graced city -Jaén now, Alicante in August- sees how, since it is announced and in a matter of hours, its squares hotels, its restaurants, deplete reservations, even if there are weeks or even months to go before the event (it was known about the Jaén bullfight in early March), the same thing that happens with the tickets, although there it is not hours but minutes that it takes when the paper runs out. Neither in Jaén nor in Alicante, the bullfight is part of the traditional fairs (in October, for San Lucas in Jaén and in Alicante, for San Juan).
José Tomás, owner of his destiny, returns to dress up in lights – in what will be his debut at the Coso de la Alameda in Jaén – alone and before four bulls from three different stud farms. The last time it happened in Granada, Corpus fair 2019, the only one of his performances that season and on that occasion he also fought four bulls and the rejoneador Sergio Galán, two. One afternoon, the one in Granada, which was in each of his bulls, a compendium of the best José Tomás. And to say that is to say everything.
José Tomás, who in 2010 returned from death in the Mexican Plaza de Aguascalientes and who this year turns twenty-seven as an alternative, has made words of silence: veto television; by contract only three minutes of images of the bullfight can be shown; does not grant interviews; nothing is known about him, just a few photos, under a cap, with a beard…. That and the fact that -for years- he hasn’t “competed” with other teammates, nor even during the season, fuels certain criticisms that question his commitment to bullfighting. Perhaps it is that the commitment, ethical and aesthetic, of José Tomás is what is manifested before the bull, in each quote, in each set. That commitment that led Barcelona now without bulls to make him his idol, as Manolete and Chamaco were before. Or, sublimated, on that luminous morning in Nimes, which will be ten years old in September, José Tomás alone before six bulls.
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On Sunday, June 12, at 7:30 p.m. on all clocks, the parade will start in a crowded square, suffocated with heat and emotion and clad in gold and silk, the skinny figure of José Tomás will step on the albero of the Coso de la Alameda with the determination of someone who possesses, like few others in history, the truth of bullfighting, that which Rafael El Gallo defined: “Having a mystery to say and say it”.
In search of it, summoned by José Tomás, people from all over the bullfighting planet make a pilgrimage to Jaén, from Euskadi, Mexico, Madrid, France, Seville, Valencia, Catalonia… to the land of the “haughty olive growers” ??whom Miguel Hernández asked “Who raised the olive trees”, to answer “nothing did not raise them / neither money nor the Lord / but the silent land / work and sweat”.
Jaén waits for José Tomás. The bullfight, too.
