In La Maestranza, José Antonio Morante de la Puebla, bullfighting genius, has cut off two ears and a tail of the fourth bull of the afternoon in the bullfight of the April Fair on Wednesday, April 26, which already enters with gold letters in the history of bullfighting.
It had been fifty-two years since the last time such a milestone in a bullfight on foot was held, it was at the April Fair in 1971 and the architect was the right-handed Ruiz Miguel with a Miura bull. Bullfighter and livestock in the antipodes of today, by the way.
The bull (rewarded with the return to the ring in the drag) corresponded to the iron of Domingo Hernández and was the necessary material for Morante to draw, with a cape and crutch, on the albero lances, luck, crutches of sublime beauty and supreme truth.
Twenty-four years have had to elapse for the genius of La Puebla to once again pass under the arch of glory that looks out over the Guadalquivir and Triana, but it is never too late if it comes from the hand of a bullfighter, an artist, fully who has done from La Maestranza an insane asylum, the madness of bullfighting.
It all began with the reception verónicas, pure compas, continued with a lucky spell, chicuelinas, tafalleras, gaoneras… which were each in themselves a painting, a tribute.
The crutch work continued at that same level, a bullfighter in a trance and an inflamed public.
Morante is a birbiriloquesco bullfighter in the Bergamo sense and that is how he expresses himself. He quotes, the embroque, the adjustment, the auction of the crutch. Going in and out of the bull’s face. Morante fights with all his body and soul in each set.
It is command and it is caress.
This is not about the story of round, natural, kikirikis, little trenches, trenches, chest passes, changes of hand… there was all of this and said and done with an unfading truth and beauty.
He went after the sword with that same truth, the sword sank into the top of the cheek of the good “Ligerito” and two white handkerchiefs appeared in the presidential box. But lying down I followed the madness, the commotion, and no one kept theirs and the usÃa took out the third, which placed the greatest trophies in Morante’s hands.
Morante hugged his family in the alley and in the sun (38 degrees) and in the shade, people of all walks of life, with bluff or not, also did it, some with tears in their eyes.
Witnesses of an afternoon that turned out to be prodigy (Juan Ortega and Diego Urdiales also left their mark).
Few times bullfighting was so beautiful.