Andrés MartÃnez de León (Coria 1895-Madrid 1978) was one of those free spirits who from time to time gives himself the luxury of illuminating Spanish culture and yet -or perhaps because of this- still a great unknown to too many.
Intellectual in the noblest sense of the term, his multifaceted personality manifested itself in journalism, writing, painting, drawing, illustration… and his alter ego Oselito (who took his name because the line of the drawing referred 0 to Joselito El Gallo), in the writing of MartÃnez de León, spoke “Andalú”.
Oselito and MartÃnez de León (author of the illustrations for the first edition of “Juan Belmonte, matador de toros”, a cult work even for confessed anti-bullfighting and whose author, the great Chaves Nogales, was a close friend of MartÃnez de León) were one alone, so much so that when, as a correspondent on the red front, he went to the battalion that the poet Miguel Hernández was in, he wrote: “Today Oselito has come to visit us at the front.”
Having done this -long- preamble, the reader who has come this far will rightly wonder what it is about if what it is about is the chronicle of the bullfight, the twentieth of San Isidro.
It so happens that MartÃnez de León, a resident of Madrid in his later years, always went to Las Ventas on bullfighting evenings going down Calle Alcalá from Manuel Becerra and, on the short walk, listening to the fans and listening to himself inside. , already began to live the bullfight.
Saving all the distances, of course, such that it happens to whoever signs this and it happened to me just three hours ago, when the storm was subsiding.
“Where are you going?”. “to the bulls!”. An answer, by the way, that the Catalan fans have been denied for eleven years.
At the time of the paseÃllo the rain stopped, the sky was still threatening and the curds laid out were a multicolored palette of raincoats.
Diego Urdiales toasted the public and at the second crutch an extemporaneous voice (as almost always) emerged from the line that I am not going to name: rancher, you don’t have to shave the bulls!… and the like-minded applauded the brave man. By the way, the bull (from Alcurrucén) wore two perches.
The bullfighter from La Rioja fought a bull that lacked emotion with temperance and a long stroke. And in one of those, the one from Alcurrucén collapsed with a crash to the joy and revelry of the aforementioned. The image, yes, was depressing, with the crew trying for a long time to lift the animal. Achieved, Urdiales sent him to the mulillas with an effective lunge.
He almost took the fourth away from Urdiales when he tried to stretch out with his cloak and it took a world to get him to the chopping horse, meek and elusive as he was, and the same when he reached the banderillas.
Ballot for Urdiales, who tried it without much conviction for the right piton and shortened the moment with a quick sword strike, thus closing his gray passage through the Fair, in which, of course, his bullfighting to the veronica and the third of removes from his first afternoon.
The first of Alejandro Talavante stopped before the cape without allowing any show and nothing in the first two thirds indicated that things would improve. And so it happened.
The man from Extremadura began to fight with the crutch on the left and the bull showed bad style, the same as when he tried to change the piton.
Come on, there was little to not scratch and Talavante said this far we have come. He got stuck with the sword.
The fifth came out, also protested of course, and Talavante could only outline a couple of verónicas because the bull was not up for the job. And in those, to round off the picture, he juggled again
But it was Talavante who unleashed a storm of passionate bullfighting, from the beginning with long round knees, warm and adjusted, which continued with the bullfighter already on his feet. Talavante in a trance and good bullfighting also when he went natural, including passes looking at the line, little trenches, turnstiles and manoletinas.
With (almost) the entire square surrendered to the cause, the lunge was defective and between that and the umbrellas, the request to hear was not quite the majority, but what was done was done.
It was the third one appearing through the pigsty door and the ones lying opposite, what a clinical eye they have, intensify their protests, for no apparent reason. In the third of banderillas Iván GarcÃa placed two even sovereigns.
Daniel Luque, hard earned the status of a figure, toasted the audience. And the work did honor to it, to the chagrin (and sorry for the reiteration) of those who go to the square and sit on the line with a notarial spirit.
The start by low and semi kneeling was cathedral, very bullfighter. In the round he curdled it thoroughly and the bull delivered less naturally, the opposite of the bullfighter who rounded off what was done with tight luquesinas. The half lunge and the piquantity did not prevent a strong and I would say majority request for ear but the usÃa became the longuis lest the guardians of the essences get angry.
And angry they continued in the sixth, that this one did not have the required presence.
Luque overcame the bull and the shouts, including the obligatory “Long live Spain” -what a cross- and literally invented a task that the bull did not have. The lunge, from the book, the majority ear request and the president passing the regulation through the lining denying the prize.
And so ended a wet afternoon in which Talavante and Luque deserved a greater reward.
The public, who endured the downpour, also got a hot cup of coffee.
