Ferocious matador feud that's reviving fortunes of bullfighting

Times

10 hours ago

A rivalry worthy of a Goya etching is breathing life into Spanish bullfighting just as its fortunes are waning.
The centuries-old art was supposed to be dying but the dramatic comeback of a bullfighter who had quit on mental health grounds, his feud with a fellow torero and the goring of them both in the past week have had a reinvigorating effect.
At the heart of the revival is José Antonio Morante de la Puebla, 45, the grand señor of understatement and unflinching faithfulness to tradition, who is pitted against Andrés Roca Rey, 28, a Peruvian daredevil showman.
For weeks, Morante, who withdrew from bullfighting last year after depersonalisation disorder floored him, has packed plazas from Pamplona to Seville, giving performances that have prompted critics to hail him as one of the 'historic greats', or even the best-ever matador.
His success has goaded Roca Rey, who, not to be cast into his shadow, has repeatedly staged increasingly breathtaking feats in front of bulls.
Tension between the two has crackled for months but reached a new pitch two weeks ago when Roca Rey refused to allow Morante to share a bill with him.
The rivalry boiled over last week at the corrida at El Puerto de Santa María in Andalusia. Morante criticised the younger torero over a supposed breach of bullfighting rules. Roca Rey's retort was dismissive and flamboyant, telling him to chill out. 'Maestro, smoke a cigar slowly,' he said, a phrase now famous.
Witnessed by a full house, the confrontation has added spice to an ebullient season and drawn comparisons with the great rivalries of the past, such as that witnessed by Ernest Hemingway between his friends Luis Miguel Dominguín and Antonio Ordóñez in 1959's 'dangerous summer'.
Antonio Lorca, the bullfighting critic of El País, wrote that the rivalry was proof there is still life in the old tradition. The feud 'is excellent news for bullfighting', he stated, adding 'not even in their worst dreams could anti-bullfighting activists have imagined that the art in 2025 would enjoy the vigorous health it boasts today, with queues at the box office at the call of two undisputed leaders who, moreover, provide ample grounds for discussion over morning coffee'.
Morante's season has been historic. In June he was carried aloft by a crowd out of Madrid's Las Ventas bullring and has since then been re-crowned as the torero of his generation.
But then he suffered a serious goring in Pontevedra on August 10 — two wounds, 20 centimetres deep, to the right thigh. It was his second in as many days. The night before, in Marbella, Morante was tossed heavily by the bull and finished with a cut to the head before raising the crowd with a sparkling, risky flourish that earned him the two ears and the tail of a bull as trophies.
Roca Rey's summer has been just as notable. This week he was also gored but but fought on, bloodied, and triumphed. 'He is a fearless bullfighter, with admirable pride and boundless dedication; prodigious, spectacular, overwhelming, risking his life every afternoon and triumphing with all honors,' Lorca observed. 'A figure of today's bullfighting, from his shoes to his hat.'
But the political current is against them. Ernest Urtasun, the culture minister from the populist left-wing Sumar alliance, scrapped the National Bullfighting Prize last year and set about abolishing the sport outright, calling it a spectacle based on 'animal torture'.
Public sentiment is turning against it too. In February, a BBVA Foundation study reported that roughly seven in ten Spaniards oppose bullfights with disapproval strongest among the young and university-educated. An initiative backed by 665,000 signatures will force parliament to vote on removing bullfighting's national cultural protection later this year.
Yet the audience is not simply fading away. As one matador told La Vanguardia last year, 'What is forbidden attracts', and a tranche of twenty-somethings is drifting back to the tendidos for the thrill. The industry's own figures suggest 2 million spectators attended bullfighting events last year.
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Morante is swiftly recovering from his wounds and is due back in the bullring in the autumn in Madrid. The appetite for him is reaching fever pitch. Lorca wrote: 'Morante is a genius, a being born to make beauty dream; a revolutionary, a complete artist, pure feeling, brave, master of a prodigious technique and a dazzling capacity for inspiration.'
The bullfighter has said that Roca Rey had extended the hand of friendship but that no conversation had yet taken place. A rapprochement perhaps would be bad for business.