San Isidro 2023 - a disservice to tauromaquia

Following speculation over the last couple of months of 2022 and into 2023, the carteles for Madrid’s main feria of the year have now been officially published - the earliest they have ever appeared. And that’s not the only change: San Isidro has been reduced from 29 to 23 festejos, the final week’s focus on toros duros and minority encastes has gone and a number of toreros, who, in the past, one would normally expect to see in the feria have failed to gain a place.

The fault behind the last of these changes lies in the empresa’s decision to award a number of participants two or three afternoons in the shortened feria - Emilio de Justo has even been given four. It is said that the bullring’s owners, la Comunidad de Madrid, whose contract required a shorter feria, wanted San Isidro to reflect quality rather than quantity. The ticket prices for non-abonados will doubtless also reflect this approach. But what we have now is a feria that, with its concentration of figuras, may interest the public in general but is not one that is attractive to aficionados: after the first week or so, San Isidro is largely a programme of “more of the same”.

De Justo has four afternoons including the Beneficencia, where the original idea was to leave the cartel open to three San Isidro triunfadores. Morante de la Puebla, El Juli, Andrés Roca Rey and Alejandro Talavante (despite his disastrous form at Las Ventas and other plazas last season) will each appear in three festejos, while Tomás Rufo, Daniel Luque, Ángel Téllez, Francisco de Manuel, Paco Ureña, Ginés Marín, Fernando Robleño, Miguel Ángel Perera, Sebastián Castella, Manzanares, Pablo Aguado, Román and Diego Urdiales have been given two afternoons apiece.

The result of this generosity is that a number of toreros one would normally expect to see in Spain’s major feria have been left out. While Rufo, Téllez, de Manuel, Robleño and Román have all been rewarded for strong performances in Madrid last year, other impressive performances in the capital in 2022 from Joselito Adame, Rafaelillo, Javier Cortés and Curro Díaz have been ignored. Antonio Ferrera, given three San Isidro afternoons last year, is also absent from this year’s carteles, as is Manuel Escribano and the returning El Cid. Alberto López Simón, with a history of leaving Las Ventas through its puerta grande on five occasions, has announced his immediate retirement after failing to gain a place in this year’s San Isidro.

The figuras, too, anxious to maximise their earnings in a temporada that is reduced in size compared to when they first became matadors, have contributed to this situation by demanding multiple appearances in the top ferias. Sevilla is another example - a plaza that puts on a fortnight’s worth of corridas over the course of a year is apparently planning its 2023 season around six appearances for Morante de la Puebla; five for El Juli; four for Andrés Roca Rey; and three for José María Manzanares, Daniel Luque, Pablo Aguado and Alejandro Talavante.

Returning to San Isidro, some commentators have blamed Simon Casas’s colleague Pedro Haces Don Bull for securing a number of single spots for Mexican toreros in the final days of putting the feria carteles together. But, to my mind, a feria of the category of San Isidro should feature a number of mexicanos and, prior to Haces’s intervention, only Isaac Fonseca had been named as a participant. Leo Valadez’s and El Payo’s spots have been earned on merit, but apparently Haces and Joselito Adame are not the best of friends, less so than Haces and Arturo Saldívar who has the final Mexican placing in the feria. Given the ‘quality, not quantity’ mantra, and the earlier mentions of absentees, in addition to Saldívar it also seems hard to justify the single afternoons awarded to El Fandi and Francisco José Espada.

With this year’s early decision-making on the feria carteles, San Isidro has also lost its traditional roles of (a) being a shop window for those toreros making an impact earlier in the temporada, and (b) giving toreros whose names are virtually unknown to the general public the opportunity of a career breakthrough. Now, the carteles are based to a ridiculous extent on known names and are primarily reflective of those toreros who have performed well in 2022. The only matadors in a position to make the kind of breakthrough we saw from Téllez last year are Álvaro Alarcón (taking the alternativa in the opening corrida), Fonseca and the other Mexicans, Gómez del Pilar, Juan Leal, José Garrido, Espada, Álvaro Lorenzo (although he has already experienced going out through Madrid’s Puerta Grande) and Fernando Adrián.

From the viewpoint of an aficionado, this year’s San Isidro, lacking variety in toreros, also lacks variety in ganaderías compared with recent editions of the feria. The only non-Domecq ranches to feature in the series are those of La Quinta, José Escolar, Alcurrucén, Puerto de San Lorenzo, Adolfo and Victorino Martín, and Los Maños, whose santacolomas will feature in one of the novilladas. Furthermore, bulls of Victoriano del Río feature on three occasions while Alcurrucén and Fuente Ymbro (a corrida and a novillada) will be seen twice.

Last night’s gala presentation of the carteles featured a charming video of young children’s connection with bullfighting (May 15 will also feature a morning clase práctica by the becerrista Marco Pérez) and welcome steps are being taken to encourage more young people to engage with la Fiesta. The limited number of free abono tickets for Madrid’s temporada available to youngsters was rapidly snapped up. The announcement, too, that OneToro have successfully bid for streaming rights to Las Ventas bullfights for the next three years should help in this regard as well (the move away from Movistar’s Canal Toros has also freed up transmission of corridas on free TV - Telemadrid will be showing 14 of the San Isidro festejos).

However, despite these innovations, the programming of 2023’s Feria de San Isidro represents a further hardening of el mundillo’s arteries - a consolidation of toreros and toros that may represent the best of present toreo, but, notwithstanding its three novilladas, does very little to assist toreo’s future. It constitutes a disservice to tauromaquia.