*Borja Jiménez leaving Las Ventas on shoulders (image from Plaza1)*

The critic Antonio Lorca put it bluntly in a recent article considering Borja Jiménez’s triumph with victorinos in Madrid’s Feria de San Miguel: “It’s the empresarios - the big ones, obviously - who decide who can be regarded as figuras and who cannot. In other words, Jiménez will be one if Matilla, García Garrido, Casas, Valencia, the Choperas, and the other significant grouping of managers of second and third-class plazas, who, in one way or another, depend on them, so decide.”

The aficionados have no say in the matter. Nor, necessarily, does talent determine outcomes. It all depends on whom the empresas wish to put on - decisions that are frequently intertwined with which matadors are managed by which empresas (or their satellites) and can therefore be put on on reasonable contractual terms taking into account the empresas’ mutual interests.

So, as the 2023 season comes to an end, the empresas will be making their minds up as to how best to structure and make money from the 2024 temporada - no easy matter given the retirement of El Juli and the current uncertainty as to whether another big crowd-puller, Morante de la Puebla, will follow suit. If both are absent next year and the gap not filled in some attractive way, there is even talk of ferias being reduced in size to ensure that the remaining events are money-making (perversely, something that may, indeed, suit the mundillo given the forecast greater shortage of toros bravos in 2024 compared to the already concerning situation this year).

The empresas are faced with a stark choice - to look back or to look forwards.

Looking back

There are already indications that a number of empresarios are desperately looking back. Miguel Báez Litri and Juan José Padilla have apparently both been approached with offers to return to the bullrings: both have turned them down. But there is a high likelihood that Enrique Ponce will make a comeback in 2024, if only to make a farewell tour that his sudden, unexpected decision to retire in 2021 prevented happening.

Although the returns to the bullrings of Sebastián Castella and El Cid in 2023 have both proved more worthwhile than this commentator and others expected at the start of the year, putting your money on famous names from the recent past is a lazy and - in the medium to long term - self-defeating way of promoting bullfighting.

Looking forward

Far better for the future of the corrida to put in the hard work of publicising the merits and achievements of the several young toreros who, with more contracts, stand a chance of becoming figuras, or at least feria regulars, and the not-so-young toreros who are also coming through.

Joining Borja Jiménez (alternativa 2015) in the latter category is Fernando Adrián, who took the alternativa a decade ago, only to struggle to obtain a decent run of contracts until winning the Copa Chenel in 2021 and who, this year, was triumphantly carried out of Las Ventas on shoulders on two consecutive appearances.

Adrián’s fate after such a rare feat exposed the outmoded workings of the mundillo, for there was no follow-up response to these successes at all - two months later, with no further corrida appearances up until that time, the madrileño had just one future contract in his pocket. Fortunately for him, the summer of 2023 was to prove a particularly wearing one on the leading toreros, and he was able to pick up substitute appearances from the end of August. Since then, he has chalked up 15 puerta grande triumphs from 15 such appearances and has staked a major claim to a regular place in the ferias for 2024.

In terms of young toreros, Tomás Rufo and Ginés Marín are arguably already on the path to becoming future figuras, while Álvaro Lorenzo (who took the alternativa in the same feria that hosted Marín’s) shouldn’t be written off just yet. David Galván, Juan Leal, Leo Valadez, Juanito and David de Miranda have been deserving of more contracts for some time, and it is too soon to ignore Ángel Téllez despite his disappointing 2023 season. Román, too, is a torero who, in the right hands and more considered contracts, could do better. Of the very new matadores de toros, Francisco de Manuel, Isaac Fonseca and Jorge Martínez are all deserving of more opportunities.

The other aspect required for 2024 is more imaginative cartel construction. At this stage, it is clear that Andrés Roca Rey will be primarily ‘pulling the cart’ next season - even if Morante de la Puebla decides to continue, it is unlikely he will want to torear to the extent that was achieved in 2022 and originally planned for 2023. So let’s see the Peruvian take on some real competition. Appearances with Daniel Luque on the same cartel are bound to draw the crowds given the highly publicised poor relations between the two, and there are indications that the Peruvian’s veto of the sevillano will be dropped for the year ahead. Sebastián Castella, Miguel Ángel Perera, Emilio de Justo, Tomás Rufo and Ginés Marín are others who, given the opportunity, could mount a serious challenge to Roca Rey through regular appearances on the same carteles.

One concern

Someone who is also bound to draw the crowds is 16-year-old Marco Pérez, who some are already touting as the natural successor to El Juli. A less welcome aspect of empresas looking to the future may be the establishment of a corridas mixta in ferias with the inclusion of the young phenomenon on the cartel. Pérez’s debut with picadores this month - a solo affair with four novillos in Istres, France - has already received criticism for being too protective of the youngster, whose sin picadores career was conducted beyond public view. In my opinion, the career of Pepe Luis Vázquez hijo was seriously weakened by his placement one season as a novillero alongside matador Curro Romero and the rejoneador João Moura in a corrida mixta cartel that featured in many ferias. What will assist Marco Pérez’s career now - and win him the respect of aficionados - will be a season of open competition with other novilleros; if that means more empresas will include a novillada con picadores in their feria programming, then great.

2024: Decision time for the empresas

Problems in Madrid’s corrales

Zaragoza’s Feria del Pilar 2023 (Part II)