A great taurine writer has left us

Santi Ortiz (photo from Pinterest)

Santiago Ortiz Trixac, better known as the torero and writer Santi Ortiz, died in Jerez de la Frontera on October 3 - the day of his 73rd birthday - following a lengthy illness.

Born in Huelva in 1949, Santi performed as a novillero from the age of 16, but eventually, fed up with the mundillo, opted to concentrate on studying physics instead. For seven years, he worked as professor in Seville University’s Department of Thermodynamics. A friendship begun during military service in Zaragoza with the novillero Antonio Batalla, also from his home town, drew him back into the bullfighting profession, however, and, following further performances as a novillero, he eventually took the alternativa, aged 32, in Huelva in the Colombinas of 1982, with José Antonio Campuzano as his padrino. Ortiz recalled later, “The afternoon of my alternativa, I had a complete disaster with my first bull: I was fine with my second, but that day I realised there was nothing doing [in terms of a career as a matador de toros].”

He returned to teaching, basing himself in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, but also began writing about bullfighting. A 1992 article on the death of his friend, the banderillero Ramón Soto Vargas, in Sevilla opened the doors to regular contributions to the magazines 6Toros6 and Cuadernos de Tauromaquia. A number of books followed - “El arte de ver toros” (1999), “Lances que cambiaron la Fiesta” (2001), “Y de testigo, La Giralda” (2006), “José Tomás, el retorno de La Estatua” (2008), “Juan Belmonte, a un siglo de su alternativa” (2013) and “Manolito Litri: más allá del valor” (2019). His latest publications - “El toreo frente al mundo” (described by the author as “a book that explains la Fiesta rather than defends it”) and the text for the Arjona firm’s photobook on José Tomás - came out earlier this year.

Two recommended reads

I would particularly recommend “El arte de ver toros” (to give it its full title: “El arte de ver toros: una toromaquia educativa”) and “Lances que cambiaron la Fiesta” - both published as part of Espasa Calpe’s La Tauromaquia series - to anyone wanting to deepen their understanding of bullfighting.

I would rank the first of these two books as important as Luis Bollaín’s “El Toreo” in developing my afición. “El arte de ver toros” takes the toro bravo as its central figure and is divided into two sections - ‘El Toro en el Campo’ and ‘El Toro en la Plaza’ - with Ortiz bringing to the latter’s description of the lidia his own knowledge and experience as a former torero. I was delighted that a brief visit to Spain in 2013 coincided with the launch of “Juan Belmonte, a un siglo de su alternativa” at Las Ventas, when I was able to tell Santi Ortiz in person how much “El arte de ver toros” meant to me.

“Lances que cambiaron la Fiesta” is an entertaining, as well as educational, read, being written as a conversation between two fictional characters, Don Jacinto Rabanales, an aficionado in his eighties, and the young, modern, Juan Barrera, who is interested in bullfighting and keen to know more about it. The seven aspects that Ortiz deemed to have changed the course of la Fiesta are Paquiro’s written rules of toreo; the introduction of the sorteo; el pleito de Miuras - the time when a union of leading matadors tried to impose a number of conditions upon empresas (including a doubling of their salaries when facing Miura bulls) before reaching agreement on a way forward in negotiations with the UCTL; Juan Belmonte’s establishment of toreo as an artistic form of self-expression; the adoption of the peto; Manolete’s introduction of linking as a regular feature of toreo; and the eruption of El Cordobés. As with any conversation between two people, a lot of other subjects to do with the corrida - both ancient and modern - are touched on along the way.

Comments from fellow writers

Fellow taurine writer Paco March wrote on hearing of Ortiz’s death: “Santi Ortiz's writings are an essential work, explaining bullfighting from what he experienced in person over the last half century and an analysis of the past based on knowledge and research.

“Santi Ortiz is also a dissident voice in the magma of the unique thought from the ideological sector that identifies with the Left that has made bullfighting casus belli. Santi, a man of the Left, not only did not want to bend [to the prevailing thinking], but stood up, leaving a record of this in many of his writings.”

The former editor of 6Toros6, José Carlos Arévalo - also a great writer on taurine matters - put it simply: “The day someone separates the good from the bad among bullfighting’s profuse bibliography, Santi will appear in the front row of writers on toreo.”