At the price of gold

Javier Lorenzo

This is a translation of an opinion piece published recently in La Gaceta de Salamanca’s taurine supplement:

Madrid has overdone it with its prices. It’s excessively increased the cost of entradas and has converted the feria of San Isidro into a spectacle that is distant from the people. The abono has been prioritised and encouraged, which makes sense, but the empresa is “punishing” the occasional aficionado, who now sees how going to the bulls in the world’s premier plaza has ceased to be accessible to all, with prices far removed from what was always the philosophy of the world’s top bullring - one that it always boasted of, but today can do no longer. And all of this at a critical and crucial time for the future of la fiesta de los toros.

To want to sell at a discount, support and even reward the abonado – and to restore the number of abonados that have been lost in recent years – is logical, normal and understandable. But to filch from the occasional aficionado who’s unable to attend the temporada’s main event on every afternoon is a serious mistake. Madrid is taking the prohibitive route of Sevilla, one of the most expensive bullrings in Spain and the plaza that won the contest over that Monumental bullring the great Joselito El Gallo conceived of and brought into being towards the end of the second decade of the last century.

The torero of Gelves was a supporter of los cosos monumentales, with their greater capacity for the public, in order to put cheaper tickets on sale and guarantee the attendance of the largest possible number of spectators, and this at a moment in history in which social crises and the lack of economic resources amongst the working class were pressing.

Moreover, the great Joselito showed himself to be in favour of defending the need to promote corridas in the face of other leisure events of the time, like football which was then beginning to boom in popularity. All his initiatives bore this in mind. Plazas monumentales, with the public’s great demand putting more spectators in bullrings at much cheaper prices, were also key in demonstrating the strength of toreo.    

This dream of Joselito, which indeed became reality, has today been squandered by the large empresarios, with Madrid the most recent example. They have shot up ticket prices and converted the taurine spectacle into an event for a privileged few. Or, if this isn’t the case, certainly more than one person will stay at home rather than go to the taquilla.  It’s one more offensive against the aficionado, who is the person who sustains and defends la fiesta and who really is the reason a man stands in front of a bull to create emotion and art. Without recompense via the taquillas, and without achieving the warmth and admiration of the public, nobody would torear.

The increase in ticket prices for the feria of San Isidro has also come at a time when there has been a radical reorganisation of the world’s top feria, with a reduction in the number of festejos and a shelving of the torista part of the abono in the plaza that was able to give space to a good number of  second or third-tier bullfighters, who have now been relegated and put on the ropes. The plaza also had a fixed and loyal clientele – not the most numerous, which is that that follows the lure of the figuras, but useful within the increasingly less varied bullfighting ‘offer’ that ends up reduced to the same experience with the same protagonists. Madrid should not become an example of that. Las Ventas should be the floodlight that illuminates the rest of the temporada, but little by little it is falling into the same mistakes as the rest.