Bad losers?
In this season of goodwill, two empresas are at loggerheads over the contract to put on Santander’s Feria de Santiago.
The Town Council’s Consejo de Administración announced its tender in October. The successful tenderer would be able to hire the city’s bullring for a month in each of the next four years and would be required, as a minimum, to organise seven festejos - five corridas (one of which could be a mixta), a novillada and a corrida de rejones - around the time of la Festividad de Santiago, with the obligation of putting on one of the events on July 25 itself. In order to bid, tenderers would need to be the titular empresa or contractee of a first or second class bullring with a flawless record in putting on ferias of five or more corridas in three of the past six years and with responsibility for a minimum of 50 festejos mayores during that same period. After the deadline for tender submissions had passed, it was announced there were two contenders - Santander’s empresa of the last four years, Lances de Futuro, headed by José María Garzon, and Sevilla Pagés y Funtausa, a collaboration between Ramón Valencia, the empresa of Sevilla, and la casa Matilla.
On December 5 it was announced that Lances de Futuro had won the tender. In addition to complying with the tender’s requirements, they had offered to put on an additional corrida and a concurso de recortadores, a feria featuring both Miura and Victorino Martín bulls, and would make improvements to the plaza’s infirmary.
Five days later, Sevilla Pagés y Funtausa submitted an appeal to the Town Council alleging that one of the supporting documents in Lances de Futuro’s submission contained a falsified signature, and arguing that the winning bid should consequently be disallowed.
Lances de Futuro issued a statement saying that the situation was one for the Council to resolve, but that no falsified signature was involved: rather, Andrés Caballero’s confirmation that the rejoneador he manages, Diego Ventura, would take part in the 2025 feria - a confirmation the empresa had received verbally and via WhatsApp - had been pp’ed. Asked about the polemic a few days later, Diego Ventura sagely commented: “I can’t say much about this because I’ve been focused on el campo and am not the person who’s spoken with José María, who’s a great empresario, as are Ramón Valencia and Matilla […] Andrés Caballero has told me after this fuss that everything was arranged with José María, that the contract was not signed, but that everything was spoken verbally and on WhatsApp. He gave the okay to Garzón so that things could go forward, and did the same with Matilla and Ramón Valencia […] You know what things are like […] The empresarios want to win, especially with a special plaza like Santander’s. One will fight up to a certain point.”
Other than his reported words to Ventura, Caballero himself has kept strangely quiet about the affair, to the extent that the critic Zabala de la Serna has commented in El Mundo: “If Ramón Valencia and Matilla are the corrupting nexus, Andrés Caballero is the corrupt nexus. Without his collaboration, there would have been no intrigue, whatever his principal [Ventura] says now.”
It’s subsequently transpired that part of Pagés y Funtausa’s unhappiness was that they learned about the tender’s outcome via public media rather than directly from the Town Council. On receipt of the empresa’s appeal, the Council has put awarding the contract on hold, but Pagés y Funtausa have maintained the pressure by announcing on December 20 that they are commencing legal proceedings against the award to Lances de Futuro “in face of the attacks made against them” and on the rather weak grounds that it “makes no sense to record 'a scribble' [on the tender document] if it is really so clear that there was authorisation to sign on behalf of the third party.”
If Pagés y Funtausa have eventually to give way, it will be interesting to see if there are other repercussions. An aficionado friend of mine swears that, to obtain toros bravos from Salamanca Province, empresas must first of all deal with Matilla before approaching individual ganaderos, in which case where will the bulls be from at next year’s Feria de Santiago? And will Juan Ortega, who is part of the Lances de Futuro stable, be snubbed when it comes to finalising carteles for Sevilla’s Feria de Abril?