Casas retains Valencia at a high price

Those of us with experience of competing for tendered opportunities where the amount of money offered is the main criterion will know that success involves beating the competition whilst committing as little funding as possible to the tenderer.

Recently, Simon Casas claimed he had lost 2 million euros on his management of Valencia’s bullring to date. Casas’ retention of the contract following the latest tender can therefore be seen as evidence of further rash judgement on his part. The Frenchman had to bring in the travel company Nautalia - his partners in managing Madrid’s Las Ventas - to assist his bid and then offered 452,000 euros per temporada to prolong his management of el coso de la Calle de Xàtiva for four years (with the possibility of a further three). The minimum price tenderers could offer was 150,000 euros a year and the Casas/Nautalia bid was almost 100,000 euros higher than the runner-up proposal from Casa Matilla.

There have long been rumours about the financial soundness of Simon Casas’ taurine activities (he himself claims to earn nothing from his running of Las Ventas). The website mundotoro was scathing about the outcome of the Valencian tender: “You are a baker and you want to carry out your trade,” it set out in an editorial. “You investigate local rents and agree to pay a landlord something ridiculous that makes your activity unfeasible - with the additional factor that bread, because it is fattening, has decreased in sales progressively in the past 20 years. Instead of agreeing with other bakers looking for a place not to be so stupid as to seek ruin in the bakery sector by agreeing this rent will be paid [… ], you invent an economic model that acts against you, against bread, against those who live on bread and against those who eat bread. You take stock of your expenses and decide this barbarity: ‘I will raise the price of bread. I’ll pay the suppliers of flour, salt and water less... And I’ll look for another place to pay another brutal rent and, in this way, with two bakeries, I’ll squeeze the providers of flour and salt even more. And then I’ll look for another one and pay even less, and another, and another…’. This is literally the economy of the torero. Pay to make bread, pay to fight bulls.

“Nautalia will pay three times more than the minimum amount to manage the bullring in Valencia. In the middle of the pandemic, without knowing where we are going economically, without knowing if next year there will be "normality", an activity that is the acknowledged cultural heritage of Spaniards is put out to tender in an infamous auction to which bullfighting has acceded. In the midst of the crisis, in the context of bullfighting’s ruin and economic bankruptcy, the so-called bullfighting sector slowly commits suicide. Inside itself, prior and more lethally than Covid-19, there is the virus of its self-destruction.

“[…] Every administration is obliged by law and by Spain’s Constitution to promote and invest in access to the culture of los toros. And yet, not only do they not do it, obviously prevaricating, but they try to exploit this to the limits of irrationality, which is demonstrated and admitted by those who bring the money to these contests. As will happen with the initial example of the baker, let the person that sows wheat, the one that makes flour, and salt, and the one who provides water go look for another trade […] They are going to adjust the minimum fees of bullfighters to shameful figures, while they continue to ask the banderilleros to charge a hundred euros less in order to save bullfighting because the costs are unsustainable.

“[…] There are solutions to this scandal, solutions to this total bankruptcy of bullfighting. The most effective: go to court so that the tenders for bullfighting activities are similar and equal to those that exist elsewhere in the cultural sector. When you tell the empresarios this, they say that it’s impossible. When you tell the Fundación del Toro de Lidia, they say it's impossible too. It’s a lie. It's arduous, it's expensive - but much less expensive than total bankruptcy […] But it's not going to happen. Neither the bullfighting sector nor the FTL possess the necessary bravery, coherence, vision and unity capable of suing for the rights to manage bullfighting […] No one protests. There has been no written communication or manifesto of empresas, toreros, banderilleros or journalists or aficionados that aims to halt this nonsense.”

Simon Casas

It is not lost on observers that the president of ANOET, the organisation that comprises the majority of bullfight empresarios and which has been complaining for some time about the demands of local authorities’ bullring tenders, has been one Simon Casas. Earlier this year, ANOET successfully led boycotts of the initial tenders for the bullrings of Málaga and Albacete. Apparently, it also discussed the possibility of boycotting the Valencia tender too, although no agreement on this was reached. ANOET did, however, argue that, in not establishing a maximum limit to the economic offer, the Valencian tender was effectively a hard and fast auction at a time when the taurine sector was emerging from the pandemic and in need of financial help. One member commented anonymously, “There’s a lack of recognition of good ideas and promotion - all the [tender] sections are translated into money”.

Earlier this year, Alberto García and Juan María Garzón, two emerging empresarios who have been particularly active in putting on festejos during the pandemic, resigned from ANOET, citing differences in approach. Now it is understood - although not yet officially confirmed - that Simon Casas stood down as ANOET’s president earlier this month.