How do you become a figura?
How long will Manuel Diosleguarde (for example) have to wait until he is put on with figuras?
“We put together three afternoons with figuras,” Rafael Garrido, head of Nautalia, Valencia’s empresa, has said, looking back on las Fallas 2023, “The idea for next year, if we’re able to do so, is to put on four such afternoons, perhaps even five, with figuras.” (This year’s feria consisted of five corridas for toreros de a pie.)
The three afternoons Garrido is referring to this year involved Sebastián Castella, Manzanares (twice), Alejandro Talavante, El Juli, Tomás Rufo, Emilio de Justo, Andrés Roca Rey and Pablo Aguado. If you take Rufo, Roca Rey and Aguado out of the equation, the most recent alternativa in the grouping was that of de Justo in 2007 - all of 16 years ago. Otherwise, the younger matadors - Román, Ginés Marín, Ángel Téllez and Francisco de Manuel - were consigned away from the figuras in Valencia’s minor carteles.
How do you become a figura these days? On becoming matadores de toros, Roca Rey and Tomás Rufo both saw carteles alongside figuras open up for them immediately after their strong campaigns as novilleros under canny apoderados. Both of them have continued to be favoured with commercial ganaderías and have kept their feet to the pedal ever since. Aguado’s path has been a more difficult one (and one I would argue has yet to be fully realised), but has been built on strong performances in Madrid and Sevilla.
If Valencia follows Madrid’s new model (Garrido being involved in the management of both plazas), and fills its feria carteles up with figuras to the exclusion of new hopes and modestos, it may improve the taquilla takings in the short term, but it will be of no help to toreo’s future. It will be a form of institutional sclerosis.
When I first started going to bullfights in the late 1960s, I could see Antonio Ordónez (alternativa 1951) appearing alongside Paquirri (alt. 1966) and Manolo Cortés (alt. 1968); Diego Puerta or Paco Camino (both alt. 1959) alongside Miguel Márquez (alt. 1968); Jaime Ostos (alt. 1956) alongside Juan José (alt. 1968).
This pattern continued into the 1970s. In the middle of that decade, I could see Camino and Paquirri with Niño de la Capea (alt. 1972), or El Viti (alt. 1961) and Palomo Linares (alt. 1966) with Luis Francisco Esplá (alt. 1976), or Ángel Teruel (alt. 1967) and Manzanares padre (alt. 1971) with Agustín Parra Parrita (alt. 1976).
By the mid-eighties, the rot had begun to set in with empresas increasingly grouping the figuras together. The 1986 Feria de San Isidro, for example, included the combinations of Julio Robles, Ortega Cano and Espartaco; Manzanares padre, Emilio Muñoz and Paco Ojeda; Ruiz Miguel, Dámaso González and Esplá; Manzanares padre with Julio Robles and Ortega Cano. Since then, things have got worse and now we have the ridiculous situation of major plaza empresas looking to confine their feria corridas to the top toreros of the day.
The third place in a corrida of figuras should usually be reserved for an up-and-coming young matador, particularly in the second and first-class bullrings. How else (except through the mundillo’s self-selection) are such toreros able to stake a claim to compete with - and perhaps overtake - the established figuras? To do otherwise is to turn one’s back on the future of la Fiesta, in empresas’ cases simply to make a quick buck.