Impressions of Bilbao’s Corridas Generales de Aste Nagusia 2023 (Part I)
Jock Richardson
An Ancient Aficionado Arrives Back in Bilbao
Arrival in Bilbao for me is a journey into an opaque mist of nostalgia, insecure hope, and impending doom. The cloud has hung over me since that conversation my wife, my son and I had in the early hours of one morning over a decade ago when we debated in our room in the Carlton and finally agreed that when the bulls were dead in Bilbao, the Fiesta Brava would be dead also. Since that night, we have witnessed many changes. A legion of our friends has, as Wally Johnston used to put it, “Beaten us to the barn”. We still have fun in Bilbao, but we have fewer pals with whom to make it: the list of great aficionados after whose names we write QEPD grows by the year. We have seen the toro de Bilbao, that bull of immense trapío, demanding behaviour and awesome beauty, lose grandeur and gain predictability. Stories about the state of the fiesta in Bilbao abound. This year, apparently, the Town Band will not be allowed to play in the plaza (what will the paseíllo be like without their heart string stretching strains of the pasodoble, Cocherito de Bilbao?). The official programmes for Aste Nagusia do not mention the festejos taurinos at all. How will those outwith the tough core of foreign, French, and local aficionados know that they are happening? There is the odd banner on the telegraph poles of la Gran Via with the face of a figura – there are no modestos in this feria - on it, but to the man in the street they might as well be protagonists in an operatic Carmen.
I must have pressed the wrong button on my computer as I was checking the times and locations of taurine coloquios in Bilbao 2023. The list I got had the Club Cocherito ones in the Hotel Carlton starting at 1300 hrs each day. My wife and I are inveterate supporters of these coloquios and, having spent the hours from noon until 2.00 p.m. in the Carlton for the past fifteen years - the hour before the coloquio used to be profitably filled by courses on tauromaquia conducted by José Luis Ramón – the continuance of the tradition was comforting. Our arrival at the Carlton this year was not.
For years, the huge domed central saloon of the hotel has been set up as a bullring with the ring as a circular bar. At the hour of the aperitif, it was filled with denizens of el mundo taurino: ganaderos, apoderados, aficionados, reporters, critics, and others. The room in which I expected to find the coloquio was locked. The two members of staff I interviewed were blunter than bemused. “There will be nothing to do with the toros in the Carlton this year,” said one. “The policy regarding taurine activities was made from above by our Director,” said another. To my question, ”Do you have a new director, then?” She answered that the Director had been in post for years. It was all Greek to me. Alice Hall would have rubbed her thumb and fore-finger together and yelled, “¡Don Dinero!”
All is not lost. The Cocherito coloquios will take place in the Hotel Indautxu; the Ercilla is still making much of itself as a taurine hotel; the feria is still destined to take place; maybe Manu de Alba will still be ferreting around the room to make sure the microphones work during the coloquios; maybe Morante’s ligament will get better; maybe Luque will recover; maybe that Rock most of the world treats as a King will stay out of hospital for a few more days; maybe Matías, who in spite of the speck in his eye over the tremendismo of the so-called King is still the most wise and upright judge in existence, will have survived the voices that want him gone; maybe the txistularis needed for the several aurreskus they must produce for the retiring El Juli and Pablo Hermosa de Mendoza will be allowed to play; maybe some people will come to the corridas. Hope insecure is hope of a kind.
The Retirement of Pablo from Bilbao
Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza
My mission for the first day in Bilbao, the corrida de rejones, was to make an honest report of the retirement of Pablo Hermosa de Mendoza from Bilbao for a friend in Scotland who loves Pablo like a brother but was too temporarily infirm to come personally. My more detailed report than this will include that Pablo was Pablo, slightly below the qualities of two Bohórquez toros, well-built and with horns atypically dangerous looking, but still Pablo: habitually cuff-sniffing, mature, efficient, domineering in the suertes but with the air of a man whose rocking chair awaits. The end of an era feeling was accentuated by the fact that two younger cavaliers, Lea Vicens and Guillermo Hermosa de Mendoza, competed with each other rather than with him, cut two ears apiece from their co-operative murubes and, frankly, gave him the bath. There was no aurresku.
The Dilemma of the Naïve Foreign Aficionado
I have often wondered if knowing a torero personally is likely to affect one’s judgment of his actions in the ring. The Bienvenida, Curro, Ordóñez, Ponce, Rafaelillo, Tejela, Morante and Joselillo friends and followers I have known never seemed able to find a word of criticism to apply to their respective heroes. I have met a legion of toreros in my time, but it has all been hotel foyer, formal dinner, and trophy award stuff in which no affective bond has had time or environment to form. I have been happy with that. I have but one single photo of myself with a torero taken in a situation I could not avoid and possess not a single autograph or signed photograph. My freedom to praise or criticise is total. But! I met Lalo de María twice last summer: once at a tienta in Yecla, and once at a trophy dinner we both attended. That was not enough, despite his personal charm, the fact that he stylishly saved the life of an American aspirate several times in Yecla, his readiness to discuss toreo as spectacle and art, and the fact that his English is better than mine, to addle my faculties into thinking he was other than ineptly living out someone else’s dream when I saw him in Albacete last September. Last night, we were returning from dinner to the oven of the Ercilla when Lalo de María stumbled out of the fabulous Ercilla street tent right into our path. It would be nice to think that he saw our approach and had leapt at the opportunity to greet us. It must have been an accident. But he did recognise me, and he did give fifteen minutes to discussion of our past meetings, his hopes, and fears for tomorrow and the development of his career so far. And he did it with that decency, serenity, and charm that force one to like him.
Lalo de María
The gods smiled on us and him in his first novillada in Bilbao, an event shrouded in gloom. It was before a crowd so sparse that the certainty of the end of the fiesta in Bilbao was palpable; the first three José Cruz novillos had very weak legs, as had the sixth. Two, the third and the sixth had to be substituted – so much for the toro de Bilbao. Lalo de María is tall; carries himself with an elegant and apparently secure and confident style; has a well-developed (much better developed than last year) sense of finding the appropriate cite distance; tries, successfully today, to structure his faenas; and has a smoothness and temple to raise the hairs. His cape work is low, varied and sometimes beautiful. His arm length allows long pases and, when he chooses, enables him to draw the animal round in linked series. He tends to leave too much distance between his body and the bull – to torear despegado – and to extend his faenas beyond la hora de verdad. Twice today, he allowed genuine triumph to escape by permitting the novillo to become rajado towards the boards and by placing imperfect swords. I need not have lost sleep worrying that I might have to disparage this charming fellow. He is on the right track and may yet reach a happy terminus. Keep up the good work, José Antonio [Campuzano, his apoderado - TW].
By the second half, the novillada had improved as entertainment and spectacle. We did have to wait for the sixth (the seventh) novillo to be substituted by another José Cruz animal. Mario Navas is a confident (maybe cocky would be a better word) youngster who will be well known to devotees of novillero competitions broadcast on the several local TV channels – he has won lots of prizes and cut an ear here last year. He did little with the invalid in the first half, but when he met the strong and noble ultimate novillo, he burst into life. Fundamentally a classic torero, he still slides into crowd-pleasing poses that do not go down well with the few bilbainos who deign to attend the bulls. Still, there was enough linked and templado toreo performed from appropriate distances to convince that Navas deserves his credibility and is one we should not miss the opportunity of seeing. Carlos Domínguez had, as it is put, bad luck with the draw and, apart from pinceladas templadas performed with good grace and manners, told us little in terms of a taurine future.
For me, the evidence of the upward trajectory of Lalo de Maria was the best harvest from the novillada.
El Toro de Bilbao Can Still be Found
“You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Maybe that was true of the walk up to Vista Alegre from the hotels in the centre of Bilbao in the 1970s and 80s when José Antonio del Moral wrote his praises of the rite. We have had sparse company as we have climbed the hill so far this year.
Today, for the first corrida of the feria, we might have imagined that we were in a procession because some folks were walking towards what is now called BIVA – how romantic is that? It turned out to be more like a few mourners dutifully making the pilgrimage to the sad farewell for an old friend. That few had felt the duty to be present was proven by the numbers who took their seats for the service: of the 14,781 available places, only around 4,500, approximately a third, were filled.
Miguel Ángel Perera
The first Fuente Ymbro was, like its fellows that followed, a genuine resurrection of the toro de Bilbao. Its appearance was enough to have made the climb worthwhile, Not over-large at 500 kilos, it was well-armed with immense armament and trapío that could be felt. Miguel Ángel Perera welcomed it with cape work that shrouded him in a cloud of ashen dust. The bull was noble and strong, charged horse and banderilleros positively and allowed Perera to build a classical faena based on long, linked orthodox passes with light, but not ostentatious, alardes, the most dramatic of which was a pass of disdain in the middle of a series. He found the cite distance exactly for each series; he offered the lure in the cites, sewed his pases together with silken temple, and led the bull into the next series in the final remates. It must have been difficult to do, but, with the co-operation of the bull, Perera made the winning of his ear look easy. His second bull was noble but a little trickier than his first. It was soon stuck in los tercios pawing the ground in a bad-tempered way. It also tended to seek the querencia of the boards. A lesser man than Perera might have given it short shrift. He soon had it under control and gradually built a faena of similar structure and form as had been his first. The certainty and security of this kind of toreo is wonderful and Perera is a Master of It. His treatment of this bull reminded me of several similar faenas of his to powerful and demanding Fuente Ymbros. This one, carefully prepared for the faena, he taught to concentrate and encouraged to charge in a superb demonstration of toreo. He had ears earned until he killed with a metisaca that led to a prolonged death in which he eschewed the descabello.
The substitution of Juan Leal for Daniel Luque was no surprise. He has triumphed in his way in this plaza in the past. His two Fuente Ymbros, especially his first, a veritable charging machine for which some demanded a vuelta al ruedo, were today miles above his pay rate and he failed to treat them to anything better than toreo de rodillas, toreo despegado and fruitless effort.
Leo Valadéz drew the least tasteful of the six and, though he left the images of some florid zapopinas and a brilliant estocada on the mind’s eye, he passed more or less unnoticed.
Three Very Different Styles of Toreo
The walk up the hill today reminded me of the morning I had to walk ten miles across the Libyan desert on a survival course to the smoke-pillar from the burning tyres that indicated where our imaginary plane had landed. It was easier than the one-mile Bilbao walk in 44 degrees. Life in the tent I built from the parachute on which I had supposedly descended and which I survived in for four days, was more comfortable than life in the air-conditioning-free, intermittent wifi and erratic safe box combinations of the Ercilla. I asked at the desk if the millionaire star toreros here were suffering the same trying conditions than their ordinary guests and was assured that they are.
Today we had demonstration of different styles: the Morante “I do it my way and just you suffer it till I decide the right time has come to please you – and keep your insults to yourselves” style; the Manzanares “effete, keep it safe by using the pico, toreando despegado, descargando la suerte and looking awfully elegant” style; and the Talavante “frivolous yet imaginative, filagree, champagne-bubble ‘toreo lihgt’” style. I admit, there is something for everyone there.
Morante had a poor afternoon. The Juan Pedro Domecqs he drew were the worst of an unequal lot. He realised that he would do nothing with the first and dispatched it promptly. His second was death on hooves. In seconds, it had Morante at its mercy with his body prostrated against the boards beneath the president: saved by his peones, he had just proved how dangerous tauromaquia can be. Composed, and to his credit, he took it to los medios and sought to subject it to toreo. It was in vain, but it was meritorious. Not for the idiot high up in tendido 4. He, a noisy character often heard shouting insults or empty phrases, called Morante “un “Golfo Gordo” which I take to mean, “A man of infinite shame”. The response of Morante was immediate and decisive. He walked to the barrera, ayuda pointed forward, to pick up the real sword and administer a couple of pinchazos and an estocada tendida without any obvious desire to make them accurate.
Alejandro Talavante
Maybe we needed something light and entertaining to raise us above the 44-degree heat. Talavante has returned from wherever he has been in exile full of energy, magical imagination, and a huge delight in what he is doing. It is infectious and the public – there were about 7,000 of them present; what this plaza needs is three “Kings” from the distant occident rather than three normal toreros – loved it. It is hard not to like it. It is jolly, it is appealing to the eye, it is filled with series de rodillas, ingeniously inserted adornos, smiling appeals to the crowd. But it certainly lacks the depth that it takes decades of afición to appreciate. That is why his three ears were questioned in several quarters as being “orejas baratas”. All of that said, Talavante is in a good moment, he knows what he wants to do, and he does it with enjoyment and panache and he adds a dimension to toreo that is not available from anyone else.
If Morante is all sporadic art and Talavante is all joie de vivre, Manzanares is the epitome of the journeyman who has found a job that can be carried out by routine. His is the painting by numbers stye of toreo. Gone are the huge, upwardly and inwardly driving pases de pecho; gone are the unerringly accurate estocadas a volapié or recibiendo. They have been replaced with a distant, secure, toreo in which the bull is kept at a safe lateral distance with skilful use of the pico and accentuation of his famous descargando de la suerte. An aficionado should never be bored in a corrida – there is usually a great deal to be thought about, analysed, and enjoyed. For the aficionado who refuses to admit to boredom, Manzanares makes life mighty difficult.