Although not a feature of the 2023 feria of Castellón de la Plana (where the concept was introduced some years ago), ‘desafíos’, or challenges, between ganaderías have already been announced in the carteles of Valencia (bulls of Puerto de San Lorenzo and Garcigrande for Castella, Manzanares and Talavante on March 16) and Madrid (bulls of Pallarés v Los Maños for Esaú Fernández, Adrián de Torres and Gómez del Pilar on April 2 and the hierros of Las Ramblas and El Tajo y La Reina for Curro Díaz, Borja Jiménez and José Garrido on April 9). The San Isidro feria also includes such a corrida on May 26, when Miguel Ángel Perera, Talavante and Ginés Marín are due to face three bulls of Victoriano del Río and three of Núñez del Cuvillo. And the likelihood is that there will be several more such festejos over the course of the 2023 temporada.

The reason for this is a shortage of bulls for the season, which is definitely likely to affect first and second-class plazas and may also impact on more minor bullrings too.

The shortage is a direct result of the 2019/20 coronavirus pandemic, the prohibition and gradual resumption of bullfighting having caused many ganaderías to cut their financial losses by drastically reducing their herds of ganado bravo. José Carlos Carreño, veedor for Las Ventas, sees the problem continuing for the next two seasons at least, with 2024 being worse than this year and 2025 worse still. In the last couple of years, he points out, there’ve been many five-year-old bulls fought because they weren’t able to appear during the pandemic years, but that situation no longer exists and corridas will now be predominantly reliant on four-year-olds.

The situation has been worsened by the increased cost of animal feed (doubtless impacted by the war in Ukraine), which has doubled in the space of 12 months. As a result, many ganaderos are using animal feed less, relying on natural pasturage instead or only introducing feed in the final months leading up to the animals’ appearances in the bullrings. This makes the job of a veedor more difficult; for instance, some animals due to be fought this year will not be put on feed until towards the end of the Spring, introducing an element of guesswork as to whether the animals sent to the plazas will meet the venues’ usual expectations as to their appearance and strength. This is likely to be a problem for first and second-class plazas in particular, as it is these locations where a premium is placed on strong and good-looking bulls..

Ganaderos had also been hoping that a shortage of livestock would lead to higher prices being paid for their bulls, but this has yet to happen. Indeed, Victorino Martín has claimed that these prices haven’t changed for 20 years! Joaquín Núñez, owner of Núñez del Cuvillo, says, “The price of animal feed has reached such an extreme that it’s impossible to recover things from the income from second and third-class rings. Only with first-class plazas can one cover one’s costs. With the second and third-class bullrings, there’s a vicious circle as they can’t pay more because people won’t go to the plazas if you squeeze them in the pocket with the cost of entradas.” Whether this situation holds over the next few years remains to be seen; if it does, expect to see the larger, more popular, ganaderías grow bigger still and a lot of the smaller ganaderías pull out altogether.

In any event, corridas or novilladas whose bulls come from two unrelated ganaderías will increase in number. There are even likely to be instances where bulls from three ganaderías are put together to form a corrida. While these desafíos may lead to a welcome increase in the diversity of bulls the aficionado sees, there are bound to be concerns about animals’ quality too, and the opportunity to judge a ganadería’s current standing, based on observing six of their bulls over the course of an afternoon, will be lost.