Temple and Juan Ortega
José Carlos Arévalo
That Juan Ortega passes bulls slowly (very slowly) is known even by the tendido gatekeepers, those who never look at the ring. For, when the hypnotic torero from Triana performs, everyone watches. But toreando slowly is one thing and passing with temple is quite another. There are bulls that charge slowly and bullfighters that keep pace. In other words, a tempered bull and calm bullfighting. Now, if everyone watches Ortega, it is because his lures - the cape when he passes bulls at the start and the muleta when the animal has formalized its attacks - are two media that first hypnotize the bull and then the public. Because the Triana matador passes bulls slowly... with temple.
The matador who surprised me the most for his temple was Antonio Ordóñez. It happened in Seville. A bolide came out of the toril that, after scraping the tablas, on returning from the third burladero, saw the call of the rondeño, standing close to the burladero with the capotes, and galloped even more keenly towards him. But, when it entered the jurisdiction of the cape pass, it pacified its run as if it had penetrated another gravitational field, and, slowly, clung to the bombastic ordoñista verónica that embraced its charge as if it were giving it something to drink.
It was the most remarkable point at which I discovered the so-called ‘temple orteguiano’. By the way, the orteguiano thing is not bad. Because it was Ortega (Domingo), perhaps after Belmonte, who invented temple. I once saw him, in Madrid, lull an indomitable bull to sleep with four or five intoxicating verónicas.
But Juan Ortega fights more slowly, with more temple, than the two illustrious predecessors I’ve mentioned. I didn't get to see Curro Puya's verónica, or Victoriano de la Serna's, those moments of loss of appetite that Gerardo Diego turned into poetry. But I believe, I suppose and affirm that Juan Ortega fights more slowly and with more temple.
I have no arguments in support of this. Nor do those who may think otherwise. Because temple is impossible to explain. There must be a technique, but I’m unable to uncover it. For me, temple is the miraculous part of the art of bullfighting. What I do know is that, when you fight slowly and with temple, the line of toreo is improved; nothing spoils the elegance that the reunion between the bullfighter and the bull’s charge requires. Juan Ortega's approach – I repeat, the corporal expression that serves as the mast of bullfighting – is a fusion between the tragic baroque of Belmonte (brought up to date before our eyes by Emilio Muñoz, a very important torero with the right hand, poorly valued), the gypsy airs of Cagancho and Curro Puya, and the Castilian elegance of Antonio Márquez, La Serna and Antoñete.
I know that these lines will be received with sarcasm by a bullfighting public opinion accustomed to not valuing the present and nonetheless complacent with the indiscriminate overvaluation of the past. But the afición is not to blame. We live in strange bullfighting times. Between the media discrimination against the Fiesta, which does not give the space that some terrific faenas deserve, and the prudent restraint of the critics lest they alarm their bosses or raise concern amongst the fundamentalist aficionados, the estimation of current bullfighting is undervalued. Can one torear better than Juan Ortega? If so, let them tell me how.
[This is a translation of an article originally published by www.burladero.tv under the title ‘Sobre el temple de Juan Ortega’. - TW]