I knew relatively little about Manuel Román Álvarez before I saw him in a mano a mano novillada in Arles at Easter - only that he came from Córdoba and, with his boyish looks and height, appeared to have been paired with young Marco Pérez (as in the Arles cartel) for a number of appearances this season.

In fact, Román is 18 years old (almost two years older than the Salamancan prodigy), entered Córdoba’s escuela taurina in 2017 and had been creating a stir in the south of Spain since 2020, when, as a becerrista, he cut two ears and a tail at Sanlúcar de Barrameda. That same year, he won the II Certamen de Becerristas de Andalucía.

He debuted as a novillero sin picadores in March 2022, cutting two ears and a tail, and, by the end of that season, had appeared in 43 novilladas in Spain and France, winning a total of 69 ears and seven tails. From the end of that year, there was a short-lived management arrangement with the previous apoderados of Enrique Ponce, Juan Collado Ruiz and Juan Ruiz Palomares - possibly an indication all was not well with the youngster? - which ended mid-season in June 2023, when the novillero took on Carlos Zuñiga as his manager.

Román had his first novillada con picadores on 28 February 2023, el Día de Andalucía, at Linares, cutting four ears, and went on to appear in 18 further novilladas that year, winning 25 more ears and a tail, including symbolic trophies when a bull of Salvador Domecq was indultado at Montoro in October. An encerrona at Córdoba that May brought the youngster four ears from five bulls and he also cut two ears at Aranjuez in September, triunfador de la tarde in a corrida mixta with rejoneador João Ribeiro Telles and the matador Álvaro Lorenzo. His temporada established him as Córdoba’s great hope for the future.

Manuel Román impressed me at Arles, the youngster being calm and serious throughout the morning festejo, showing variety with the capote and producing three strong, classically-inclined faenas. He, I thought, like Pérez, was a real promise for the future.

It was with some surprise and sadness, then, that I learned on 11 September of Román’s decision to call an apparently permanent halt to his taurine career. Manuel was lying fifth in the escalafón de novilleros, with 19 novilladas to his name and with only Marco Pérez (with whom he’d shared 11 afternoons), Javier Zulueta, Jarocho and Samuel Navalón ahead of him. Given the last two would both be matadores de toros by 14 September, the busiest month for novilladas, the Cordoban stood every chance of being amongst the top three novilleros by the season’s end.

Manuel’s retirement was announced in a statement that read in part as follows: “After a few years of dedication and sacrifice to the most beautiful profession in the world, today, very saddened, I announce that I am leaving it indefinitely […] I never dreamt that I could generate the amount of interest shown in me and, much less, that the time would come to capture in these lines the tremendous sorrow that I feel so prematurely, but the circumstances and my morale have not been able to overcome what for me could have been a historic season.”

The veteran taurine critic José Carlos Arévalo has blamed the much-reduced numbers of novilladas that take place these days for the Cordoban’s departure, but, judging by the novillero’s statement, it sounds like the reason is more likely to be Manuel Román’s mental attitude in the light of this year’s performances. He has only managed three two-ear faenas (at La Linea in March and July and Antequera in June) and has spent much of the season seeing other leading novilleros at the same festejos achieve exits on shoulders while he has left the bullring on foot. Nevertheless, his decision is very much to be regretted, and it seems Córdoba will have to wait a while longer for its next important torero.