When I first started attending corridas in the late 1960s, bulls from Salamanca made up the bulk of animals chosen for the leading ferias and the Salamancan ganadería most favoured by the figuras was that of Atanasio Fernández. In San Sebastián’s 1968 Semana Grande, the atanasios were fought by Paco Camino, El Cordobés and Paquirri, while the 1969 feria saw Antonio Ordóñez, Ángel Teruel and Miguel Márquez face the ganadería’s product.

In 1926, Atanasio Fernández, whose family background was in the coal industry, married Natavidad Cobaleda, daughter of Bernabé Cobaleda, a Salamancan ganadero who had just added to his ex-Carriquirri Navarese ganado bravo with animals purchased from the Conde de la Corte. The Conde’s ganadería itself was quite new at this time, having only debuted in 1922 with stock that had belonged to the Marquesa Viuda de Tamarón. Atanasio himself was a great bullfight aficionado, and, after travelling to Madrid with his father-in-law in 1928 to witness the impressive debut in the capital of Conde de la Corte bulls, the pair decided to get rid of the carriquirris from the Cobaleda herd and focus solely on the tamarones.

When Bernabé died the following year, his herd was split equally between his son, Juan, and Natavidad, with Juan retaining the Cobaleda brand and Atanasio creating a new one in which the ‘A’ for Atanasio and the ‘N’ for Natividad were intertwined. Atanasio retained the Carriquirri antigüedad with the UCTL and also the divisa colours of red and green. Needing to augment the inherited herd, Atanasio purchased further Conde de la Corte stock before making a promising debut at Valencia in 1931. His Madrid debut the next year was equally successful.

After the Civil War, atanasios were championed by no less a figure than Manolete and continued to be favoured by Antonio Ordóñez, Julio Aparicio and Manuel Benítez El Cordobés. It was Atanasio’s ganadería that provided the material for the notorious San Isidro corrida of 1972, when Palomo Linares cut four ears and a tail (the last to be awarded in the capital), Curro Rivera four ears and Andrés Vázquez a further oreja. Two years later, El Niño de la Capea confirmed his alternativa in Madrid with atanasios, cutting three ears - the same amount as his companions that afternoon, Palomo Linares and Paquirri.

The leading matador of the 1980s, Espartaco, continued to favour the Salamancan ganadería and atanasios were also once the favourite bulls of Enrique Ponce. In my book, Dialogues With Death, Enrique says: “The Atanasio bloodline is the one I enjoy the most. These bulls possess great virtues, in particular their temple and readiness to charge […] They rarely give problems when they’re inspected by the vets, for they’re very strongly constituted, solidly-bodied and serious-looking. You have to wait for an atanasio to reveal itself, for it rarely does this as soon as it comes into the ring. During the first two tercios, it can behave quite coldly. After it’s taken a second pic, it’ll start to show what it’s made of. Indeed, with some it’ll take longer still […] They can do something strange in the initial muleta passes and then end up templados, turning out excellently. Because of this, faenas with these bulls often improve as they go along: I much prefer this to toros which start off strongly and are worn out after the second series […] if you follow their rhythm, once they’re committed, you can achieve a phenomenal mid and closing faena.”

Atanasio Fernández died in 1982 and - 40 years later - it is a rare event to see bulls of atanasio lineage in the plaza de toros despite his being a willing seller of his bulls to other ganaderos - Antonio Ordóñez, El Viti, Chamaco, El Sierro, José Luis Marca, Sepúlveda and Lisardo Sánchez all had atanasio herds at one stage, while in Portugal his bulls were bought by Ernesto Louro Fernándes de Castro and Manuel Assumpçao Coimbra. As recently as the early 1990s, the toros of los Herederos de Atanasio Fernández were performing well, only for the herd to gradually worsen and no longer be one that was sought after by toreros. The family opted to send their ganado bravo to the slaughterhouse in 2010 after not even a single corrida was bought from them for the 2009 temporada.

In his new booklet on the ganadero and his bulls, Atanasio Fernández, Creador de un encaste, Domingo Delgado de la Cámara reckons the virtual disappearance of the Atanasio bloodline this century - in the eighties and nineties, bulls of atanasio lineage were still the most frequent participants in corridas in Madrid - is partly down to the increasing popularity of the Domecq encaste and partly because don Atanasio’s successors simply found the animal too difficult to predict at selection stage.

After describing the Atanasio bull as ugly, tall and “tumbledown” in appearance, but with a stature that didn’t trouble the plaza vets, giving the figuras certainty as to the bulls they would finally face, Domingo de la Cámara substantiates Enrique Ponce’s comments, saying the animals would often come out cold and manso but then improve as the lidia went on, ending up very good in the muleta. Consequently, the atanasio was a very challenging prospect for the torero, an animal that “called for much firmeza and a lot of knowledge” as well as bravery and power.

But it was this evolving nature in the lidia that made selecting atanasios a difficult task for the ganadero. Alipio Pérez Tabernero Martín has commented: “If you have a ganadería ‘atanasia’, you have to select from amongst the mansos. If you select en bravo, given the size and strength of these bulls, they’ll send the picadors from the plaza and no matador would get in front of them.”

“It seems,” concludes Domingo de la Cámara, “that, after the death of old don Atanasio, none of [the ganaderos] that came after him knew how to achieve the secret of consistent performance.” The ganadero had kept his selection methods and criteria to himself. In addition, atanasios frequently suffered from poor health in their early years, whilst consanguinity in the herd was high, making them an unattractive proposition for bull-breeders.

Coupled with these factors was the increasing popularity of the Domecq encaste amongst the toreros. “The radical difference between the Domecq bull and other toros,” states Domingo de la Cámara, “isn’t in the good bull, which isn’t any better than those of other encastes. The difference comes with the bad bull, which [in the case of Domecq] stops coming forward and doesn’t present many complications, while the bad bull of the other encastes is very complicated and dangerous. In the case of atanasios, as well as having sentido and bad intentions, they tend to be very wayward and wild in their charges, which complicates their lidia.”

The survival of the encaste was not assisted by its unpopularity with picadors and banderilleros - atanasios killed Joaquín Camino, brother of the matador Paco Camino, and Manolo Montoliú as they attempted to place banderillas - nor the perception amongst aficionados that, atanasios having been a favourite of the figuras, they must be an easy type of animal. Attempts to introduce Domecq blood to atanasio herds were unsuccessful, and a number of ganaderos with atanasio stock - including El Sierro, Charro de Llen, Sepúlveda and José Luis Marca - chose instead to move over to the Domecq bloodline completely.

Nowadays, there are just three atanasio hierros - those of Puerto de San Lorenzo (12 corridas in Spain and France in 2022) and Valdefresno/Fraile de Valdefresno (10 2022 festejos), each belonging to Salamanca’s Fraile family - that continue to feature in the main ferias in Spain, while Barralva (six 2022 festejos) flies the Atanasio flag in Mexico. The Fraile bulls are descended from the animals of Lisardo Sánchez, purchased from Atanasio Fernández in 1948. There are rumours that, at some point, Santa Coloma blood was introduced to the Lisardo Sánchez herd, but Domingo de la Cámara reckons the lisardos’ larger horns and lower height compared to atanasios are more to do with ganaderos’ selection over the years. The Fraile family has a fourth Atanasio hierro via Lisardo Sánchez, that of María Cascón (four festejos last year), and two Domecq herds, El Pilar and La Ventana del Puerto.

A newer Atanasio initiative is that of Fernando Rodríguez with the ganadería in his mother’s name, Adelaida Rodríguez. Created in 1991 with lisardos, the ganadería began appearing in novilladas con picadores and corridas at the start of the 21st century, with good results. These animals appeared in just one novillada last year.

Another Atanasio ganadería trades on a reputation of providing serious, often tricky, bulls. This is the herd of Dolores Aguirre Ybarra, who in 1978 acquired via María Teresa Osborne the animals originally owned by don Atanasio’s daughter, Pilar. The purchase was not promising initially, so Dolores opted to refresh the stock by acquiring two Conde de la Corte sementales. More recently, further Conde de la Corte blood has been introduced to the herd, which has a strong reputation amongst French aficionados and continues to have its place in Spain amongst the corridas duras. The ranch provided animals for eight festejos in 2022.