Bulls: ‘Of mud and gold’, self-portrait of 26 classic bullfighters | Culture | EUROtoday

Of clay and gold. Self-portraits of bullfighters is the title of the primary literary work of the journalist and bullfighting consultant Nacho de la Serna, through which, via a sequence of interviews, he provides form to the “self-portrait” of 26 interval bullfighters, now retired and who, some greater than others, left their mark on the planet of bullfighting.

Manili, Julio Aparicio, Pepe Limeño, Raúl Sánchez, Joselito, Ángel Teruel, Chamaco, Tito de San Bernardo, Manolo Cortés, Niño de la Capea, Jaime Ostos, José Fuentes, Luis Alfonso Garcés, Pepe Luis Vázquez, Antonio Sánchez Puerto, José Antonio Campuzano, Curro Romero, el Puri, Julio Pérez Vito, Emilio Muñoz, Pepe Luis Vargas, Roberto Domínguez, Santiago Castro Luguillano, Luis Francisco Esplá, Tinín and Conchita Cintrón are the nice protagonists of this work. “There are 26 very sincere and revealing interviews of retired bullfighters of all conditions. A book of contrasts, of those who succeeded and those who did not, but all of them left their mark and their mark on the history of bullfighting,” Nacho de la Serna (Madrid, 1972) tells Efe.

Published by the El Paseíllo publishing home, ‘De mud and gold’ options the presentation of one of the vital prestigious writers in bullfighting journalism, Ignacio Álvarez Vara, Barqueritowho reveals that these interviews “reveal the discovery of a poorly known world, the arrival to the bottom of the personal mystery that every bullfighter carries with him.” “A book that brings us closer to the less conventional and more extreme side of men who dress in lights, bullfighters with aura and success, but also broken toys,” provides Barquerito.

The interviews have been revealed between 2007 and 2013 within the month-to-month journal of the Taurodelta firm, the corporate that then ran the Plaza de Las Ventas, and the place the creator served as press officer. Of all of them Barquerito writes that “they were becoming self-portraits stripped of litter and fatuous pretensions, into sincere and even passionate autobiographies and, incidentally, connecting the dots and, if neither party intended it, into a story of the most unknown background of bullfighting in the last 50 years.”

Of clay and gold It is the literary debut of Nacho de la Serna, a lawyer by occupation and journalist and member of a household with essential bullfighting roots. Grandson of the previous bullfighter Victoriano de la Serna, he himself tried his luck as knowledgeable and made his debut as a bullfighter in Vinaroz (Castellón) on July 24, 1994 alongside Javier Conde and Macareno.

His father, José Ignacio de la Serna, was additionally a bullfighter in addition to a famend supervisor, a subject through which the creator of the e-book works, at present main the profession of the Malaga native Jiménez Fortes, and beforehand that of the bullfighters Fernando Robleño, the Frenchman Juan Leal or the Venezuelan Jesús Enrique Colombo.