Morante de la Puebla, the painful setback of a bullfighter damaged inside | Culture | EUROtoday

A goring has damaged the face of José Antonio Morante de la Puebla (La Puebla del Río, Seville, 46 years outdated) in one of many happiest moments, unquestionably, of his already lengthy skilled profession.

This Monday he arrived on the Plaza de La Maestranza with a smile on his lips, prepared, certainly, to revive outdated photos of the oldest bullfighting once more, however a bull crossed his path, ran over him violently and the bullfighter’s blissful expression turned dramatic and painful. Clandestinequantity 178, with a chestnut coat and weighing 512 kilos, belonging to the Hermanos García Jiménez ranch in Salamanca, had damaged it inside when he tried to cease it with the coat.

The sq. was silent; The bullfighter was taken to the infirmary and an infinite wait started till, after ten at night time, the medical report signed by Octavio Mulet, chief surgeon, confirmed the acute seriousness of the fuck.

This afternoon Morante himself declared to the Canal Sur TV cameras that this had been essentially the most painful goring of his life. “I was in immense pain and, in addition, very afraid because I saw that the bull had picked me up and I thought I was bleeding; when I got to the infirmary and saw that the bleeding was little, I relaxed, but it did hurt a lot.”

With uncommon pace, the information unfold like wildfire all through the bullfighting world; Not in useless whoever was on the working desk was a particular character, essentially the most excellent bullfighter right this moment and one of many best in historical past.

Now, there are lots of questions that come up concerning his quick future: the restoration time, whether or not or not he can be prepared for his subsequent dedicated celebration, on May 10 in Valladolid, how this accident will have an effect on his spirit and, even, if this fuck may very well be decisive in placing a definitive finish to his profession as a bullfighter.

The fact is that what occurred this Monday within the Sevillian plaza was not within the script; neither within the minds of the spectators nor in that of the bullfighter. Perhaps, as a result of right this moment’s bull has misplaced respect, and its main function on this pageant has been relegated to that of a mere troupe. But Clandestine He claimed his place and has damaged, with out understanding it, the protocol of ardour.

Because that, an extreme ardour, is what drives this man, revered as an excellent artist, who, being a veteran bullfighter – 28 years since he took the choice in Burgos in 1997 – has managed to reconvert himself as the nice novelty of bullfighting within the twenty first century, the one who fills the plazas as quickly as his identify seems on the posters, the one who has mobilized the youth, who has the followers in love and the brand new and quite a few ones shocked. batch of beneficiant spectators.

Paradoxically, this goring provides an epic chapter to his sensible service report, and can serve to boost the determine of a bullfighter revived after his pissed off farewell on October 12 within the Plaza de Las Ventas, staged with all solemnity, and shortly forgotten as quickly as the brand new Sevillian businessman, José María Garzón, seduced him with the query of what’s going to turn out to be of bullfighting with out you…

Be that as it could, José Antonio Morante Camacho, son of a humble household from the Sevillian city of La Puebla del Río, just lately divorced for the second time and father of three youngsters, is a being born for the bull, and already, as a baby, he performed on the street dreaming of glory together with his cousin Juan Carlos, his lifelong swordsman.

He shocked from the start, earlier than he debuted as a bullfighter in 1994 and was taken over by Leonardo Muñoz, father of the bullfighter Emilio Muñoz. But his profession has not been simple. He took the choice away from La Maestranza, within the Plaza de Burgos on June 29, 1997, he returned to Seville two years later and left an excellent letter of introduction: he left on his shoulders by the Puerta del Príncipe on April 19, 1999; But what appeared like an excellent profession to stardom all of the sudden stopped and the younger bullfighter was pressured to make an extended journey by the desert.

Fortunately, he was not a bullfighter who was very punished by the bulls. The most necessary have been the one he suffered on April 29, 2000 in La Maestranza when a Victoriano del Río bull precipitated muscle harm to his left thigh; one other in August 2009 in El Puerto on the correct thigh; in Huesca, in 2013, and in Pontevedra on August 10, 2025.

Morante has all the time been a bullfighter with in depth information of method, but in addition irregular and inconstant: he has all the time had, after all, the approval of educated followers, however, for years, his star was removed from the sunshine of the nice figures.

Thus, till in 2004 he summoned the media in Seville and shocked them with the information that he was affected by critical psychological issues and that he would journey to the United States to bear electroconvulsive remedy therapy (generally generally known as electroshock).

That was his first retirement from the ring, however that announcement contained one thing extra: it utterly modified the general public notion of his determine, and that sickness, which he nonetheless carries, has been and continues to be the principle protagonist in his profession.

Three years later, in 2007, he hung up his mild go well with once more as a result of, as he mentioned, he had misplaced his hope after slicing off a single ear in a bullfight with six bulls in Madrid; and in 2017, one other momentary farewell “because presidents and veterinarians have bored me.”

Little by little, José Antonio Morante was clearing the vertices of a posh character; a taciturn, fickle, bohemian human being, of few and sententious phrases, in everlasting battle with psychic ghosts which have pressured him to bear lengthy and harsh medical remedies which have influenced his profession and have saddened his face.

Rejection of modernity

He expressed these issues with crystal readability in May 2021 in an interview given to this newspaper, wherein he introduced himself as a person from the twenty first century locked in a lamp from the start of the twentieth. He mentioned that he longs for custom, rejects modernity, admires Joselito el Gallo and his time, and that on the unique desk of the king of bullfighters, that he retains in his home in La Puebla, the place books on bullfighting and philosophy relaxation. “I am a traditional man,” he mentioned, “and this idea that the party has to reinvent itself seems horrible to me.” Then, he additionally defined his shut relations with Santiago Abascal, president of VOX. “The political authorities have maintained an attitude of silence and apathy regarding the problems of bullfighting, which little by little has been losing importance. The ban in Catalonia is an example. The Constitutional Court cannot take seven years to decide whether bullfighting can be banned or not. Vox was born from the cowardice of the PP and to defend traditions; and I join them like someone who clutches at a burning nail.” He added that he didn’t think about himself a scholar to resolve what is true or incorrect, however “I do agree with the policy of containment that this party defends.”

On August 7, 2021, a momentous occasion occurred in his bullfighting life: with full capability, he locked himself in El Puerto de Santa María with six bulls from Prieto de la Cal, a troublesome ranch removed from the figures, and the expertise was very detrimental. But what the collapse of his fragile spirit might imply served to vindicate himself as a determine.

At the San Miguel truthful in Seville that 12 months, a brand new bullfighter was reborn, excited, succesful, dedicated, a full-fledged artist, who additionally triumphed in Madrid on the Autumn truthful, days earlier than he was awarded the National Bullfighting Prize.

The following 12 months he triumphed once more in Seville and Madrid and completed the season as chief of the rankings with 100 bullfights fought. And on April 26, 2023, he minimize off each ears and the tail of the bull Ligerito from Domingo Hernández’s ranch in La Maestranza, which marked his consecration as a historic determine in bullfighting.

But the psychological sickness, the dissociative dysfunction he suffers from, was nonetheless on Morante’s thoughts, and in 2024 he was pressured to droop the season as much as 3 times.

Advised by his shut buddy and legal professional since 2021, the Portuguese dentist Pedro Jorge Marques, he underwent a brand new therapy within the neighboring nation, and in March 2025 he acknowledged in an interview in Abc that he had considered dying as reduction and that his sickness was “complex, sad and painful.”

Despite every thing, he reappeared that season in Seville, the place he was the winner of the April Fair, he introduced himself in San Isidro and he entertained himself in finishing up his most heartfelt process on this sq., and days later, on June 8, he went out for the primary time by the Puerta Grande de Las Ventas.

By then, José Antonio Morante had lengthy been acknowledged as a fable, as a bullfighter from one other dimension. And so he’s, a revolutionary of recent bullfighting, a courageous bullfighter and artist (“the most artist of the brave bullfighters, and the bravest of the artistic bullfighters”, the journalist Paco Aguado has written about him), a genius able to shifting, of enthusing and capturing in a brushstroke an anthology of bullfighting.

And on October 12, 2025, after one other bullfighting exhibition, within the morning, on the pageant in tribute to Antoñete, organized by him, and within the afternoon bullfight, he went to the middle of the Las Ventas ring and, amid common shock and wrapped in tears, he untied his ponytail and mentioned goodbye to bullfighting.

That afternoon, bullfighting was left orphaned, and that is what Seville’s new businessman, José María Garzón, understood, who didn’t know learn how to arrange a Seville Fair in 2026 with out Morante’s identify on the posters. He traveled to Portugal, the place the bullfighter lived, later visited him a number of occasions at his farm in La Puebla, they ate and drank espresso a number of occasions, till Morante—with out speaking about cash, the businessman says—gave his approval to reappear in Seville. “I just don’t know how to do anything else,” he then admitted to this newspaper.

It was introduced 4 afternoons within the Sevillian season ticket, and on the sixteenth he drove the viewers loopy with a grasp class on historical and fashionable bullfighting. He didn’t depart by the Prince’s Gate as a result of he failed with the sword and the Regulations prevented him from doing so. But it did not matter. His work had a really deep influence, and that’s the reason he was awaited with a lot expectation final Monday. So a lot in order that nobody thought in regards to the bull, that protagonist relegated so many occasions to the function of additional and who broke the bullfighter’s face, turned his smile right into a painful grimace and left a shocked bullring in silence.

It is the annoyance of a goring, inherent to the bullfighting pageant.