Alcurrucén Bulls for Juan José
Padilla, Miguel Abellán and Diego Urdiales.
The corrida began
with a beautiful black and white girón bull with a reticent charge. Padilla is
a capable technician and used the mobility that the bull possessed when it was
minded to charge to construct a superficial but attractive faena. There was no
moving toreo en redondo, but rather plenty fundamental and accessorial passes
that served to keep the populist section of the crowd engaged. He concluded the
faena with a full but ineffective estocada that required the descabello to
complete the task.
The lidia to the
fourth bull began brightly. In typical Padilla style, he welcomed the faena
with a couple of largas on his knees, which always please the crowd, and
satisfactory veronicas which the aficionado would have welcomed. The bull had a
mobile charge that Padilla was able to exploit in an attractive galleo by
chicuelinas to take it to the horse. The spectacle continued with a pleasing
tercio de banderillas. Two pairs al cuarteo that were executed within an
acceptable distance of the bull’s horns and a pair al violin that accomplished
its purpose of stirring the crowd. Sadly the faean de muleta was almost
entirely non-existant. It began with hopeful kneeing down muletazos, but the
excitement of the crowd at the populist toreo did not match the bull’s
worryingly inspid charge. I am inclined to think that the bull had a medical
problem rather than a lack of strength because, from this point on, it was
barely able to move and eventually, after a some long minutes of Padilla
posturing with the muleta and then the sword, collapsed on its side before the
matador from Jerez was able to give an estocada. The conclusion is a sad
spectacle for the fiesta.
Miguel Abellán’s
first bull had a profound charge that had to be teased out of it. The animal
would not give up the charge readily, you had to present the lure right up
against his nose and keep the muleta in its face between each pass to ensure it
repeated the charges. Along these technical lines Miguel was able to perform
three deep series of derechazos. The faena as a whole had emotive peaks and
troughs brought by the animal’s reticence to charge, on occasions, but as a
whole it was a technically correct and pleasing work which was moving on
occasions. The tardy effects of a full
estocada probably prevented Miguel from cutting an ear that a majority of the
crowd had petitioned.
When the fifth bull
came out of the pen, we were at that disconcerting point of the afternoon hwere
the pre-corrida optimism has turned to pessimism faced, as we were, with
another string of underwhelming bulls… Such pessimism was not helped by the
untidy charge of this bull, a nervy reticence to charge that was founded on its
mansedumbre. Abellán sought to focus the animals charge with some pleasing
early doblones before giving it distance for the first series of derechazos.
The bull charged with mobility and repeated, which allowed for a linked series,
but marked by the informal charge. The two subsequent series followed the same
form, it was not pretty toreo, but pleasing in their control of a nervy bull.
By the time Abellán took the left hand the bull had lost interest in charging.
Abellán tried another series on the right side, in an attempt to raise the
temperature of the faena and cut an ear. He might have been better served
opting for the sword, over and above the prize of an ovation he received at the
end of the faena, the merit of the performance was in his ability to have
dominated a nervy bull. Moreover, the afternoon was further confirmation that
the improved torero we saw last year has returned in 2015.
The third sword this
afternoon was Diego Urdiales, a veteran torero with a strong core of supporers
who feel that he is unfairly marginalised by the system. While I will not be
the one arguing for the equity of the current mundillo, I feel that he receives
about the right amount of contracts; he is a very good torero, and Sevilla
should have certainly found a spot for him, but I think that he is firmly part
of the second tier and therefore a step below the leading toreros and figuras.
With the third bull he showed his positive qualities. The bull was mediocre,
but Urdiales was firm and performed an intense faena marked by his personal
aesthetic expression. Some of his individual passes an redondo were truly
beautiful, and the naturales a pies juntos with which he concluded the faena were
an attractive tip of the hat to toreo de frente. The faena was worth an ear,
but Urdiales lost this with poor sword work.
Urdiales opted for
some low genuflected test passes to begin his muleta work with the final bull.
The animal was strong enough to charge, but reticent to do so with vigour and
emotion. Urdiales’ only option, therefore, was to stand his ground and exert
his dominance and control over the bull. He managed some distinctive passes to
savour, but the faena, taken as a whole was inconsistent and un-motive because
of the bull’s condition. Urdiales’
performance this afternoon was encouraging, he was able to extract the little
that each of his bulls offered.
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