Heroism in the Maestranza

SEVILLE, Spain (By Paco Aguado, from EFE).— Victorino Martín’s long-awaited bullfight that took place yesterday at the Maestranza in Seville led to an afternoon full of emotions and very diverse results for the shortlist, between the gesture of Manuel Escribano, who left the infirmary to kill the sixth and cut off his ear, just as Borja Jiménez did with the third, to the failure of Roca Rey, who let the best bull of the afternoon go.

But the zenith moment came at the end, before the start of the sixth, when Escribano, who had been injured by his first, left the “rubber” to leave, without a jacket and wearing jeans instead of the torn satchel, once more to the pigsty door to receive that second of his lot, after the different turns of the fight had been run.

With the square plunged into absolute silence, after being accompanied on the way to the pigsties by the shouts of “bullfighter, bullfighter!”, the music band started a pasodoble in his honor, the happy notes of “Amparito Roca” and that flourish of clarinet that filled such a tragic moment of waiting with hope, with the bullfighter on his knees in front of the darkness of the pigsties. When he finally saved the attack with a graceful long one and prepared to beat Veronica with those nervous attacks from the start, the square was already a clamor, with the arena strewn with straw hats, as they say that used to happen in the middle of the great tasks. It will be, without a doubt, the most exciting and memorable moment of this April Fair.

Later, Escribano, who had been injured not very seriously doing exactly the same thing with his first one, even managed to banderillear, not without difficulties after the mishap, a bull that measured him a lot and that was torn off with a violence similar to that of the Gerena, based on endurance, ended up appeasing to cut off his ear with the flavor of a heroic victory in the Maestranza.

Borja Jiménez had previously walked another ear of the one that, in principle, appeared as the first bull in his lot, but which ended up being the second after having to stab the one that injured his countryman. He therefore killed three Victorinos of Espartinas and offered with each of them a different dimension.

With the one who started the fight, who jumped and had little distance, in addition to the sense of that right piton with which he injured Escribano with the cape, Jiménez stood firm, without ever getting upset, in a brief but meritorious task, getting more of what there was and without the public being able to value it.

And in that tone he was also with the fifth, the most accomplished of the “victorinada”, who took the deceptions at pace, almost asleep, to surprise the matador at the slightest doubt, which the Sevillian did not let happen, because based on With a certain tenacity, he even managed to make long, temperate passes before the animal refused.

Something else was about the third, another Cinqueño who seemed to be distressed behind the rods, but who rose towards a clear nobility with which Jiménez put more fiber than rest, mixing, somewhat anxiously, deep-stroke muletazos with other less temperate ones within some rounds that he always finished off gracefully and reaching some positions that cheered him on vigorously until the trophy was awarded.

The great disappointment of the afternoon was carried out by Roca Rey, the first figure of the moment who decided to fulfill the “deed” of announcing himself with “victorinos” in the Maestranza, although he finally ended up losing the bet. And not so much because of the doubts that he showed with his first, that he did not finish giving himself, but for so clearly wasting the brave quality of the one who came in fourth place. Only this Victorino, as his lineage dictates, did not want to be summoned with deception as a screen and at half height but with flights that would hook him as low as he requested to attack with rhythm and a long distance, which Roca, unaccustomed to, to these details, and it seems that he was not worried before assimilating them, he discovered at the very end of an insistent, but unsuccessful, effort to try to live up to the bet.