Forty-two Bilbao bulls
The season ticket with the oldest tradition of the Spanish season returns to the scene, with Morante, El Juli and Roca Rey in the leading role
The General Bullfights of Bilbao, with the prologue of one of rejones, are going to be seven this time and not eight. The reduction tries to be compensated with the inclusion of a bullfight on Monday. Compared to 2019, substantive changes are detected in the bull program. The most striking are two: the fall of Victorino Martín, who then threw six bulls of extraordinary seriousness, and the virtual return, after twenty years, of a rancher as vocational and radical as Dolores Aguirre.
The name and personality of Dolores are a hallmark of classic Bilbao, an icon, the pride of the country’s fans. Seven years after the death of Dolores, the cattle ranch, in the hands of her daughter María Isabel Lipperheide, maintains its reason and its principles intact: the Atanasio-Conde de la Corte mating in purity, the guarantee of the complete bull, trapío and formidable presence , the makings of the Bilbao bull par excellence.
Of the eight herds of 2019, only three survive in the program: Miura, Victoriano del Río and the Garcigrande-Domingo Hernández binomial, then played in a single trick, but split and separately on this occasion. In addition to Victorino, Torrestrella, Zalduendo, Fuente Ymbro and Jandilla have been left out of the competition. One salvation: from Jandilla was the discreet bullfight at the reopening of Vista Alegre last June. The three replacement and refreshment places have been awarded to Dolores Aguirre, Puerto de San Lorenzo and Santiago Domecq, who is making his debut in Bilbao. The bulls of the Port, traditional in the subscription, return five years later and assigned on a good date, a festive Friday, to an unprecedented triplet: Morante, Paco Ureña and Roca Rey. The surprise poster of the week.
Morante has renounced the role of essential in Bilbao, but without ceasing to be. Roca Rey, which has been packed for a month of August, is, together with El Juli, the base or the main hook of the fair. The two alternate in the bullfight on Thursday with bulls from Victoriano del Río. The heart and meat of the General Bullfights are the three major dates of the week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The afternoons when El Juli and Roca Rey double, and the sweet and spicy icing of Morante. The launch of Tomás Rufo in Bilbao, with the usual sponsorship of El Juli in the bullfight of Domingo Hernández, is one of the biggest claims of the week.
Absence of Diego Urdiales
In addition to the absence of Emilio de Justo due to a force majeure, and the absence of a bullfighter as in a state of grace as Daniel Luque, Diego Urdiales has been dropped for unknown reasons of bullfighting politics. Diego’s track record in Bilbao over the last decade is unparalleled. Here he has signed anthological works, from his private collection. According to a set phrase, Bilbao is his square.
It is different for Paco Ureña, recognized as the undisputed winner of the 2019 edition with two excellent bulls from Jandilla. There is a particular category of, let’s say, ‘Bilbao bullfighters’, favorites of the two great bullfighting clubs of the Villa, El Cocherito and Bilbao. It was Ivan Fandiño. They are Urdiales and Ureña. Ponce has been beyond the distinctions of the two clubs. And in the same, and more popular than any, it continues to be El Juli, who exactly twenty years ago killed the bullfights of Victorino, Javier Pérez Tabernero and Torrestrella on three consecutive afternoons of subscription. With critical and public success.
There are nineteen matadors announced this year in the season ticket. One less than in 2019. Nine novelties, who knows about them caused by the casualties of Diego Urdiales and Emilio de Justo. Morante, Perera, Luis Bolívar, Talavante and Saúl Fortes, who took the alternative for granted in Bilbao once years ago, are retaken. They are the newcomers Damián Castaño, Ángel Téllez, Tomás Rufo and Leo Valadez. In addition to El Juli and Roca Rey, who due to convalescing from a serious injury could not fight in the year 19, Román, Ginés Marín, Ureña, Ferrera, Manzanares, José Garrido, López Chaves and Manuel Escribano repeat. Dolores Aguirre opens the parade on the third Sunday of August. She closes it Miura seven days later. She will see later if he is bull all that glitters. Bull of Bilbao, she understands.
Electronic panel with the name of the banderilleros
The Vista Alegre bullring opens this year an electronic light panel or indicator, in which the characteristics and the name of the bulls that come out to the arena will be announced to the spectators, as well as the name of the pickers and rehileteros when they are in the luck of varas and banderilla. And it is to be assumed that other details that may be of interest in terms of bull returns, unforeseen setbacks, substitutions, gorings, nursing…
The detail, proposed so many times, deserves a standing ovation and should be required in the first, second… and even in some third places with a certain prestige and high capacity for ‘clients’. The ‘artifact’ has already been released in the June bullfight that inaugurated the Bilbao season and it is the third bullfighting arena in Spain that enjoys this service, with Zaragoza and Pamplona.