An historic temporada (2025 Season Review Pt1)

Morante de la Puebla during Sevilla’s Feria de Abril

2025 will be viewed as an historic year for bullfighting, not only because it represented the peak (and possible end) of Morante de la Puebla’s career, but also because toreo’s popularity amongst the Spanish public was confirmed with record plaza attendances and TV viewing figures. In addition, a nonsensical proposal to get rid of bullfighting as an aspect of Spanish culture was defeated in the Congress of Deputies, giving rise to a willingness amongst both of Spain’s two main political parties to, at minimum, tolerate the spectacle.

Morante’s year

After the stop-go nature of his 2024 temporada and a winter largely spent in Portugal receiving treatment for the mental illness that has accompanied the matador for most of his adult life, 2025 began with doubts as to whether Morante de la Puebla could sustain a full season. With his Olivenza re-appearance rained off, the sevillano’s temporada began on March 29 at Almendralejo, Morante receiving pitos on his first bull and two ears on his second. After that, further salidas a hombros were very much the order of the day; Springtime triumphs came at Moralzarzal, Granada, Jerez, Ávila and Aranjuez, while he won three ears from three appearances in Sevilla’s Feria de Abril. June 8 brought his first-ever Puerta Grande triumph in Madrid, Morante cutting an ear from each of his juanpedros, while two ears and a tail were cut in Salamanca six days later. Móstoles, Granada, León and Estepona saw further triumphs and Morante cut two ears for the first time at Pamplona before his performances dipped for a while. Come August, he was triumphant again at El Puerto de Santa María (twice) and Marbella (another tail) before a goring at Pontevedra on August 10 laid him low until September. Don Benito, Navalcarnero, Almódovar del Campo, Úbeda and Zafra witnessed further strong performances before October 12 in Madrid, where he was awarded an ear in the morning festival and then two ears from his second garcigrande in the afternoon corrida, leading to a tearful removal of his coleta and a crowded departure out of Las Ventas’ Puerta Grande that was reminiscent of scenes from the ‘Edad de Oro’.

For most of the season, Morante displayed his singular toreo and the desire to succeed that has accompanied this artista since his ground-breaking temporada of 2022. His cornada and the cogidas that increased in frequency during the season’s second half reflected the effort he was putting into achieving close toreo and successful afternoons. Indeed, it became apparent during the year that he had become a bigger draw than Roca Rey, with crowds flocking to the bullrings to see him, perhaps in part because of worries his career was nearing its end.

It was typica of Morante’s reverence for taurine history that it was he who determined that a statue of Antonio Chenel Antoñete should be erected outside Las Ventas and that he then led in arranging the festival that secured the funds for this to take place. In addition to financing the statue, the festival ensured that a new generation could view the toreo of Curro Vázquez and César Rincón first hand - a great service to La Fiesta by the departing maestro, who will almost certainly have statues erected in his honour in the future.

Growing attendance figures

2025 was also historic for the growing numbers of abono holders in Spain’s major ferias; the increased spectator numbers in general at bullrings throughout the country; and the noticeable increase in attendance by young people. Madrid typified these national trends: for the first time, over one million people attended bullfights during the Las Ventas temporada; 18 corridas held there were ‘no hay billetes’ events - three times as many as in 2024; while the Feria de Otoño achieved the highest number of abonados in the last 15 years.

Televisión abierto

With the pay channel OneToro experiencing financial problems and failing to close out its promised coverage of the 2024 temporada, there were fears as 2025 commenced that television viewers would be unable to see the season’s major ferias. Indeed, Sevilla’s Feria de Abril was only witnessed by the spectators in La Maestranza. But Telemadrid’s decision to televise the whole of the Feria de San Isidro opened the door to greater availability of corridas on free television channels because, during the feria, it achieved a television audience of an average 127,000 spectators - its highest-ever figures for May - becoming the second most viewed channel in the capital when the corridas were transmitted. Its streaming figures that month broke records, too - 103 million minutes of video viewed, with the principal foreign markets being México, France, Portugal, Colombia, Perú and the USA.

Higher viewing figures bring in advertising, so, consequently, several public TV stations that had been lukewarm about showing corridas changed their approach. Aragón TV, who’d shared some of Telemadrid’s San Isidro transmissions and had experienced higher viewing as a result, was one of the first to announce more showings of corridas. Canal Sur upped its transmissions and successfully negotiated to show the whole of Sevilla’s Feria de San Miguel. The most noticeable about-turn occurred at the Valencian channel À Punt, which in June removed its opposition to showing bulfighting and began transmitting corridas from the present and the past.

The mundillo can be criticised for its failure to enter into television agreements for all the major ferias - Sevilla, Bilbao and Zaragoza were not shown at all, while only part of Pamplona’s San Fermín was transmitted - and it remains to be seen whether this trend of showing corridas on regional public free-to-view television (the state broadcaster RTVE continues to ignore los toros) will continue in 2026. But, certainly for viewers based abroad, access to the 2025 temporada was a lot better than anticipated while, in Spain, the transmission of corridas on free TV appeared to boost corrida attendance figures too.

A preservation of cultural identity

There were mixed messages about the corrida’s future in 2025. In Colombia, the final legal decision was taken to prohibit bullfights from 2027, while there was a worrying decision by Mexico City’s regional authority (backed by the national government) to effectively ban bullfighting in the capital. But in Spain, after years of tension and with a Minister of Culture keen to assist a public petition to remove bullfighting’s protection as a part of the country’s cultural heritage, the corrida ended the year in a stronger position than it’s been in for some considerable time. The petition was given time for parliamentary debate, but the ruling PSOE abstained from voting after an excellent speech from Maribel García López (see ‘A Final Political Act’), and this, together with Partido Popular’s voting against the proposal, meant that the petition progressed no further and Spain’s two main political parties supported maintaining bullfighting’s position as an important part of Spanish culture.