Bullfighting – heading for a famine?

Sergio Hueso

Bullfighting has once again fallen into the mistake that many of us feared and that, at this point, was almost predictable: to turn Morante de la Puebla back into one of the pillars on which to sustain a big part of the main ferias. Not only as an essential figure in the carteles, but as an almost indispensable attraction to sell them.

And here there is also an issue that the sector itself knows perfectly: egos. In an industry where too often what you do matters as much as being able to boast of having done it, no empresario seems to want to be left without Morante. There is a kind of silent competition to be able to say, “I also had him at my feria”. Not hiring him even comes to be interpreted, in certain quarters, as a business failure.

The problem is not to announce Morante. There’s more to it than this. The problem is to build the ferias around Morante. To make a good part of the commercial appeal of series depend on his name and turn it, from the first advertising poster to the final promotional campaign, into the main argument for going to the box office.

With the great cycles of the temporada already presented and a good part of them celebrated, we can begin to draw a worrying conclusion: one more year, and the opportunity to manufacture the future has been lost.

We continually repeat that there are only two truly blockbuster bullfighters: Morante and Roca Rey. And there is certainly much truth in this. What we rarely add is that the system itself is largely to blame for this being the case.

Because ferias don't just use these two on posters. They also make them practically the absolute centre of their communication and marketing campaigns. The result is elementary: the less specialized public ends up knowing what they are constantly taught.

Meanwhile, names such as Daniel Luque, David de Miranda, Diego Urdiales, Borja Jiménez or Víctor Hernández, among many others, continue to perform sufficiently well to occupy a level that they rarely receive outside strictly aficionado circles. And so it is impossible to create new box-office toreros.

If a feria is mainly promoted with Morante and Roca Rey, the occasional spectator will go to see Morante and Roca Rey. We cannot regret that the rest have no commercial pull when, for months, we have decided that, for the general public, they practically don’t exist.

The press also has an enormous responsibility in this equation. And it is worth saying it as a journalist. With Morante – with all due respect to an extraordinary figura – we’re capable of turning almost any circumstance into news. Meanwhile, performances of enormous merit starring other toreros too often pass fleetingly through the pages and screens.

There are, for example, Daniel Luque’s and David de Miranda’s performances in Bilbao - two faenas of enormous interest that didn’t reach anywhere near the echo that they would probably have had if other names had been involved. To this is added another burden that deserves its own chapter: television that has not been where el toreo needed it to be, so the media impact is even less.

There are small decisions that, when accumulated, end up building a wall. Empresas are demanding new names capable of filling positions, but the sector itself makes it difficult for those names to become established commercially.

Morante must be there. Roca Rey must be there. The figuras must occupy the positions they have earned. The question is what we do while they are there.

Because Morante will not last forever. No bullfighter does. And this season, he once again shows signs of logical wear and tear after so many years of enduring enormous pressure. Roca Rey, for his part, has also spoken on several occasions about the gigantic level of demand that accompanies his career.

In a year, three or five, there will come a time when no one can carry a good part of the box office of this business on their shoulders. And then what? That is the real problem.

For too long, bullfighting has been eating the seeds it should be planting. It enjoys the names that can fill plazas today while devoting very few resources to turning those who come after them into the names that can fill plazas tomorrow.

Talent exists. A lot. There are toreros ready to make that leap, but figuras are not built just inside the ring. They need triumphs, of course, but also storytelling, promotion, presence, television, communication and continuity. They need a situation where the extraordinary things they achieve on any given Tuesday do not disappear on Wednesday under 20 news stories about the same old protagonists.

Because if, one day, the two great current commercial attractions were to be missing simultaneously [as occurred briefly in 2025 – TW], bullfighting could suddenly discover something quite uncomfortable: that it spent years looking for substitutes without having spent time manufacturing them. Bread for today and hunger tomorrow.

[This is a translation of an article originally published by burladero.tv under the title ‘El toreo se está comiendo las semillas’. - TW]