Ginés Marín - under the stopwatch’s long shadow

José Miguel Arruego

Ginés Marín

Aside from the excuses in the form of a romería or meteorological instability, Sunday’s La Magdalena afternoon left us with a lesson of crude evidence in the tendidos. First and foremost, youth, no matter how thriving it may be, still lacks the necessary magnetism to sustain the weight of the box office on its own. And second, that grouping the new matadors as the sole story-line is, in the end, to condemn them to isolation.

The future of this spectacle is not built in ghettos of foolishness, but in the shelter of consecrated figuras, in that necessary generational change that only flourishes when masters and aspirants share the same arena. In other words, it’s a matter of seeking a balance between veterans and newcomers so that the proposition brings freshness to the combinations and not that mixture of redundancy and monotony that capitalizes on ferias and abonos. And this is not just the work of the empresarios.

But, if we stick to what happened in the arena of the Pérez Galdós bullring, in addition to the lack of drive of the string of La Quinta bulls and the attitude and determination with the cárdenos of Aarón Palacio, who exchanged two severe volteretas for an ear, the afternoon gave us a revelatory performance by Ginés Marín, which, despite not being a resounding triumph, had the virtue of reconciling the most disparate sensitivities.

He was already impeccable with his first bull, noble and with little transmission, which he embroidered with a quite of tafalleras, performed with slowness and rhythm. But it was in the fourth where he showed his virtues most strongly. First, because of how he caressed the charge of the santacoloma, without a sudden jerk of the cloth or a toque at the wrong time that would have taken Conradi's animal out of its path, and then, because of the smoothness with which he moved the lure, the time he gave the animal between one pass and another, the way he ‘filled the scene’ in the naturales de frente or closed with the ayudados por bajo that oozed southern aromas.

His resolute facility has often acted against him, as his toreo, with a clear caminista influence, has been branded as cold and lacking in individuality. That is perhaps why his triumphs were not lauded, no matter how important they were. And yet, Sunday’s solitary ear in Castellón has aroused an unusual interest in seeing him again, just now that he has been left out of the remainder of the calendar’s initial ferias.

The feeling of sediment and maturity that he left in the city on the plain contrasted with the stimulating urgency of Aarón Palacio. A stark cry of someone who wants to claw open a path for himself. Perhaps Ginés recognized himself of a decade earlier in the aragonés. Because his way of triumphing is equally legitimate. Necessary. Admirable, even. Even if the toreo you store on your hard drive is different.

Ginés is screwed. Because his situation is, from the outset, a puzzle that is difficult to resolve. He lives in that no man's land where youth is fading but the system still refuses to grant him the stripes of seniority - a paradox that in May he will celebrate 10 years of alternativa. Nor does he have the protective plating of an unchallengeable bullfighter, although his solvency and his service record are solid arguments for not allowing himself to be banished to the more thankless festejos.

The active aficionado has Ginés well positioned: he knows of his resounding triumphs and his constant presence in the abonos. However, for the occasional public, those who do not follow the day-to-day occurrences in the specialist media, the extremeño is a well-educated unknown, a name that does not end up entering the collective imagination and lives under the long shadow of the stopwatch.

There are similar cases. For example, Álvaro Lorenzo, someone else who will soon commemorate a decade in the upper escalafón. A few days ago, I saw a video of him on social networks. Another bullfighter of that generation that flourished when bullfighting had already ceased to be part of society, who have already shown that they know how to torear, but are now capable of reaching victory by a path with a superior message.

In addition to the figuras, the de luxe veterans who open carteles and the newcomers to complete the combinations, there is a group of bullfighters who have found their point of maturity now that the watch hands play against them. It would be a shame to let them go.

[This is a translation of an opinion piece published by cultoro.es under the title ‘Bajo la sombra alargada del cronómetro’. - TW]