Morante’s unsurprising Pontevedra cornada
Morante after his initial treatment for the goring (image from www.aplausos.es)
On August 10 in Pontevedra, while giving a pase de pecho in the centre of the arena to his first Garcigrande bull of the afternoon, Morante de la Puebla was hooked up in the air, the bull’s right horn piercing the matador’s right leg. The cornada grave left two trajectories of 6 and 10cm., damaging an abductor muscle. Although this has been a memorable, historic temporada for the sevillano, news of the goring did not come as a surprise to many seasoned onlookers.
There are phases when a matador is likely to receive injuries and Morante was going through one of them. Sometimes cornadas occur when a matador has had a series of magnificent performances, where his level of confidence is such that he feels invincible, as if nothing bad could happen to him. This was the case with Daniel Luque’s terrible cornada at El Puerto de Santa María in 2023. On other occasions, a matador can be toreando at the limit of safety, receiving one warning after another until a more significant percance occurs. A look at Morante de la Puebla’s performances in the month leading up to his Pontevedra appearance shows this latter sequence of events and that the writing was on the wall.
In the 11 corridas he took part in following his two-ear afternoon at Pamplona on July 9, Morante was caught on no less than five occasions, the last of these at Pontevedra.
At Roquetas de Mar on July 20, a jandilla tossed Morante during a chest pass. Three days later at Santander, the susto could have had a serious ending. While Morante was attempting a series of chatitas - a chicuelina-like pass in which half the capote is kept in front of the torero’s body and the bull’s charge is diverted by a simple, short, outward flick of the other half of the cloth - his Domingo Hernández opponent came straight on, knocking Morante off his feet with a blow to the chest, which was very nearly a blow to the head. Morante got up and continued toreando as it nothing had happened.
Corridas at Azpeitia, Huelva, El Puerto de Santa María and Palma de Mallorca passed without incident, but then came three successive days of percances.
On his triumphal evening of August 8 at Marbella, when he was awarded the two ears and tail of his second Garcigrande bull, Morante was caught once more by that same animal. Mundotoro.com described the circumstances as follows: “With absolute abandonment and a dedication beyond any human limit, Morante de la Puebla achieved his umpteenth work of completeness in his historic season. He crossed reason to such an extent that, in one of those encounters, the bull caught him with its horn and violently flipped him from horn to horn”. Once Morante was on the ground, the bull was caped away. The matador then resumed the faena, bringing off a superb series of derechazos before the estocada. After the corrida, it was confirmed that Morante had a cut to the right side of his head and a bruised right hip.
The following day, at El Puerto de Santa María, Morante, after cutting two ears from his first Núñez del Cuvillo bull, opted to meet his second with similar lances to those he had given at Santander, albeit this time to an animal with a short and rapid charge. The matador ended up in a tight area between the bull and the barrera and, in seeking to extract himself, lost his balance and fell to the ground, the bull running over him. He was fortunate to escape injury.
The next day, his Pontevedra goring happened. After a brief hospital visit (it was said by the people accompanying him that a stay there could worsen his health issue - presumably referring to the matador’s mental health), Morante spent the night at his Pontevedra hotel before leaving for Portugal and further treatment. The doctors reckoned Morante could be out of action for up to a fortnight, which would put his appearances at Málaga and Bilbao in doubt, although toreros often recover from injuries sooner than the medics forecast.