That first aviso

Carlos Bueno

There are activities that, little by little, end up becoming the norm without us even noticing. One of them is the excessive duration of the faena de muleta. What a few decades ago was an exception today seems common: that the first aviso sounds while the matador continues to torear as if time did not exist.

There was a time when hearing an aviso was a source of disgust for any torero. It meant that the work had taken longer than necessary; that the diestro had not known how to measure the time; or that his estocada was insufficient. It was not viewed well. It was a demerit, a mistake. Today, however, we too often witness a very different scenario. The first aviso has been normalized to the point that, on many occasions, it arrives when the torero has not even profiled to enter to kill.

The reasons can be diverse, but the result is usually the same. Faenas that, after a promising first half, enter an unnecessary extension looking for a final arrimón with which to excite the tendidos based on being close to the bull, desplantes and alardes. These are legitimate resources when they are born of inspiration, but they lose a good part of their impact when they serve to artificially prolong a task that has already said everything it had to say.

Too often, that excess is intended to make up for an intensity that's been lacking from the start. Excitement is sought by accumulation, when true emotion is born from authenticity. And authenticity does not depend on the number of muletazos, but on the truth and depth with which they are executed.

We all keep in our memory short, compact and complete faenas by Juan Mora or Luis Francisco Esplá, rewarded with both ears and without the need to eternalize preparing the bull for the kill - performances with few muleta passes, but of enormous content. For, when a task reaches its peak, prolonging it only dilutes its impact.

The teachings of the unforgettable Antonio Chenel Antoñete also resonate with full validity. His philosophy was as simple as it was wise: "There are faenas that last four minutes and too many that last ten. But in no great faena are there more than twenty perfect muletazos." A sentence that encompasses a complete conception of bullfighting - knowing when to start, when to climax and, above all, when to end. That ability to measure the time is as much part of the art of bullfighting as temple, mando or good taste.

Perhaps the time has come to recover this culture of creation. It is not a matter of systematically performing short faenas, but rather of doing them completely. And a faena is complete when it has expressed everything that the bull and the bullfighter could offer, not when the stopwatch exhausts the regulatory limit.

Because the matador should never confuse quality with quantity. The greatness of a work is not measured by the minutes it lasts, but by the residue it leaves. After all, what remains in the memory of the aficionado is not how many muleta passes there were, but how many of them were truly unforgettable. And that emotion, the emotion that arises from being convinced, has never needed excess to make it happen.

[This is a translation of an article originally published by burladero.tv under the title ‘La emoción no entiende de excesos‘. - TW]