Valladolid, September 13: Profound toreo with victorinos

Today’s somewhat unusual cartel - José Ignacio Uceda Leal, Fortes and Tomás Rufo with bulls of Victorino Martín - had a lot to commend it and it lived up to my hopes for the afternoon.

Uceda Leal hadn’t appeared here in Valladolid for 15 years and I hadn’t seen him for a similar amount of time. He had a total of five corridas in the 2024 temporada, winning two ears at his closing corrida at Yelpes. This year has been more successful, with an ear cut in Madrid’s Las Ventas on May 18, an exit on shoulders at Moraleja (Cáceres) on July 13 and a further ear won at Cuenca on August 25.

The tall 48-year-old drew a weak victorino to start with, giving it some initial verónicas before drawing it to the centre of the arena and closing with a rough media verónica. Falling before its sole vara, the animal didn’t appear strong enough for a quite, but showed its ability to turn quickly early in the faena, nearly catching Uceda Leal in a sequence of half-kneeling muletazos. Thereafter, the faena was conducted almost entirely on the bull’s better left horn, the veteran procuring excellent, templados, naturales, lengthening the bull’s charges, albeit with variety in the distance between matador and bull. The estocada was superb and led to the award of an ear, while the bull was dragged out to unmerited applause.

After giving his second bull a couple of verónicas and a nice media and seeing it receive a light puyazo, Uceda Leal produced another fine exhibition of sober toreo castellano in the faena, beginning with some elegant doblones. This time, each hand was employed with the muleta, the passes complete and templados, until the matador was caught on the bull’s horns. Emerging from the susto unscathed, José Ignacio recovered for a lovely series of derechazos and a chest pass. A pinchazo was followed by a bajonazo, but the good people of Valladolid chose to ignore this and successfully petitioned for a further oreja.

Saúl Jiménez Fortes, sporting a plaster and abrasions on his face, presumably from his cogida at Albacete five days earlier, gave just one clean verónica to his opening victorino but followed that with a faena very similar to Uceda Leal’s first, but with naturales closer to the bull and with the cloth held lower. His opponent was trickier, too, proving difficult to bring forward and receiving pitos en arrastre. After a strong estocada, an ear was on the cards, but three attempts with the descabello resulted in an aviso, ovación and saludos.

The stylish capework to his other victorino was limited to one opening verónica. Raúl Ruiz won applause for his banderillas. Now without the face plaster and retaining his montera, Fortes set about establishing another faena of profound, classic passes, mainly derechazos, not helped by a hesitant bull that proved difficult to bring forward. The faena was consequently a long one. It ended with some positioning close to the bull and an estocada caída, with a majority of the crowd sufficiently appreciative of Fortes’ work all afternoon to win him an ear.

Tomás Rufo drew the lightest and heaviest victorinos of the afternoon at 473 and 579 kilos respectively. The former, ‘Porteño’, was whistled for its appearance on its entry to the plaza but departed with a vuelta en arrastre.

This was the second of the toledano’s ‘gestures’ with victorinos this season. His first, during Dax’s main feria, had not been a success, at least one critic saying that Rufo had let the good qualities of the animals in front of him go by; Onetoro, recording summaries of each Dax corrida, had not shown a single Rufo muletazo! For his part, Tomás described his French appearance as “a day in which I learnt a lot. There are afternoons when you don’t have a solid triumph, but you take away many lessons […] I can say that what occurred in Dax has made me mark out Valladolid in red because of what I’ve learned, and the need and wish to triumph will be clear that afternoon.”

They certainly were, beginning with an exquisite series of verónicas a compás and con pies juntos to ‘Porteño’, closed with a media verónica and followed by a quite of close and slow delantales, ending with another media. Uceda Leal took advantage of a second puyazo (the bull having earlier charged the picador of its own volition) and ‘Porteño’’s clear qualities for a short quite of verónicas and a cheered media. Andrés Revuelta and Fernando Sánchez won merited applause for their tercio de banderillas. After dedicating to the public, Rufo embarked on a superb faena, beginning with doblones and passes from on one knee and then moving on to giving the slowest and most curving naturales of the afternoon, ‘Porteño’ maintaining its strong charge. Tomás closed the faena with a series of derechazos sin ayuda and a committed estocada to win two ears.

A similar level of determination was shown with the final victorino, caped by Rufo to the centre of the arena, where he left it with a well-timed revolera. ‘Hechichero’ received a lengthy vara before Tomás gave a single lance quite and Sergio Blasco was applauded for his banderillas. There followed another excellent Rufo faena, the naturales being particularly strong, and this bull being more of an exigente victorino compared to Tomás’s first, which had behaved more like the matador’s usual fare. The animal was killed with a deep media estocada, the muleta left draped over the sword’s hilt, and Tomás was awarded his third ear of the corrida before he and Uceda Leal left on shoulders.

I’ve seen three such ‘gestures’ this year, all with victorinos. In Sevilla, Daniel Luque did not have the animals for a triumph; in Santander, a careful Andrés Roca Rey performed well, but not in the style his followers wished to see. Here at Valladolid, Tomás Rufo had proved he could triumph with victorinos as well as any other bull.