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| Monument to Bullfighter |
Pedro Romero did not "invent" bullfighting.
The origins of Andalucía's strange, cruel, compelling ritual
are lost in time, and are almost certainly rooted in some forgotten
rite of passage of the shadowy, mysterious Celtiberians who peopled
the peninsula centuries before the coming of the Romans.
What form the ritual took is now impossible to say,
but it was during the Visigothic era around the 5th Century AD that
the taunting of bulls by young men out to prove their courage, or
their profound stupidity, began to assume the aspects of a formalised
spectacle. The men would subject the animals to humiliating taunts
and leap or somersault over them when they charged. Oddly, many
of these elements survive in the Portuguese style of bullfighting,
in which bulls suffer far greater humiliation than in Spanish rings,
but which is often cited as "more civilised" than the
Spanish style, because the animals are not killed in view of the
public.
The Moors, who prided themselves on their horsemanship,
developed the style now known as "rejoneando".
A rider, invariably a nobleman, would confront the bull, using a
lance called a "rejón". In this version,
the men on foot were reduced to mere ciphers whose function was
to direct the bulls towards their mounted masters. "Rejonear"
became a sensation. Throughout Spain crumbling old Roman amphitheatres
were suddenly in great demand as settings for the spectacle. Small
towns and villages which had no suitable sites threw up makeshift
arenas either in fields beyond the town boundary, or increasingly
in the town square, or plaza. This custom would eventually give
the name Plaza de Toros to every bullring in Spain.
Bullfighting remained largely a noble prerogative
until the 18th Century, when Philip V, who must surely have had
a dash of English blood in his veins, denounced it as barbarous
and determined to put a stop to it. Although the Catholic church
was among the most prominent breeders of fighting bulls in Spain,
the squeamish king succeeded in attracting the support of a compliant
Pope in his crusade. A decree was issued that threatened excommunication
to any nobleman who persisted in the practice. Faced with this,
the gentry increasingly stepped aside in favour of a new breed of
low-born professionals who did the fighting for them.
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Aerial view of bullring
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Which brings us almost, but not quite, to Pedro
Romero, for though his is undoubtedly the most celebrated name in
the history of the corrida, he was not the first member of his family
to grace the ring. His grandfather, Francisco, born in Ronda in
1698, was a great innovator. It was he who introduced, among other
things, the muleta. It had become traditional for matadors to carry
a short cloak over their left arms. Francisco Romero found this
cumbersome, and draped his instead over a stick. The greatest inventions
are invariably blindingly obvious in retrospect. Romero's innovations
soon became known as the "Ronda school" to distinguish
them from the "Seville school" which had been the dominant
style before he exploded onto the scene.
Francisco's son, Juan, was if anything even more
innovative than his father. It was he who developed the concept
of the "cuadrilla", or bullfighting team. He also
introduced the "estoque" (the sword specifically
designed to despatch the bull), the "banderilleros",
and the assistant known as the "cachetero" who
delivers the coup de grace to the dying bull with a short dagger.
Incredibly, considering his choice of profession,
Juan Romero lived to be 102, and fathered three sons - Juan, Gaspar,
José - and one legend - Pedro.
Though, as we have seen, Pedro Romero was not so
innovative in practical details as his father and grandfather, he
was revolutionary in an altogether more fundamental way. He is considered
the first matador to truly conceive of the bullfight as an art and
a skill in its own right, and not simply as a clownishly macho preamble
to the bull's slaughter. He had great rivals, notably Joaqín
Rodríguez "Costillares", and the Sevillian
Pepe Hillo, but Pedro Romero unquestionably outshone them all. He
set standards and rules for the corrida which persist to this day.
Ironically, late in his long life, Romero was appointed
head of the bullfighting school in Seville. They say that in front
of a cheering crowd he killed several bulls in Madrid at the age
of eighty, and that in his time he killed over 6000 bulls in the
ring without ever being gored. We may safely assume that much of
what was later written and said about him includes a fair dash of
tale-teller's licence, but there can be little doubt of his lasting
impact both on the art of bullfighting, and the fortunes of his
home town. He died in Ronda on February 10th 1839.
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