«I like women more than anything: that is known to shut up; as if I did not fight more than for men, I would have cut my ponytail . Sometimes, on those fatal afternoons that one has, when almost with the tears shed, the tackles of killing are left and one takes refuge in the barrier, when returning the face to the laying, in the middle of the hostility of those who shout, they stumble our eyes with the pretty eyes of a gachí who, with the caress of his compassionate gaze, wants to comfort us. This has happened to me sometimes, and then I have gone to the bull, like a jabato, with the cape, and encouraged by the heat of the eyes of the unknown and I have raised the public doing everything I knew and something else. Gypsy eyes send a lot of fluid ».

It was the confession that José Gómez Ortega, Joselito or Gallito , made, just before he died, just now a century ago, in the Plaza de Talavera de la Reina, to the journalist José María Carretero, which he published under the signature of El Caballero Audaz . Also this one: «Despite my few years, I feel within me the emotion of home life: a life in the country, working a pasture, of meek cattle, of course, and without losing a bullfight as viewer. That is the idea that, as the supreme joy of my life, I caress for the future.

He was barely 25 years old, but the combative Joselito was already thinking of smoothing the sullen frown of war in the arena. As Shakespeare wrote, he cherished the idea of ​​"instead of riding armed steeds to intimidate the souls of fearful adversaries, to make agile pranks in a lady's room to the lascivious invitation of a lute." But who was the lady of that future truncated in Talavera by a bull named Bailaor . The daughter of the farmer Felipe de Pablo Romero: the beautiful Guadalupe.

« I am in love with the daughter of a popular Sevillian farmer and I am going to marry her . Within a couple of seasons, I retire. And I'm going to do it as Guerrita: at the Pilar fair in Zaragoza, which I love so much, and by surprise ». The clarines of that Pilar fair never rang for Joselito. Of course, he didn't even see Guadalupe dressed as a bride. The young woman's family, belonging to the Sevillian aristocracy, did not approve of this love with the bullfighter of Gelves. «How is my daughter going to marry a gypsy?» Felipe de Pablo Romero once said. And Joselito, who had tempted many times in that house, lamented to his closest friends: «He used to call me son, and now gypsy».

In any case, being the son of a payo and a gypsy woman was not what prevented that wedding, but the tragic and unexpected death of the bullfighter in 1920. Not surprisingly, Joselito came to give Guadalupe a bull in the bullring of Bilbao , feeding the correveidile of the entire audience. She never married and died octogenarian in the Sevillian neighborhood of Los Remedios in 1983. In her will she asked for flowers to never be missing in the grave of her beloved Joseph, crowned by the impressive funerary monument of Mariano Benlliure.

Manuel Barrios, in his book The sacristan of the devil: magical life of Fernando Villalón, reproduces texts from the time that narrated the burial of the Rooster: «At the end of the Paseo del Duque, a woman in mourning, young and beautiful (probably Guadalupe de Pablo Romero who until the last day of her life brought flowers to Joseph's grave), with her eyes ravaged in tears, she gave a shout of Joselito !, and several friends withdrew her from the sidewalk ».

Four bitter men had Joselito sewn to their throats the afternoon he fell before Bailao r: the death of his mother, Mrs. Gabriela; the war with the teachers on account of the Monumental square; the harshness with the press, which in that 1920 season was tougher than ever, especially Gregorio Corrochano; and, above all, his impossible love for Guadalupe.

The connoisseurs of the figure of Gallito , such as Luis Uriarte, who had already been mortally wounded in Talavera on the afternoon of May 16 say: «I was thinking of retiring in a couple of years at most, because if big, very big, it was his fond of bulls, the greater was the love inclination that throbbed in his chest. A bloody grenade came to thunder in bloom the illusions of the unfortunate fighter. Sad fate! »

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