A human tide swayed Sebastián Castella through the Puerta Grande with the night in tow. It was 21.30 p.m. when a light cannon came out of it. He had come to Madrid with the grass in his mouth of his silent reappearance, chewing unconsummated glories from America to Spain. Dress in white and silver. He played Las Ventas, "his" square. And destiny, the fairies, the protective heaven that he kissed on his shoulders, wanted it precisely here that a bull of fable jumped in his hands. Which were silk and iron government, a conjunction of elements in which the wind also played. It was not easy to cram everything into the vessel of his wrists: the bravery, which really demanded an agonizing precision, and the gusts that whipped the crutch.

Castella, Le Coq reborn, transmuted of temperances and harmonies, gathered and vertical, very expensive in the stroke, curdled a huge task. Rociero, the bull of Jandilla made in the mold of perfection, that harmony crowned by the expression of its exact head, so flat, hid the rhythm of the race. Repetition on the crutch and to overflow on it.

SC also added the intelligence since it prolonged work with those statuary codilleros, smearing with the back and solving with a trench of poster. He immediately looked for the grounds of the "6" sheltered from Aeolus, among the stripes. In other climatic conditions theirs would have been the means, to raise the task out there. Like that opening of his legend with Jabatillo. But it was impossible, being already difficult under the sun. The series of round forehands climbed the lines, not all at once, but little by little. From the second round, an endless change of hand resulted. There were leads, very heavy uncles, who shouted "distance!", atavistic people anchored in the bravery of inertia. Rocíero's greatness lay in the fact that she started from scratch. To Castella in that moment of doubt on the left, impossible by the wind, all the neurons were connected with lucidity of figure: he withdrew a few meters, rearmed the right and released a sidereal fuss. The batch already enclaved the work in the heart of the square, which roared. But the roar would still be superior to the next of natural, when Sebastián Castella sublimated the bullfighting with an unattainable elegance and spaciousness, fused in such a way with the bull that the sculpture was of a piece. A shock in his reed waist. The extraordinary work continued along that channel with the incredulous crowd, standing, because they consider Castella brave and cold. And that was a fire of good bullfighting. He tangled in a yes but not with his mess that he solved at the stroke of his wrist. Like the brooch of manoletinas from which the last pearls fell. A lunge in style, by the same hole of the needles, and the madness unleashed, unanimous for the best work of the San Isidro fair (to date). The handkerchiefs in the air, the vocerío, the two ears, the Puerta Grande, sixth already of Sebastián. A cannon of light, white and silver, pierced it at 21.30 p.m.

He had premiered the bullfight of Jandilla, so consensual by the wind -Ides of May in this San Isidro that marcea-, a black bull, low, pale and frentudo, of strange trapío and morrillado until the congestion of the neck, which practically disappeared. And with it, humiliation. By sheer morphological incapacity. It was already noted in the cape of Sebastián Castella that he returned under a mantle to Madrid, where he has carved out a curriculum of respect: six Great Doors with this Friday of glory, being the matador with more ears cut in Madrid in this century. The bull threw his hands ahead also in the fabrics, the power counted. He did not lack, however. Sustained by its limited neck flexibility: if you don't give yourself down, you don't fall. Castella was focused on a work of infinite constancy from the flexible and loose opening doubloons, a resolute sheaf. He transcended hardly anything of the temperate plain of his doing. The lunge fell off, causing bloody vomiting.

Nothing for the bass with which José María Manzanares asaetó a bull that moved in the antipodes of the first. Not because of his measured power, but because of his formidable neck, his humiliation, the category of his face, so narrow of temples, which he placed since his appearance in flights. The virtues of the bull - fixity, promptness, eagerness to do well - predominated over the defect. Manzanares encountered a problem of heights, the conflict of Aeolus in some poorly chosen terrain [in the "1"] and, above all, his own lack of tact. The remarkable bull lost his hands more by the pulls than by his deficiencies. When JMM, already very advanced in the task, demanded him more fluidly within his robotic order, he answered the jandilla with background until the end. A pity. The fifth was soon defunded.

The weakest bull of the afternoon, the third, was also for the loosest bullfighter of the poster: Pablo Aguado. Which remained blurred with a very bleeding sixth.

You can buy tickets for the San Isidro Fair here.

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MONUMENTAL OF LAS VENTAS. Friday, May 19, 2023. Ninth fair. Full of "no tickets". Bulls of Jandilla and one of Vegahermosa (6th); serious, made, all Cuatreños; extraordinary the 4th; notable the 2nd; they highlighted those two on a set of scarce power and manageable and measured background, come to less; very bleeding the 6th.

SEBASTIÁN CASTELLA, in white and silver. Detached lunge (silence); Great lunge (two ears). Puerta Grande.

JOSÉ MARÍA MANZANARES, navy blue and gold. Low lunge (greetings); puncture and lunge (silence).

PABLO AGUADO, of Corinth and gold. Skillful half lunge (silence). In the sixth, four punctures and hairlessness (silence).

  • Bulls
  • José María Manzanares Jr.
  • Sebastian Castella
  • Articles Zabala de la Serna

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