It was the afternoon of almost. Of the good bulls without endings. Of a bullfighter without legal justice and of another with blood and fire. It was the day of the bulls of Algarra, Espada and, above all, of Román. That fitted bayonet the waves of a beast of Montalvo with a boiler in its bowels. He tore off an ear still with the trembling of war in his eyes.

The sun had appeared for a moment, not luck for El Payo, at the dawn to project the vast shadow of the bull of Algarra, so congested neck, made in block ahead, a seriousness of complicated humiliation. It gave him more rhythm than his reserved condition in his right hand provided. That conquered the most chanted round. He weighed the bull on the crutch, manageable in his meager eagerness; Unfeasible by the left, so ignorant. The elegant Mexican – almost unprecedented later with the fragile room of Montalvo – reached the brightness of a beautiful pass of contempt between the resolution of the veteran.

That bull was the first of the three consecutive cinqueños of the patched bullfight, the worst without being all bad. A chestnut of more flexible appearance, with more neck, the rag of the turned pythons, touched above, took out a good son. Also the power counted. The excellent class. Roman opted for the distance that is the mirage of bravery. And so the bull on the first crutch of each series passed. But where he did really well was in the second and third, in that embroque of wonder. Which was when Roman toreó adjusting to the tempo of the onslaught. Necessarily short series that remained on the frontier of good. Like drive and power. He repeated the cheerful scheme with the 25 onslaughts faces of Algarra. And he killed him by right.

The workings of the third, his expression, his generous neck, the way of placing his harmonious and respectable face, predicted a promising game. As it was. When it settled, it was seen. In the chicuelinas of El Payo in his turn of quites, he felt as much as later in the fight of Cancelas. Francisco José Espada prefaced the work by statuaries and released his hand behind his back, a resource that would be repeated. Basically he also played with distance, he met in temperate series of good tone that the immense chest passes raised. The bull did not last long, which already in the last proposal on his left was bored. He lifted Espada's spirits with the intelligence that adorned his task and buried an unappealable lunge at the top. An overwhelming petition crashed into the box dock. That he looked away.

From the robbery we went to a give-and-take task of Román Collado with a very deep bull - Montalvo patch, a Garcigrande drip in the face - that moved like a truck with no one at the wheel. A very crazy and messy thing, with a lot of motor and sometimes humiliation. The Valencian, with the face of a dog, played not infrequently the horn. The more he hooked ahead the more he ruled. Tremendous the gresca. Like the manoletinas and the ear.

At the end Francisco José Espada wanted to overcome the injustice attacking in a spout with a sixth, from Algarra, less finished. He wrote down exciting notes. On his knees he started work in extraordinary rounds. But standing he found that the bull did not give as much or last as expected. He always looked for the opposite python, and in one of the times the bull surprised him, turning him over. He got up in pain, perhaps wounded in the back of his thigh. He could not sign with the Espada steel.

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Token

SALES Wednesday, May 23, 2023. Thirteenth fair. Three-quarter entrance. Bulls of Algarra and two of Montalvo (4th and 5th); three Cinqueños (1st, 2nd and 3rd); serious in their different finishes and workmanship.

EL PAYO, Turkey blue and gold. Lunge (silence); puncture, half pierced and hairless. Warning (silence).

ROMAN, OF lead grey and gold. Contrary lunge (greetings); lunge (ear).

FRANCISCO JOSÉ ESPADA, navy blue and gold. Lunge (request and return); puncture, lunge fall and lunge. Notice (farewell ovation)

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