Olvera (España) (AFP)

Cape and sword in hand, the bullfighter Javier Conde trains again in the south of Spain but without bullfight on the horizon, the arenas being closed for months because of the pandemic.

No bullfight is for the moment announced in the country which started a cautious deconfinement, anxious to avoid a revival of the epidemic which caused more than 27,000 deaths.

In training, Conde faces cows, much less imposing and dangerous than the "toros bravos" of bullfights which can only be faced once.

"How well the little girl is doing!" He says of one of them, at the foot of a hill in the Andalusian town of Olvera.

In the small arena of the Montes de Oca breeding, the matador trains with Candido Ruiz, member of his "cuadrilla" (team), the young "novillera" Rocio Romero, young "torera" who still faces only young bulls and a "picador", a bullfighter on horseback whose role is to bite the bull.

For Conde, the situation "was very hard and very sad" while the bullfighting season, which ends in October, had to be stopped clearly from its start in March.

The 45-year-old matador, who has made inroads in the cinema in bullfighting roles and is married to a flamenco celebrity, the singer Estrella Morente, confides that he is "devoted to all kinds of things: I painted, i 've worked on a frame "while" thinking of toring at all times ".

"Many families are having a very bad time" in the bullfighting sector, he insists, reproaching the government for not announcing specific support measures for bullfighting which weighs, economically, more than 4 billion euros.

In the living room of his farm, under a bull's head hung on the wall, the breeder José Luis Sanchez hopes to see bullfights by July or August: "Otherwise, he says, it will be a disaster for breeders, bullfighters , celebrations..."

Rocio Romero wants to believe that "the worst is over" and that bullfighting will resume soon.

The president of the Union of breeders of combat bulls (UCTL), Antonio Bañuelos, recently estimated in the press that the current crisis was "the worst in the history of bullfighting", the revenues of the sector having collapsed and the future of farms being threatened if they can no longer sell their animals to the arenas.

© 2020 AFP