Bulls Luis Miguel Dominguín: the hatred with which Miguel Bosé grew up because of his mother
Opinion The Plaza de Las Ventas in Madrid, much more than bulls
This Thursday, June 17, one of the most emblematic monuments of Madrid turns 90: the Plaza de Las Ventas, nicknamed
the cathedral of bullfighting
, through whose lines
world personalities from politics, cinema, literature or business
have paraded
.
The old saying "bulls are neither left nor right" is strictly fulfilled in Las Ventas, since Ernesto
Che
Guevara, the mythical leader of the Cuban revolution, in September 1959, during the Franco regime,
occupied a barrier next to a group of comrades
, dressed in their rebel army uniform and black beret on their heads. Years earlier, in October 1940, it was
Heinrich Himmler
, Hitler's right-hand man and founder of the SS, who
He witnessed a bullfight
in Las Ventas together with the Foreign Minister, Serrano Suñer. He came to Spain to organize the famous interview of the Fuhrer with Franco in Hendaye and to pay tribute to him,
that afternoon the swastika was stamped on the posters
and the right-handers
Marcial Lalanda
,
Gallito
and
Pepe Luis Vázquez
were
forced to do the Nazi salute
. The bullfight was suspended in the middle by the rain, fortunately for the architect of the Jewish genocide, who got dizzy, assuring that it was
"a cruel spectacle."
The Monumental de Las Ventas
was inaugurated on June 17, 1931
, two months after the Second Republic was proclaimed, with a
run for the benefit of the unemployed workers
organized by the socialist mayor Pedro Rico, which was attended by President
Niceto Alcalá Zamora
. Its predecessor was the Goya bullring, located on the land that is now occupied by the Wizink Center. Las Ventas, in the neo-Mudejar style, was
designed by the architect José Espeliu
, advised by the right-handed Joselito
El Gallo
before he was killed by a bull in Talavera, and completed by Manuel Muñoz Monasterio, architect of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium. In this stage, masters such as
Juan Belmonte, or Marcial Lalanda
exhibited their bullfighting there.
and
Domingo Ortega
, whose rivalry led to the prohibition of music during the tasks, since one afternoon the supporters of both faced a violent fight because
Ortega did not have a pasodoble.
Franco greets Manolete before a bullfight, in 1946.EFE
From the 40s, after the Civil War, there was a boom in the festival and the Monumental was the scene of
unforgettable tasks by Manolete
, who made his last walk in Madrid on July 16, 1947, weeks before his fatal capture in Linares.
That afternoon, his second bull, from Bohorquez, wounded him in the leg but the matador continued to fight with blood running down his calf.
After his death, it was the turn of the haughty Luis Miguel Dominguín, who messed up a scandal in 1949 in Las Ventas when he came to the center of the ring and
raised his index finger to the sky proclaiming himself number 1 in bullfighting.
Orson Welles, in a laying of Las Ventas, in the 50's. EFE
In the 1950s, thanks to Franco's good relations with the US government, Spain became a Hollywood branch due to the number of films that were shot. Stars such as
Ava Gardner, Gina Lollobrigida
,
John Wayne, Sofia Loren
, the filmmaker
Orson Welles
, or the writer
Ernest Hemingway
passed through Madrid.
, many of them regulars of Las Ventas, especially Ava, who had a passionate love affair with Luis Miguel.
They say that after his first night of love in a suite at the Castellana Hilton, the bullfighter hurriedly left the room, and when Ava asked him where he was going, he replied: "Let's tell it."
Dominguín ended up marrying another star, the Italian Lucía Bosé, and their rivalry in the squares continued with Antonio Ordóñez,
Fran and Cayetano Rivera's grandfather.
Lucía Bosé, Mel Ferrer and Audrey Hepburn, in Las Ventas in the 50's. EFE
In the 60s, Las Ventas was the scene of a bullfighting earthquake,
El Cordobés
, which with its iconoclasm and its
leaps of the frog
conquered the masses, but not the good fan, inclined to teachers such as
Diego Puerta,
El Viti
or Paco Camino ,
who one afternoon cut 8 ears at the Monumental. A thorn for Benítez was that controversial tail, unique in the history of Las Ventas, that his rival at the time,
Palomo Linares
, cut off
. Foodies, such as the Duchess of Alba, preferred the art of
Curro Romero
, who barely opened his jar of essences but guaranteed the show with
loud quarrels in which they even threw urinals at him.
Or the gypsy
Rafael de Paula
, who one afternoon of artistic rapture in Las Ventas,
ended up sitting on the bull that he had just killed.
With the arrival of democracy and especially with the socialist government of Felipe González, the party began a
great apogee
, thanks to those wealthy
beautiful people who
emerged from the felipismo that filled the shadow lines of Las Ventas when there was a luxury poster to see figures such as
Espartaco, Ortega Cano, Roberto Domínguez
, and later Enrique Ponce,
El Juli, José Tomas or Morante
.
Millions
were paid
in resale
for a barrier of 9 or 10 where to rub shoulders with
Mario Conde
, Minister
Enrique Múgica, Vargas Llosa
, Carmen Martínez Bordiú or King Juan Carlos himself, who was during his reign
the great ambassador of bullfighting.
So much so that instead of witnessing the bullfight in the box he preferred a barrier or a line.
A hobby that his first-born, Infanta Elena and his grandchildren Froilán and Victoria Federica, who has even been the girlfriend of the bullfighter Gonzalo Caballero, sucked.
At that stage Las Ventas was part of a ritual, a kind of
social
who is who
in Madrid, which after the bullfight continued with a dinner at Casa Lucio
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