IN some ways, he’s ridiculous. He’s short, overweight and far too old to be practising such an athletic profession. He has odd traits that belong to the 1970s – an addiction to cigars and outrageously bushy sideburns.
Today (October 2), Jose Antonio Morante Camacho turns 46. This eccentric figure from the small Sevilla town of La Puebla del Rio just might go down in the history books as a genius – perhaps the last of his kind.
Better known as ‘Morante de la Puebla’, he is a bullfighter. Probably a great one.
Hemingway once wrote that bullfighting is unlike any other art because it is fleeting. You can still admire the Mona Lisa five centuries after Leonardo painted it, but to see Joselito at his peak you had to be in the ring that day.
It is not quite so true now that we have video, but the essence remains: the matador’s art lacks permanence. Each pass, each banderillo, is a moment that vanishes. If a torero – never ‘toreador‘, except in French opera – performs superbly, he may be awarded an ear.
It sounds brutal. One ear is cut from the bull and handed to the victor. During his lap of honour, he may fling it into the crowd. Don’t catch it – you’ll be sprayed with blood.
Very rarely, an extraordinary performance – combining courage, grace and artistry – earns two ears. A once-in-a-generation display may be rewarded with two ears and a tail.
But Spain’s grandest rings, Las Ventas in Madrid and La Maestranza in Sevilla, usually frown on such theatrics.
Which is why Morante is different. In April 2023, he was so dazzling in Sevilla that La Maestranza abandoned its usual reserve and awarded him two ears and a tail. Two months later in Madrid, Las Ventas went further: they flung open the Puerta Grande – the great gate of honour. No other living matador has received such tributes.
Morante is a throwback to the golden age of bullfighting, and he embraces the label. While most modern toreros learn their craft in bullfighting schools, he taught himself in the marshes of the Guadalquivir.
With no money and no family ties to the profession, he fought his way up the hard way. Starting as a novillero in 1991 at just 12 years old, he took contracts wherever he could find them. By 1998 – after 121 fights and 47 triumphal exits – he finally took his alternativa in Burgos at the age of 19.
As he explains: “Most of the time, the bullfight is humdrum. The animal doesn’t understand he’s supposed to entertain the crowd. But sometimes I get a carril – the bullfight gods allow a special kind of beauty to flow through both me and the bull, and for a while we make a living sculpture together.”
But the bullfight itself is dying. Young Spaniards loathe it. When it becomes just a spectacle for tourists, whatever authenticity remains will be lost.
Go and see Morante while you still can. There will never be another.
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