After the first four bulls did not allow the bullfighters the slightest chance to shine, Damián Castaño was aware that the fifth, whether good or bad, was the only possibility life offered to look at his season with a bit more calm. He put on his montera, took the muleta and the simulated sword, and off he went to war, but a real one, not like those in the movies.
On the other side of the trench awaited an opponent — better said, an enemy — with a bad temper and a loaded shotgun, with long and sharp horns, and a challenging look that was truly frightening. It was a bull from José Escolar, weighing 572 kilos.
But Castaño knew that this opponent was the door to his future, and that he could not be driven by the survival instinct and much less by fear. And he decided to risk his life. Literally.
The fight was brutal, to the death; the blows echoed in the deafening silence of the afternoon. The Las Ventas bullring had a lump in its throat, the tension could be cut with the knife of imminent danger, of the inevitable goring, and of that thought that flies around heads in moments like these: how is it possible that a human being forgets his body for an earthly dream?
Well, it is possible, and this afternoon Damián Castaño has proven it, a heroic and steady bullfighter, fixed in the toughest bullfights, those that make you lose weight from the cold sweat that bathes your back, and that stand as Rubicons that only open the door if you are capable of taking the winding step that separates life from death.
Be that as it may, Castaño once again showed that he wants to keep bullfighting, and for that he fought like the greats, knowing that at any moment he could be thrown into the air. Uncertain bull, with its head always at mid-height, developing sense in each muletazo, with its gaze lost searching for the man’s body, gañafones and tornillazos in the air… and the man who does not turn his face away and completes an unbearable effort for everyone. The whole bullring was sweating from fear when Damián Castaño mounted the sword. He stabbed, the bull chased him fiercely, the bullfighter lost his balance and a providential cape carried by the subaltern Toñete miraculously warded off the imminent danger. Castaño took a well-deserved lap of honor that was something like a passport for a new resurrection of the bullfighter who every afternoon — all the more so in San Isidro — puts his future on the line.
Minutes earlier, another subaltern of his team, Rubén Sánchez, was working with the cape in the banderillas third of that fifth bull, and after a dodge he was lifted into the air and slammed to the ground. The medical report indicates that his condition is serious.
The sixth was the only one that showed better condition, which Gómez de Pilar took advantage of to mount a performance of brave craft in which a couple of commendable series of muletazos with both hands stood out, although he could not put the desired finishing touch to the work due to his incomprehensible insistence on unnecessarily prolonging it, which led to two warnings sounding, something that had already happened to him with the third, reserved, difficult and without any clarity.
In short, the José Escolar bullfight drew attention for the beauty of its appearance, for its sharp horns, for its tameness, its brusqueness and its danger, and thus it is not possible to bullfight. Castaño could not do it with his first, to which he did steal some meritorious muletazos, nor Pepe Moral, who faced, first, a very unbred animal and, later, a tame and very dull fourth.
Escolar / Moral, Castaño, Del Pilar
Bulls from José Escolar, very well presented, sharp-horned, tame, unbred, tough and dangerous; brave and very complicated the fifth, and the sixth was the only one that let itself be fought in the final third.
Pepe Moral: detached estocada -warning- (silence); pinchazo, half fall, six descabellos and the bull lies down (silence).
Damián Castaño: two pinchazos, rear estocada and one descabello (silence); pinchazo, detached estocada and one descabello (lap of honor).
Gómez del Pilar: two pinchazos -warning-, pinchazo, five descabellos -second warning- and five descabellos (silence); -warning- half estocada -second warning- and two descabellos (ovation).
The subaltern Rubén Sánchez, from Castaño’s team, was gored during the second third of the fifth bull, and suffers a wound in the right popliteal fossa with a forward trajectory of 10 centimeters, and a second one of 15 centimeters in an ascending direction that causes injuries to the hamstring muscles. Facial trauma and erosion on the bridge of the nose. Serious prognosis.
Las Ventas bullring. June 2. Twenty-second event of the San Isidro Fair. Almost full (19,553 spectators, according to the company).
Read more Bonoloto: check draw of Tuesday, June 2
