“You have to see the great bullfighters at their beginnings and at their end.” Thus, with this quote interspersed in her speech, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, inaugurated the great exhibition that covers the farewell of Julián López “El Juli”, who will say goodbye to Las Ventas on September 30, within an Autumn Fair that bears his name.
Juli said he felt overwhelmed and was gratefulor, after 25 years at the top, to a place where he has experienced everything: “through the door of the infirmary and through the Puerta Grande; demands, misunderstandings, triumphs, failures and absolute happiness.” Ayuso stressed that she was proud of El Juli’s figure as a “bullfighter of Madrid”, “one of the most important bullfighters of the last century.”
During the inauguration, the president of Plaza 1, Rafael García Garrido, and the managing director of the Center for Bullfighting Affairs, Miguel Abellán, spoke, in the presence of the Minister of the Interior and Environment, Carlos Novillo. Garrido thanked the teacher“for having given us your legend, for having carried bullfighting from generation to generation.”“on, for treating him in the way that only the greatest can do: without turning his back for a single afternoon.”. Through the corridors of the Las Ventas bullring, The exhibition is extended and will last until October 12, reports EFE.
“Right now I have a lot of feelings that are not easy to handler, because in this square I have lived the most intense and hardest moments of my career, but the word that best defines them is gratitude. In this exhibition you can see many numbers about what my career has been, but my greatest satisfaction is the sensations that I have experienced in the ring,” stressed the honored bullfighter.
The exhibition, organized by the Center for Community Affairs of Madrid in collaboration with Plaza-1, the arena’s management company, and curated by journalist Noelia Lópezhas a large number of photographs, posters, trophies, bullfighting dresses and capes from El Juli’s walks, which review his long and triumphant career in bullfighting since his debut at twelve years of age.