Juan Ortega He walks towards his reunion with Las Ventas as the great event of his season. After his absence in San Isidro he returns this Saturday with Daniel Luque and Pablo Aguado with bulls from El Pilar. Madrid awaits his arrival covered in his bullfighting – with an ambitious advertising campaign – immortalized in muletazos with an incomparable aesthetic for its marquees and billboards.
In it Hotel Santo Mauro This Wednesday he spelled out his concept of bullfighting and life with the writer Juan del Val in a deep conversation guided by Isabel Forner. “I’m with the bull under the bed,” she said three days after fighting in the bullring that launched her that summer. Ortega has learned to manage the pressure of a commitment of this magnitude: «Sometimes I arrive at the team yard completely defeated, I fight against that fear by loving the afternoon. Imagining beautiful things about the afternoon, the square, the livestock farm, which in this case is El Pilar, and that helps me feel comfortable and gain confidence. To assume it as something mine. “I work on it day by day.”
The exchange of ideas, concerns and concepts delved into his bullfighter personality that marks every step he takes in his life. «The most difficult thing about bullfighting is that you make bullfighting your priority, that it is above everything in life. If there is something in life that makes you happier than bullfighting, that gives you more peace, if there is something you like more, you do not make that effort that the bull demands of you at that particular moment. It’s something that Pepe Luis Vargas – his teacher – taught me and it’s the point I’ve reached at this moment,” the Sevillian explained yesterday with the same temper that he gives to his wrists.
Juan del Val categorically stated that Juan Ortega is the bravest bullfighter in the ranks because he is the one who bullfights the slowest. Somewhat blushing, the Sevillian explained what courage is for him: «Courage is a constant fight against the instinct of self-preservation that we all have. Every day I work to win the game over fear at the exact moment. He expanded on his way of conceiving bullfighting. Breastfeed, fly, pass it over the belly, draw the trajectory of the muletazo more slowly than anyone else. But he stopped at something that he pursues as an obsession: «Depth is something I pursue above all else because it is what I admire the most. “I educate the body to have that expression that deep bullfighting achieves.” Del Val added that upon meeting Ortega “I understood that there was a lot of coherence in his way of being with his way of bullfighting. Before meeting him personally he knew that he was going to follow him everywhere.
A hand in hand at the Cajasol Foundation, a toast at Vistalegre and an after-dinner conversation until dawn talking about bulls forged a friendship between the television personality and the bullfighter that unites the hope of fans of classic bullfighting, of eternal bullfighting. The details occupied another relevant point in the reflections between the two protagonists. Ortega takes care of every detail in the square and outside of it, as Del Val recalled. The matador gave the example of La Maestranza as an example that each of the details improves the whole: «In the Plaza de Sevilla every corner is taken care of, everything perfectly painted, everything taken care of. Bullfighting must be like this so that the work as a whole is superior.