The San Miguel Fairwhich begins this Friday and is one of the most important bullfighting cycles at the end of the Seville campaign, will be marked by the reappearance of Morante de la Puebla in a season of intermittence and by the indefinite farewell of Julián López ‘El Juli’, one of the most decisive bullfighters of this first quarter of a century.
‘El Juli’ leaves the profession just 25 years after taking the alternative in Nimes when he was a fifteen-year-old teenager; A few months later, in April 1999, he appeared as a matador in the Plaza de la Maestranza, achieving – without consummating due to being injured – the first of the seven Prince’s Gates that have marked his long career.
Within that record, Julián López shattered the respective ‘records’ achieved by Spartacus and Curro Romeroto which we must add the pardon of the famous bull ‘Orgullito’, a buoyant example of Garcigrande that won all the prizes at the 2018 April Fair and made ‘El Juli’ the great winner of that year.
The announcement of the retirement of the precocious Madrid maestro has turned next Sunday’s celebration into a true event which has served as the “hitching flag” for the rest of the cycle, in which three consecutive full-blown hits are ventured. The three San Miguel bullfights also imply the closure of the Sevillian subscription pending the festival on the 15th that will close the season. Morante’s injury
The Sevillian autumn cycle will also be the scene of the umpteenth reappearance of Morante at the end of a season marked by two different circumstances: the historic tail that he cut in April and the painful wrist injury that has turned the season into a rosary of comings and goings since the end of June.