will return to the ring to fight four afternoons in Seville this year. The bullfighter will perform the Paseíllo on Easter Sunday, two afternoons at the April Fair and on the day of the Corpus Christi festival. In addition, the company has announced that “it will leave a free space in San Miguel [29 de septiembre]in case the maestro decided to fight, or in his case for an outstanding bullfighter of the season.” On his first afternoon, on April 5, he will be accompanied by Andrés Roca Rey and David de Miranda.
The right-hander from La Puebla had made the decision to retire from bullfighting on October 12, at the end of his performance in the Plaza de Las Ventas in Madrid, after a very strong somersault and opening the main gate of Madrid for the second time in his career as a matador. Since then, pressure from fans and companies to reconsider that withdrawal – which has been limited to the fall and winter rest months – has only grown. , businessman of the Maestranza of Seville, already anticipated the possibility of returning in January: “The presence of Morante on the posters of Seville is a dream I have, but now I cannot advance anything, because I must wait for the positioning of the bullfighter, which has not yet occurred; it depends on him.”
The businessman, appointed in November of last year, went to Portugal to feel out the bullfighter’s intentions and visited him again a few days ago at the Huerta de San Antonio, the matador’s recreational estate on the banks of the Guadalquivir. Then he published a photograph on his WhatsApp status in which he was walking next to Morante with the caption: “dreaming…”, which set off alarm bells. Although these are the only afternoons confirmed at the moment for the right-hander this year, the head of Las Ventas, Rafael García Garrido, already said in Abc who does not rule out bullfighting in 2026 in Madrid, and dropped that he could do so in the goyesca.
October last year was not the first time that Morante de la Puebla left the arena, but the event acquired such great relevance that it seemed to be the definitive one. He had already won the 2021 National Bullfighting Prize on three previous occasions, and on none of them did he stop bullfighting for more than a year. In 2005 he decided to suspend the season “due to mental problems,” and returned months after spending time in Miami, where he received medical treatment. In June 2007 he suspended his season again to return on January 6 of the following year. And he retired for the third time on April 13, 2017, after a run in El Puerto de Santa María where he announced that he was leaving due to “boredom”, only to reappear on May 12, 2018 in Jerez de la Frontera.
