Friday, March 02, 2012

Call Him "Desperdicios Segundo"

The Spanish bullfighter Juan José Padilla, who lost an eye when a bull gored him in the face, is preparing to enter the bullring again, with a pirate's eyepatch over one eye.

You can click the link to see photos of Padilla pre- and post-goring - - significant surgery took place, and his post-goring photos have left him gaping like a cretin - - and even see the horrible footage of the goring itself.

However, Padilla won't be the first one-eyed bullfighter. James Michener, in his monumental tribute to Spain, Iberia, wrote of another matador who lost an eye to a bull:

On June 1, 1857, the Concha bull Barrabás participated in what the books describe as 'one of the most famous accidents in the history of bullfighting' in that, with a deft horn, it caught the full matador Miguel Domínguez under the chin and then in the right eye, gouging it out. It was assumed that Domínguez would die, for his face was laid open, but with a valor that had characterized his performance in the ring he survived, and three months later was fighting again as Spain's only one-eyed matador, having stipulated that for his return the bulls must again be from Concha y Sierra. For another seventeen years he fought with only one eye and enjoyed some of his best afternoons with Concha bulls. He is known in taurine history as Desperdicios (Cast-Off Scraps, from the contemptuous manner in which he tossed aside his gouged-out eyeball).

An aspect of bullfighting etiquette is that, when a bull breaks off a horn in the ring, a matador may only pass the bull (allow to charge past) on the side with the remaining horn. I wonder if there is an etiquette established for passing the bull when the matador only has one eye?

1 comment:

NotClauswitz said...

Wow... I'm glad bullfighting never got into my scope of gotta-try-this.