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The Next Big Thing, and that's no Bull
He’s too young to have a driving licence but he regularly squares up to 500 kilos of angry black bull and triumphs. El Juli is the boy wonder of Spanish corrida and the Leonardo di Caprio substitute of many a young espan?la’s dreams. MARY DE SOUSA experienced the El Juli circus in Brihuega. Photos: VALERIE DE LA DEHESA
It was a big day for Brihuega, a pretty village with a castle and a beautiful bullring an hour north from Madrid on the Zaragoza road. A heavyweight bullfight cartel of Espartaco, Jos? Tom?s and the infant phenomenon El Juli had brought throngs to the centre. Every parking space was nabbed, every restaurant terrace filled and outside what passed for the town’s hotel an eager crush of well-dressed matrons and over-excited teenage girls was waiting in the sunshine.
It was rumoured Conde Lequio had a beautiful girlfriend in tow inside but the crowds weren’t there for the slick-haired Count. The big draw was a smallish sixteen-year-old with a scar on his right cheek who has sent a shockwave through the bullfighting world with his skill and daring. Madrile?o torero Juli?n L?pez Escobar, who killed his first young bull when he was only ten, is on so much of a roll right now that old sages are already muttering about burnout.
Inside the hotel, all was chaos. We tracked down his wily apoderado (never was a man more aptly titled) Victoriano Valencia at lunch and politely reminded him of the interview we’d arranged with the boy wonder. He continued chewing his cordero contentedly as he pondered our presence. "Later," he said. "Ask for his hotel room at reception." "Not allowed to tell anyone," said the receptionist as a man sidled up and whispered "24" with a conspiratorial wink.
After another two hours of wheedling and waiting in the hotel corridor, his dad arrived with a message. "Later." At 6pm, half an hour before he was due to walk out into the ring, we were allowed a five minute audience just behind Canal Guadalajara and in front of a lady who wanted a photo for her bedroom wall. "In a couple of years’ time we won’t even get this far," mused another photographer. Downstairs the crowds were peeking through the curtains of a special area reserved for famosos to get a glimpse of Conde Lequio and Jes?s Mari?as (the small, annoying one with the moustache on T?mbola). TV stars Inma del Moral and Pedro Ruiz hurried past holding hands. Now we only had to get past his dad (who must be set to some bittersweet pondering on his own failed career as a torero at times like these) and we were in.
Already dressed in his sparkly pink suit of lights, El Juli stood facing the mirror, occasionally flexing his legs like an athlete and adjusting his montera. It was clear his mind was already elsewhere, not really seeing the people surrounding him as his suit was pulled and adjusted by his mozo de espada (literally his sword keeper but really his assistant). He momentarily came to when a shriek went up from the girls outside who had glimpsed him through the open bedroom window. Despite his concentration, Brihuega is already small potatoes to El Juli who has fought before 50,000 spectators in Mexico and was awarded two ears and an ovation the first time he ever appeared in 1997. When first presented at Las Ventas in Madrid in September 1998 he left raised high on shoulders by the main gate. It has been a similar story since then with his prestige growing alongside his fan club.
Our audience over (my carefully prepared questions about whether he felt fear or that he had missed out on a proper childhood were horribly inappropriate minutes before a fight and remained unasked) we were hustled out of the room behind him and out into the sunshine as a huge cheer went out and girls thrust notebooks and pens under his nose. Another journalist asked only for his dream cartel. "Manolete and El Cordob?s," he said staring out the window. Later, in the Plaza de Toros, he knelt down to re
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