He fell into the bullfighting pot as a child, to the point of leading to the condemnation of a bullring director who had made him a bullfighter too young. The “El Juli” star is hanging up his bullfighter cape this weekend at age 41.
Real name Julián López Escobar, “El Juli” was already miming bullfighting at two years old with a cloth, his father said in the 1990s. An early career whose end was suddenly announced this summer.
Political farewells
His farewell began on Saturday evening in the Madrid bullring of Las Ventas and ended the next day in those of Seville, two temples of bullfighting.
“It’s always been my dream arena. Which made me want to be a torrero,” El Juli commented on OneToroTv on Saturday after the bullfight, explaining that he was “overwhelmed with a fullness and a unique happiness.”
The star, who exited through the main gate of Las Ventas, the supreme tribute for a matador, dedicated one of the bulls to the president of the Madrid region, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, a rising figure of the Spanish right, seated in the bullring ” for everything she did for bullfighting.
Former young prodigy
In July, the matador took everyone by surprise by announcing on Instagram “not a retirement, but the end of a magnificent stage”. Describing his profession as “hard and difficult”, he explained that he now wanted to devote himself to his family and his other occupations.
Considered one of the greatest bullfighters of his time, the forty-year-old became known very early on as a “young prodigy of the bullring”.
Born in Madrid on October 3, 1982, El Juli is the son of a “novillero”, a bullfighter fighting young bulls, from the 1970s who had to stop his career following an injury.
Banned from arenas because too young
For his first communion, little Julián was allowed to ride his first cow at the age of eight.
At the age of 10, he entered the Madrid Bullfighting School “where he was the delight of his teachers”, reported in 1995 the first AFP report on this “future great star of bullfighting” 1.50 tall. mr.
At the time, the director of the Madrid Bullfighting School, Gregorio Sánchez, assured that we could “give no advice to this little genius because he already knows everything”.
Accompanied at all times by his father, El Juli fights bulls when the “aficionados” demand that he quickly face animals of greater stature to put his true value to the test.
In 1997, the director of the French arenas of Nîmes, Robert Pilès, was fined 10,000 francs for having had “El Juli” bullfighted in September 1995, when he was not sixteen years old, the legal age required.
Too young, the “Mozart of bullfighting”, as his lawyer nicknamed him during this trial, is banned from bullrings in France but also in Spain.
An unusual technique
No matter, the insolently talented teenager leaves to learn his skills in Mexico, where he becomes a super-star. “Julimania” is launched.
Returning to Europe, he took the alternative, the ceremony during which the young novillero became a bullfighter, in 1998 in Nîmes.
The following year, he was the most active bullfighter of the season with 135 bullfights. According to estimates published at the time, his expected earnings that year were estimated at 66 million francs or around 10 million euros… at 17 years old.
Injured several times, in July, when announcing his retirement, he thanked the doctors “in whose hands [il a] been 18 times.”
For the director of the Madrid bullring Simon Casas, El Juli has a “technique beyond the ordinary: he finds the answer to all the problems posed by bulls”.
“From a very young age, this gifted man had the intuition of the animal,” he told AFP, believing that the matador left at the right time. “He leaves at the height of his glory. Very few bullfighters have had such a long career while remaining in the top 5. You have to know how to stop.”