Francisco Romero, creator of the crutch 'la muleta'
Bad times were running for the Arts back at the dawn of the eighteenth century; Europe was brewing the century of reason and Spain, a religious devotee, was giving up her world hegemony in Utrecht. Francisco Romero, born in Malaga and adopted from Ronda, lifts a cape on a stick before killing the bull; He is creating the muleta, the architectural transept of the fight. Instrument of vital importance to consolidate bullfighting as Art in fullness.
The cloth, the bull and the bullfighter; a living set. The crutch serves to curdle the bull’s onslaught and subdue it by right. The muleta serves to be a bullfighter, to challenge space at a time when the right-hander must show his supremacy. The crutch sacralises the place, it is a complicated instrument that serves as a means to a magnificent, vital and necessary end. A piece of flannel and the bull, make the human being recognize and identify with himself. From this personal experience, the transmission, the communication of feelings between bullfighter-bull-hobbyist is reached.
The Space intensifies to carry out the task with the muleta in the same location, create a hot place, untune the place, leave it bald and command it, in order to make it lasting in the feeling of the fan. And it is good if it is sincere, it is believed if it is sincere, it is felt if it is sincere, if life is in it, if the emptiness engulfs you to let you lead-fight.
Places, sides, directions, looks, exits, places,… spaces. The muleta is at the service of all these spaces. It is an instrument that must be treated with dedication and delicacy, grasping it by lying, that is, tricking it in the eyes of the viewer. That the doll flies and touches the palm of the hand, that the forearm does not exist and that its invisibility obeys exclusively to geometrically straight lines. Inspiring movement. Defining the temper.
Don Rafael Ortega talking to himself says:
“With the muleta there are a few classic and pure passes, but the truly fundamental ones are what each bull asks for. There are bulls that are more choppy than others, that have more strength, that have more abruptness, and then they must be reduced with the crutch Of course, the first thing the bullfighter has to do is try not to cut off the bull’s journey with the muleta.…, The bullfighter must always dominate the bull, but taking it long; the bullfighter who goes to the bull’s ear, to punish him, he does not fight. The attack must be carried as long as possible, but naturally, without the reolinas turning the bull around “
Surely, the master Ortega, would agree that the most outstanding passes by technique and Spaces would be the following:
The Derechazos, which is given by the right hand mounting the muleta with the sword, opening it to the face of the Bull and widening the Space of deception, placing the frame with the sword and stretching the flannel. Rigidity.
The Natives, given by the sinister carrying on the right the dubiously white weapon. The muleta, free of racks and bias, haggles.
Passes changed by citing with one hand to exit the bull by the leg opposite the hand that cited it. Souvenir trincherillas, pimp trenches, pitiminí pinwheels, headlamps and anthology chest.
And the assisted, holding the muleta with the left hand and mounting the frame with the help of the sword. Low, long and violent to punish; Tall and soft to care for.
The muleta is the chisel that prays the air opening an empty space-path so that the energetic force of the sacred animal steps on it. It is at this time that catharsis must occur between man and animal. When man is man and animal and the animal is only animal. The bullfighter has made his total domain with the muleta. He has commanded breaking the straight journey of the bull and making it turn around him, creating a sacred space whose main protagonist is the man, the Bullfighter.
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