MADRID — Spain’s most famous matador, Morante de la Puebla, shocked a packed afternoon crowd at Las Ventas when he stepped to the center of the ring after taking two ears from his final bull in order to cut off his historic coleta and signal retirement Oct. 12, 2025 The spontaneous gesture — made minutes after he had earned a Puerta Grande exit on Spain’s Day of Hispanidad — struck like a lighting bolt to the bullfighting world, which was already wondering about its future under growing ethical and political pressure.
Morante de la Puebla and the rave at Las Ventas
The sendoff came at the end of a high-voltage afternoon in which Morante de la Puebla, 46, rebounded from a heavy fall from the fourth Garcigrande bull, Tripulante, to make an elegant classical faena that won him two ears and with them Madrid’s most coveted gate. In Las Ventas’ official report, the head count in attendance was 22,964 as the maestro stepped out and was carried out on shoulders to have second thoughts, drop to one knee in the sand and allow a member of his cuadrilla to cut a tassel that has been synonymous with the torero’s promise since the 19th century.
Local broadcaster Telemadrid called the retirement “por sorpresa,” adding that neither the plaza nor his own entourage had planned a celebration, and that fellow matador Fernando Robleño also picked this afternoon to say goodbye to his home ring. For many aficionados, the spontaneous action confirmed Morante’s reputation as a torero who has never been far from cultivating calculated artistry with rash, occasionally self-destructive acts.
A delicate genius from the heart of a disputed tradition
Born José Antonio Morante Camacho in La Puebla del Río, a town outside Seville, Morante de la Puebla has long been considered the foremost torero de arte of his time and the successor to Curro Romero in capote work. A profile in 2010 in the newspaper El País cast him as bullfighting’s last great practitioner of mysterious duende, and noted, even back then, his habit of vanishing from the ring only to return different.
Those years also turned Morante de la Puebla into a political symbol. After Catalonia voted to outlaw corridas in 2010, he was part of the so-called G-10 of star matadors that lobbied Parliament and manipulated media coverage to defend “la fiesta,” ultimately turning bullfighting into a proxy war between regional identity and animal rights. In this self-styled “cathedral of bullfighting,” his retirement comes at a time when attendance is declining — just 8 per cent of Spaniards attended a bullfight last year, according to national reporting on the industry’s rusticated decline.
The maestro’s departure also marks the end of several seasons shadowed by ill health. In 2024, El País Cultura reported that Morante de la Puebla twice stopped his season because of psychiatric problems that had left him weak and required doctors to adjust his medication. British and Spanish coverage of that year cast him as one of the earliest major bullfighting stars to speak so frankly about depression and dissociative disorders, connecting his latest withdrawal to a concern for his mental health as much as his legacy.
Morante de la Puebla’s goodbye and the new bulling divide
Reactions to the retirement have laid bare Spain’s deepening divide over bullfighting. Conservative leaders took to social media to gush about “el maestro” after Morante de la Puebla’s final paseíllo, and animal rights activists pointed to the sight of a blood-streaked torero weeping in the sand as evidence that a tradition itself had run its course. One viral exchange, as reported by HuffPost España, featured a schoolteacher refusing to accept the term “maestro” for a bullfighter and reclaiming it for classroom teachers in Spain, crystallising the battle over culture that now shadows every corrida.
Within the bullrings, however, Morante de la Puebla is a lodestar. This season, he opened the Puerta Grande of Las Ventas twice — in June’s Beneficencia charity corrida and in October’s farewell — and won major prizes from Sevilla’s city hall for his 2023 campaign when he became the first matador in more than 50 years to cut a tail in the Maestranza. To fans, the loss of such a box office attraction is a damaging blow that embattled empresarios can ill afford.
Whether the end has finally come is anyone’s guess. Speaking in a wide-ranging interview noted by the Spanish daily ABC, Morante de la Puebla then told The New York Times that he didn’t want to use the expression full retirement but rather a break, suggesting faith and exhaustion, not merely injury, guided his decision. For now, the picture that lasts is of the matador on his knees alone in the sand of Las Ventas cutting away his coleta as thousands roar — a parting gesture whose meaning and significance seems to hover still longer over an art form that Spain must suddenly re-examine to wonder who, or what, it really serves.
