BarcelonaJosé Antonio Morante Camacho, known as Morante de la Puebla, walked out of the main entrance of the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid yesterday, Sunday, after his last bullfight. The images of thousands of people carrying him on their backs, as if he weren't a person of flesh and blood but a messiah sent by God to spread the divine word, demonstrate that, at least in Madrid, bullfighting is still a mass spectacle that inspires great emotions. It's surprising to see, among Morante's audience, many young people (most of them with aesthetics). Cayetana) and many more boys than girls. However, something has changed compared to a few decades ago. Bullfighting in Madrid is no longer the interclass and popular phenomenon it had been; it's a new form of cultural warfare, a symbol of the new, unabashed right, which is why Morante is being challenged by its two top leaders, Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Santiago Abascal, to whom he dedicated his work yesterday.
But unfortunately for Ayuso, Morante de la Puebla is more identified with Vox than with the PP, and yesterday he took a photo while they were putting his last ponytail on his head with the Vox leader.
This image is much more important than it might seem because it means that the number one in bullfighting tells the entire bullfighting world who their political leader is, since the bull he dedicated to Abascal was not just any bull, but the last of his career. It's the photo that tips all those votes, which are not minor, toward Vox's coffers. And this was evident in Las Ventas, where shouts of "Abascal, president!" and not of"Ayuso president".
If we look at it as a whole, we see that the rise of Vox has two main keys. On the one hand, the strength among the young vote, where it is the first force, and in certain pockets of conservative vote such as the bullfighting world or the hunting community. It is, in some way, an ideal world, the world not so much of the rural world, Cayetanos from Madrid who go on excursions to farms to participate in a capea of heifers or in a probe of bulls.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Galician and therefore with little bullfighting experience, has a very difficult time breaking into this world. Curiously, Abascal, who is Basque, can boast more credentials in this world because the Basque Country has a strong bullfighting tradition, and even the historic Aberzale leader Jon Idígoras was a bullfighter. And, above all, the fans who saw Morante de la Puebla live yesterday want to experience strong emotions, Trump-style, and that is much more represented by Vox than by the PP.
