Francisco Romero (bullfighter)

Francisco Romero (1700–1763) was a significant Spanish matador. He reputedly introduced the famous red cape (muleta) into bullfighting in around 1726.

He was the founding father of a bullfighting dynasty, fundamental for bullfighting history. He was apparently the inventor of several characteristics that started to be used in a key period for bullfighting when the modern on foot system was defined, as the use of the muleta (cape) and estoque (sword) to kill the bull face to face. He was the father of Juan Romero, also a bullfighter, and grandfather of the great Pedro Romero.

During the first years of the 18th century, at Ronda, Francisco Romero, at the end of a bullfight, asked for permission to kill the bull by himself. Up to this moment, only nobles mounted on horses dared to fight a bull. That afternoon, after provoking the bull a couple of times with a linen, Francisco Romero killed the bull with his sword. He soon repeated the same feat at other bullrings and became an authentic professional, giving birth to the modern style of on foot bullfighting. The use of linens (white ones and hanging from a stick) could have been done before Romero's feat. Those linens evolved step by step towards the modern muleta or red cape and capote or purple and yellow cape, but it is very plausible that was Romero the one that popularized his use as the bullfight essential prop.

It seems that the death of a bull by sword was practiced previously, specially by the employees of meat processing factories in Sevilla, but not in a bullring. In any case, if Francisco Romero is not the inventor of the modern bullfight, he is the first matador that became professional and lived from his art. His success implied a fundamental and radical change in the bullfight art: up to him, the main part of the corrida (bullfight or bullrun) was the piking of the bull from a horse, followed by bullfighting on horse and then some use of cape by helpers on foot, but the horse rider was the protagonist of the bull party. The death of the bull was only the end of the bullfight and it wasn't particularly celebrated. After Francisco Romero, and after some years when both bullfighting styles (on foot and riding a horse) fought for public support, on-horse bullfight started to lose the protagonist role it had and the death of the bull by a lonely man on foot, armed only with a sword, keeping himself as still as possible while being charged by a truly wild animal, proof of the bravery of the matador, became the most important part of bullfight.

The wild character of bulls is guaranteed by their owners, as bullfighting bulls have as little contact with humans as possible before entering the bullring. If a bull has any experience with a cape (or even become habituated to the mere presence of humans on foot) before a bullfight it would be very difficult or impossible for a matador to avoid being injured by the bull, as they learn very quickly to distinguish the cape from the human behind it. That also explains why bullfights are so short: they are a race against time before the bull understands he's being cheated by the cape. Bullfighting bulls can use a horn as a person uses a knife, with extreme precision and they have a preferred side (left or right horn) that they use for their attacks. Those characteristics of wild bulls, that make them as unpredictable and dangerous as any wild animal, raised Francisco Romero original feat to a legendary status in the history of bullfighting.

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