Spain’s leading matador “stunned the bullfighting world” last week by “symbolically cutting off his ponytail in the ring”, said The Times .

The gesture by Morante de la Puebla in Madrid’s Las Ventas, after a “triumphant” performance, signalled the retirement of “one of the greatest ever bullfighters” at the age of 46. His career, although “plagued by near-death gorings and long absences due to depression”, often “exhausted critics’ superlatives” and “injected” bullfighting with new popularity, “drawing young and old” to watch it. His resignation, which astonished even his own team, is “a blow to the tradition as public sentiment is turning against it”.

Relic of the past

Bullfights have been held on the Iberian Peninsula for at least 900 years, and are synonymous with Spanish culture

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