Spanish bullfighter blinded in one eye returns to ring

Spanish matador Juan Jose Padilla, blinded in one eye by a horrific goring less than five months ago, returned to the ring in triumph Sunday and slayed two half-tonne bulls.

With a patch over his left eye and his face still partially paralysed, the 38-year-old faced his dangerous prey at the bullring in the southwestern town of Olienza near the Portuguese border.

Fans packing the arena rose in a standing ovation to the man known as the “Cyclone from Jerez”, who had vowed ever since his massive injury to fight again with the sharp-horned beasts.

Spanish media said Padilla, dressed in a green-and-gold “suit of lights”, proved he could fight one-eyed.

The matador earned a bull’s ear — a reward for bullfights judged to be of great quality — for each of his two kills and was accorded the honour of leaving by the main gate to the bullring.

The crowds clapped and sang flamenco songs as Padilla enticed the bulls with his cloak to charge close to his body in a series of stylized passes before dispatching them with his sword.

“You have to have a lot of courage to return to the ring with sight in only one eye,” said the Spanish daily ABC.

“He himself said in an interview that with some bulls you don’t need two eyes, you need four.”

On October 7 last year, Padilla slipped in front of an enraged bull in a bullring in Zaragoza, northeastern Spain, after piercing its back with two sharp, barbed “banderillas”.

Watched by shocked crowds, the bull plunged a curved horn through the left side of the sprawling bullfighter’s upper jaw and out through the left eye socket, forcing the eye to bulge outwards.

The force of the blow dragged the matador about half a body-length across the bullring.

Padilla stood clutching the wound as blood poured from his face. He began to collapse as fellow matadors supported him out of the ring.

He was raced to intensive care at the Miguel Servet Hospital where surgeons performed a five-hour operation, fixing the broken parts of his face with titanium plates.

When he emerged from the emergency operation, Padilla vowed the same day to “put on the bullfighter’s clothes again because that is how it is written in this profession”.

In the days leading up to his return in Olienza, the matador said: “The fans have been with me, supporting me throughout. Now it is my turn to give it back to them in the ring.”

Though the bullfighting world has been transfixed by Padilla’s return, Spain is divided over whether the tradition itself should survive.

Bullfighting has been banned from this year in northeastern Catalonia after the regional parliament responded to a petition by animal rights groups that garnered 180,000 signatures.

It was the first region in mainland Spain to ban the bullfight, which had been outlawed in the Canary Islands in 1991.

While the move fueled the debate across the country over bullfighting, there is little sign that any other Spanish region is poised to follow Catalonia’s example.