Un Torero Verdadero

After my torero-like portrait of Victor two days ago, I decided to go for the real thing. Here is Ivan Fandino, torero, just moments before entering the ring at the Plaza de Monumental in Barcelona. All toreros have their silver cup from which they drink at stages during the fight, always kissing it once they have finished. Here Fandino, as many do, is cooling himself in advance of the fray by pouring some water down his back between his warm, brown skin and tight traje de luces, or 'costume of light'.

Bullfighting has just been prohibited in all of Catalonia with effect from January 2012. It is a controversial decision which has been covered in nearly all foreign press, so I won't go into the arguments here. Whatever the pros and cons, Barcelona never feels more Spanish than when you have a drink and some tapas around the Monumental on a Sunday summer afternoon; with fine Castillian, Gallician, Extremaduran, Murcian and Andalucian ladies and gentlemen dressed in their finery, it is quite an occasion.

PS Lots of detail in LARGE

PPS
Several shots showing his handsome features in extras . . .

PPS
A very sad postscript is that this much admired torero, Ivan Fandino, died in a bullfight in France in 2017. Several honours have been given and busts erected in his memory as one of his generation’s greatest toreros.