A 26-year-old bullfighter dubbed the “Messi of matadors” has been gored in an incident that has raised fears for the future of one of the sport’s last-remaining superstars.
Andres Roca Rey, a darling of the Spanish media who has been romantically linked with a niece of King Felipe VI, was hospitalised with severe bruising.
Video footage shows the Peruvian holding out a bullfighter’s cape to the half-ton bull, which charges before turning at the last second and dipping its horns into his midriff.
The bull, which had already been stabbed several times in the back with banderillas, tosses Mr Roca Rey in the air like a doll before crushing him into the red-cushioned barrier.
As several men rush into the ring to try to drag the star to safety, the bull, named Viruta and weighing 467kg, gored another well-known matador, Cayetano Rivera Ordoñez.
Daniel González, a fan of bullfighting, tweeted: “I am still shocked after what we saw in Santander.”
Known for his daring style in the ring, Mr Roca Rey is the biggest star in the world of bullfighting, still capable of filling stadiums wherever he goes.
“He is like the Messi or Ronaldo of the bullfighting world. No one has such acclaim as him or can fill bullrings wherever he fights,” Antonio Lorca, bullfighting critic of El País, Spain’s best-selling newspaper, told The Telegraph.
Much like Messi, an Argentinian who left for Spain when he was 13, Mr Roca Rey was brought to the country when he was a child to progress his career as a bullfighter. He is now a Spanish citizen.
Mr Roca Rey suffered multiple bruises on his face, neck, right thigh and left knee, doctors at the bullring said.
He was undergoing scans in hospital on Wednesday to check if he had suffered any other injuries from the goring.
Spectators said this was the worst goring the star has received in his eight-year career. But they hoped he would recover, as after previous bruising encounters.
Mr Roca Rey was gored five times in his first five fights, leading to The Sun publishing a video of his exploits in 2016 under the headline “world’s worst bullfighter fails again”.
In 2021, he told The Critic that he would not stop taking risks in the ring, comparing the relationship with a bull to that between lovers.
“If you commit yourself 100 per cent to another person, you can get more out of the relationship, but you can also get more badly hurt. It’s the same in the arena,” he said.
Last year he was gored at a fight in Bilbao, in northern Spain, but against doctors’ advice carried on the contest and was carried out of the front door of the ring on the shoulders of supporters – an honour in the bullfighting world.
The Peruvian is thought to command six-figure fees for his appearances in Europe and South America, but these contracts have never been disclosed.
From a bullfighting family, his father Fernando Roca-Rey Muller was a matador as was his great-grandfather.
He described his style to The Critic as “total seriousness”.
“You adapt to different rings and different crowds, but your soul is always free,” he said.
“Never mind the triumphs, the gorings, the pain — pain in your bones, pain in your mind.”
Boasting 250,000 followers on Instagram, where he describes himself as an “artist”, Mr Roca Rey denied reports that he was dating Victoria de Marichalar, the niece of King Felipe VI.
Once a popular part of mainstream Spanish culture, matadors were considered the pop stars of the day and celebrated in the media.
In recent years, the popularity of the pastime has waned because of the economic damage caused by the pandemic, the greater choice of ways to spend free time and the rise of the animal rights movement in Spain.
The number of bullfights rose 14 per cent in the past two years from 824 in 2021 to 1,546 last year as the sector recovered from the pandemic, according to figures from the Spanish culture ministry.
However, it is a minority interest. Only two per cent of Spaniards attended a bullfight in the 2021-2022 season, according to government statistics, but among them teenagers aged 15-19 were the largest group.
Canal Toros, Spain’s biggest private subscriber television channel dedicated to showing bullfights, closed in March in a move which animal rights activists claim showed the waning popularity of the controversial pastime.
The channel had failed to reach a deal to show Spain’s biggest bullfights which are also viewed by fans in Britain, Latin America and the United States.
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