Juan José Padilla is a Spanish '' torero'' ('bullfighter'). He became a '' matador de toros'', 'killer of (full-grown) bulls', in the town of his birth, Jerez de la Frontera, on June 18, 1994 when he was 21 years old. He was known as the 'Cyclone of Jerez' and featured heavily, both personally and professionally, in ''Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight'', a shortlisted nominee for the

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in 2011. On October 7, 2011 he was gored by a bull in

Zaragoza Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributari ...

, almost dying from his injuries. From a single horn wound through his skull, he suffered multiple fractures to both jaw and skull, facial paralysis, loss of hearing in his right ear and of sight in his left eye. Five months later in March 2012, he returned to the bullring with an

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- gaining the nickname 'The Pirate' – in

Olivenza Olivenza () or Olivença () is a town in southwestern Spain, near the Portuguese border, on a historically disputed section of the Portugal–Spain border. Its territory is administered by Spain as a municipality belonging to the province of Bad ...

. The author of ''Into The Arena'', Alexander Fiske-Harrison, who had trained as a ''torero'' with Padilla and was now a personal friend, accompanied him for British '' GQ'' magazine and ended by describing the result of that day's triumphant return: "it is Padilla alone who is swept up to tour the ring on the shoulders of the crowd. Then I see that it is not the crowd, but other bullfighters. An entire profession is holding him up so that an entire nation can applaud him. That night Padilla is on every news channel; come the morning he will be on the front page of every newspaper. When I meet him at the hotel afterwards, he has tears in his eye." He has continued to fight throughout the season with a hero's welcome - and failures - in both major bull-rings and minor ones, including

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Valencian Community, Valencia and the Municipalities of Spain, third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is ...

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Pamplona Pamplona (; eu, Iruña or ), historically also known as Pampeluna in English, is the capital city of the Chartered Community of Navarre, in Spain. It is also the third-largest city in the greater Basque cultural region. Lying at near above ...

, La Línea de la Concepción, and the town where he grew up, Jerez de la Frontera, and the town he now lives in, neighbouring

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. On March 12, 2017 at a bullfight in Valencia, he was gored through the thigh and chest, suffering a punctured lung

Having announced his intention to retire at the end of the year in 2018, his final tour of the bull rings of Spain was marked with great successes and further injuries. In July 2018, Padilla lost his footing during a bullfight in Arévalo and fell to the ground after he was struck several times by the bull. He returned to the ring in Pamplona a few days later. His final Bullfighting, corrida was with the bulls of Núñez del Cuvillo in the Feria de El Pilar in

, the same ring where he had lost his eye seven years before. Cutting two ears from his final bull, he was carried out of the ring on the shoulders of the crowd and finally retired, still number one in the ''escalafón'', the official ranking of matadors in Spain.De La Serna, Zabala
'La última apoteosis de Padilla'
''El Mundo'', 15 October 2018

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Padilla, Juan Jose Spanish bullfighters Spanish Roman Catholics 1973 births Living people

See also

References