Renunciar: to renounce or give up; a bullfighter renounces his alternativa when he abandons his position as a full matador de toros to accept any contracts he may obtain as a novillero.
Reparado de vista: bull with defective vision in one eye though not completely blind. Defects of vision are often caused by a straw or a thistle injuring the eye when the bull is feeding.
Res: wild animal; any head of cattle on fighting-bull-breeding ranch with fighting blood.
Resabio: viciousness; toro de resabio: vicious bull.
Retirada: retirement; bullfighters sometimes retire when they are short of contracts or very much in love with their wives and return to fight again in a few years hoping in the first case that the novelty of their re-appearance will bring contracts and in the second simply returning because they need money or because the intensity of their domestic relations has relaxed.
Revistas: magazines or revues; revistas de toros are bullfight periodicals. Most of them at present are propaganda sheets in which photographs and colored accounts of the performances of bullfighters who pay a certain sum to the editors appear. Bullfighters who owe money for unpaid propaganda or others who have refused to accept propositions made to them for propaganda usually in the form of paying for a cover featuring a photograph of themselves or, cheaper, an inside picture, are attacked more or less scurrilously in the cheaper sheets. Le Toril, published in Toulouse, France, is an impartial bullfight revue sustained by subscription and accepting no propaganda or advertising either hidden in the text or open. Its sincerity and impartiality are handicapped in writing good criticism by the small number of corridas its editors can afford to see each year and by the fact that they do not see the first and second subscription season in Madrid and so see each fight as an individual action rather than as a part of a bullfighter’s season or campaign. El Eco Taurino published in Madrid contains the most complete and accurate accounts of bullfights in Spain and Mexico. La Fiesta Brava of Barcelona, while it is a propaganda weekly, has excellent photographs, and a certain amount of news and fact. None of the others is serious, although some, such as Toreros y Toros, are interesting papers. El Clarín of Valencia is well gotten out with excellent photographs but is only a propaganda sheet. Torerías is always interesting and is the most scurrilous of the blackmail sheets. In the old days La Lidia, Sol y Sombra and for a short time Zig-Zag were real bullfight revues in whose bound volumes you can read the bullfight history of their epoch although none of them appears ever to have been free of the financial influence, manifested in one way or another, of certain matadors.
Revistero: bullfight critic or reviewer.
Revolcón: tossed by the bull without being wounded due to the horn catching in the clothing, lifting between the legs, or under an arm.
Revoltoso: bull which turns rapidly, excessively rapidly, to recharge after the man has passed the bull with cape or muleta.
Rodillas: the knees.
Rodillazos: passes made with the bullfighter on one or both knees. Vary in merit according to the terrain they are performed in and whether the matador goes to his knees before or after the horn has passed.
Rondeño: Escuela Rondeño: Ronda school or the Ronda style of bullfighting, sober, limited in repertoire, simple, classic and tragic as against the more varied, playful and gracious style of Sevilla. Belmonte for example, although an innovator, was essentially of the Rondeño School, although born and bred in Sevilla. Joselito was an example of the so-called Sevillian School. As in most talk of schools in art or literature the separating of people into schools is artificial and arbitrary with the critic; in bullfighting more than anywhere else the style is made up of the habits in action, attitude toward the fight and physical capabilities. If a bullfighter is very serious in temperament, sober rather than cheerful in the ring and with a limited repertoire due to lack of imagination, faulty apprenticeship or physical defects that prevent him, for instance, from putting in banderillas, they class him as belonging to the Rondeño school although he may not have any allegiance or belief that the sober way of fighting is better than the gay. He simply happens to be sober. On the other hand many bullfighters who are far from gay or cheerful in the ring simply because they are from Sevilla and trained there employ all the Sevillian tricks, light-hearted airs and graces, smiling forcedly and being very flowery and gracious when they have nothing but cold fear in their hearts. The Sevillian and Rondeño schools of bullfighting as real schools of thought and opposing views on the subject did exist in the early days of professional bullfighting when there was great rivalry between the great matadors of the two towns and their disciples in their ways of fighting but now Rondeño means sober and tragic in the Plaza with a limited repertoire and Sevillano means light-hearted or imitation light-hearted with flowery style and a lengthy repertoire.
Rozandole los alamares: when the bull’s horns graze the ornaments on the bullfighter’s jacket.
Rubios: blonds in men; in bulls the place between the top of the shoulder blades where the sword should enter. Rubias are blondes in women.
S
Sacar: to bring out; Sacar el estoque: to pull out a sword in order that the wound may bleed more freely and the bull go down; or simply to remove it because badly placed. Usually accomplished by a banderillero running forward from behind the bull and tossing the length of a cape across the sword so that the weight of the cape pulled forward on the sword will bring it out. If the bull is nearly dead the matador may pull the sword out himself by hand or with a banderilla sometimes using the same sword to descabellar with. Sacar el toro is to bring the bull out into the ring when he has taken up a position close to the barrera.
Sacar el corcho: to pull out the cork from a bottle. A Sacacorchos is a corkscrew. In bullfighting it is the anti-esthetic, twisting style of working with the cape made by citing the bull too far on the bias when taking him to make veronicas.
Salida en hombros: for a matador to be carried out in triumph on the shoulders of members of the crowd. May mean much or little depending on whether his representative has prepared it beforehand by distribution of free tickets and instructions, or whether it is spontaneous.
Salidas: exits; in bullfighting to da Salida is to send the bull away from the man with the cloth at the finish of a pass. The salida in each pass is the place at which the bull should leave the man’s territory in cases where the bull passes the man. The respective exits of both man and bull from the juncture they make in the putting in of the banderillas and the killing are called their salidas.
Salir por piés: is to run at full speed at the conclusion of any manoeuvre attempted with the bull in order to escape being caught.
Salsa torera: literally salsa means sauce, but salsa is the indefinable quality which being lacking in a bullfighter makes his work dull no matter how perfect.
Saltos: in the old days were jumps made over the bull either unaided or vaulted with the aid of a pole. The only jumps made now are those of the bullfighters who are forced to jump the barrera.
Sangre torera: bullfighting blood — as in coming from a family of professional fighters.
Sano: healthy; bulls must be passed by a veterinary as in good health before being fought. Weakness of the hooves caused by the after effects of hoof-and-mouth disease called glosopeda is not easily detected since it is often only in the fight that this weakness will appear.
Santo: a saint; El santo de espaldas: is said of a bullfighter who has had a bad day; the saint turned his back on him. Bullfighters take their patrons from the local Virgen of their town, village or district, but the Virgen de la Soledad is the patron of all bullfighters and it is her portrait and image which are in the chapel of the bull ring at Madrid.
Seco: dry, harsh; torero seco is one who works in a jerky, sharp rather than suave manner. Valor seco: is natural unadorned courage; golpe seco: is the sharp hard chop the bull sometimes gives with his head to try to dislodge the pic. It is this sort of chop that given by a bull to horse or man makes the worst horn wounds. Vino Seco: is wine that is not sweet.
Sencillo: a bull that is frank in his charges, noble and easily deceived.
Sentido: understanding; bull which pays little attention to the cloth but makes for the man, having in the course of the fight learned more rapidly than the men have fought him through their defective actions with cape and banderillas. If a bullfighter runs and works at a distance rather than skillfully deceiving the bull by being so close the bull can only concentrate on the cloth, the animal, seeing the man apart from the lure, learns to distinguish them apart very rapidly. Thus a bull is made difficult by the men, through fear, working far away from him, and failing to get the banderillas in promptly, while he is made easy and dominated by the man working so close that the bull sees nothing but the cloth and by putting
