Ricardo Ortiz was handling the bulls in their enclosures ahead of the Corrida Picassiana in Málaga on Friday, April 3
Credit: Alex Zea/Europa Press via Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- A retired matador was killed by a bull as he was helping to prepare for a bullfight in Spain on April 3
- Ricardo Ortiz, 51, was handling the bulls in their enclosures ahead of the Corrida Picassiana in Málaga
- The Corrida Picassiana is a Picasso-themed bullfight during which three bullfighters take on six bulls
A retired matador was killed by a bull as he was helping to prepare for a bullfight in Spain.
According to CNN and The New York Times, 51-year-old Ricardo Ortiz was handling the bulls in their enclosures ahead of the Corrida Picassiana, an event held at La Malagueta, a historic bullring in Málaga in southern Spain, when he was injured by a bull.
Lances de Futuro, the company organizing the bullfight, said in a statement that "one of the bulls gave [Ortiz] a severe goring that caused his death" on Friday, April 3.
"We want to convey our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the deceased, a much-loved and respected person in the bullfighting world," the company added.
Credit: Alex Zea/Europa Press via Getty
According to the Times, the Corrida Picassiana — a Picasso-themed bullfight during which three bullfighters take on six bulls — went ahead as planned on Saturday, April 4.
Event organizers had a tribute for Ortiz and held a moment of silence at the beginning of the bullfight, the outlets reported.
The Spanish newspaper El País and bullfighting news site Mundotoro reported that Ortiz, who was born in Málaga in 1974, came from a family of bullfighters and had a successful career of his own, beginning in the early 1990s.
Ortiz had recently retired from bullfighting and had been working with Lances de Futuro, organizing bullfighting events.
Bullfighting and bullrunning have become controversial in recent years, following the deaths of participants and criticism from animal rights activists, including Humane World for Animals, which reports that 180,000 bulls are killed annually in bullfights.
The event is banned in several countries, including the U.K., Canada and Italy. According to the outlets, bullfighting is not explicitly banned in countries including Mexico and the U.S., but new laws passed in recent years have attempted to make the events less fatal for bulls.
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Deaths in bullfighting and bullrunning are relatively uncommon, the Times reported, and Reuters previously found the number of bullfighting festivals in Spain dropped by a third from 2010 to 2023.
Earlier this year, a 71-year-old was killed during an incident on the first night of the local Carnaval del Toro (Carnival of the Bull) festival when an animal charged him, piercing the upper part of his ribcage.
In 2015, an American college student, Ben Milley, was seriously injured after being gored by a bull at the same event while he was studying abroad in Salamanca.
In 2016, a 29-year-old matador was gored to death during a bullfight, the Times reported.
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