Miura bull

The Miura is a line within the Spanish Fighting Bull or Toro de Lidia breed of Spain. It is bred at the Ganadería Miura in the province of Seville, in Andalucia. The ranch is known for producing large and difficult fighting bulls. A Miura bull debuted in Madrid on April 30, 1849.

A Miura bull charges at matador El Fundi at the Seville bullring

The Miura derives from five historic lines of Spanish bull: the Gallardo, Cabrera, Navarra, Veragua, and Vistahermosa-Parladé.[1]

The bulls were fought under the name of Juan Miura until his death in 1854. Then they were under the name of his widow, Josefa Fernandez de Miura. After her death, the livestock bore the name of her eldest son Antonio Miura Fernandez from 1869 to 1893 and then the younger brother, Eduardo Miura Fernandez until his death in 1917.[2]

Reputation

Bulls from the Miura lineage have a reputation for being large, fierce, and cunning.[3] It is said to be especially dangerous for a matador to turn his back on a Miura.[4] Miura bulls have been referred to as individualists, each bull seemingly possessing a strong personal character.[5]

In Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemingway wrote:

There are certain strains of bull with a marked ability to learn from what goes on in the arena ... faster than the actual fight progresses which makes it more difficult from one minute to the next to control them ... these bulls are raised by Don Eduardo Miura's sons from old fighting stock...

Famous bulls

The brand of the Miura ranch
  • Murciélago survived 24 jabs[6] with the lance from the picador in a fight October 5, 1879 against Rafael "El Lagartijo" Molina Sanchez, at the Coso de los califas bullring in Córdoba, Spain.
  • Islero gored and killed bullfighter Manolete on August 28, 1947. Islero had poor eyesight and tended to chop with his right horn.[7]

Notes

  1. mundotoro.com Archived 2010-05-26 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Origen. Ganadería Miura. Archived 24 August 2018.
  3. "Animals: Pamplona's Encierros". Time. July 11, 1932. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
  4. "PLAIN PEOPLE: The Best Is Dead". Time. September 8, 1947. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
  5. Villiers-Wardell, p. 117
  6. Cossío, Los Toros, tomo3: "El toro bravo II", ISBN 978-84-670-2531-6, Espasa Calpe, 2007, Spanien, p 584.
  7. geocities.com
gollark: Descriptivistically speaking, words are defined by how people actually use them, now, in practice.
gollark: If you include all fighting ever under martial arts, it's kind of a useless term.
gollark: The modern meaning is mostly that.
gollark: Although I don't know of any actual wars mostly fought with unarmed combat, because that would be silly.
gollark: I don't really know anything about it other than that it seems to be associated with unreasonable claims a lot nowadays.

References

Books

37.59637°N 5.47804°W / 37.59637; -5.47804

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