Mozart, Chopin, Picasso… The great masters whose genius was expressed from childhood are summoned. Superlatives too. With his youthful face and short stature, Marco Pérez looks like a kid. However, he is almost 16 years old and in Istres, this autumn, he will dress in gold in order to walk the paseo of his first novillada piqué.
But many years ago…
Mozart, Chopin, Picasso… The great masters whose genius was expressed from childhood are summoned. Superlatives too. With his youthful face and short stature, Marco Pérez looks like a kid. However, he is almost 16 years old and in Istres, this autumn, he will dress in gold in order to walk the paseo of his first novillada piqué.
But it has already been many years since it was labeled as a phenomenon. And the Spanish press therefore compares him to the greatest, captivated as it is by the kid from Salamanca, since a video has circulated with breathtaking virality, in which he displays, at the age of 8, a talent surprisingly early, in front of a toro on the sand of the Glorietta in Salamanca.
The buzz hasn’t waned since. This spring, an almost innocuous sequence of the teenager in the patio of cuadrilles in Las Ventas de Madrid exceeds in a few days the million views on the TikTok profile of the empresa of the bullring. The enthusiasm it arouses is not limited to social networks. In Madrid, on May 15, he comes to a practical class. 10,000 people, mostly young people, acclaimed him and carried him in triumph after he had cut four flags from his bulls. A few months earlier, on October 12, as part of a festival in Seville, he crossed the Prince’s door with his ears and tail.
“He raises a lot of hopes. He’s gifted like you see in bullfighting every 25 years.”
The dazzling trajectory of a kid who is not separated from a fetish stuffed animal, imposes another comparison, this one more natural: with El Juli, this other phenomenon of precocity. Like him, because he was not of legal age, Marco Pérez went to Mexico to perform there.
Il lit Garcia Lorca
During his American tour, the young Salmantine still finds himself at the center of attention and controversy. Well in spite of himself. In Colombia, the President of the Republic himself stands in his way. Gustavo Petro, former guerrillaan anti-bullfighting man who was the first to suspend bullfighting in Bogota when he was mayor, uses the pretext of the boy’s age to ban him from performing in Cali and Manizales.
In Spain, everyone is arguing about it: the prestigious apoderados make him calls with their feet, the ganaderos and the figuras invite him to hold. That’s a lot of pressure for such skinny shoulders. “The responsibility is great for those around him”, confirms Jean-Baptiste Jalabert, his apoderado since 2019 who does not want to ignite. “He raises a lot of hopes. He’s gifted like you see in bullfighting every 25 years. The last was El Juli. Comparisons are inevitable but you have to let it grow and do things the way they should be done. »
The learning continues. In Mexico or in Castellón, he experienced some setbacks, especially in the sword. Son of a former novillero, now a butcher, Marco Pérez has the profile of a good boy with a well-made head. To Rosario Pérez, an ABC journalist, who met him at his home in Salamanca, he says he reads Garcia Lorca and does not rule out the idea of becoming a doctor or a journalist. Asked about this, Morante de la Puebla evacuated the subject: “He is a bullfighter. » Full stop.
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