‘Solitude afternoons’, by David Carabén

I have long want to dedicate a retahm of compliments to Pedri. Because he insists on telling us that his talent, that we have already sung many times, has no roof. Because seeing it in each game uploading to the control cabin, from where it accelerates or pauses the rhythm of their classmates, it is an unpaid show. Anyway, because it is in a state so extraordinary that, even when it takes the liver through the mouth, it seems that Dance.

But yesterday I went to see Soledad afternoons and I had not been two hours in a long time with my mouth. Not talking about the movie, right here and first of all, even if it is the week of the epic in Lisbon and from 0 to 5 in the female classic, it would seem unfair. And not because, surely, we are before the first masterpiece that Catalan cinema brings to world cinema. It would seem unfair because Albert Serra’s gaze on the work of Peruvian bullfighter Andrés Roca Rey is such a beautiful and precise song to determination and talent, these two stages of the same substance, such as what I would not know how to sing to anyone, Pedri included.

See Pedri get on the control cabin, from where it accelerates or pauses the rhythm, it is unpaid

It is always a gift for the eyes to see how someone tests a technique that has dedicated themselves to perfecting a lifetime. But, when the point of view is the exact, halfway between fascination, respect and admiration, on the one hand, and anguish, horror and physical shaking, on the other, the contest becomes a kind of metaphor of all things. There are nerves, tension, sweat, blood, the snaps of the wounded beast, the chillidos of the swallows, applause and bleachers, the precarious stylization of violence, the solemnity of the ritual, surprised bursts of beauty, the agonizing death of the feared beast, humor after the battle … In fact, salts of the cinema exhaus. Mattered and exhausted. And is not why we like sport: because it allows us to attend live to the appearance of talent, the unexpected deployment of capacities in order to overcome new obstacles? What sense would, if not, see twenty -two types in short underpantness pursuing a spherical leather painted colored colors? What does football make sense? And the bulls? None. And at the same time, they have all the meaning of the world.

Like the great sports athletes that we might not look, like the battles heroes that are not ours, Roca Rey regularly dedicates himself to summoning the miracle. To open grave. Day after day. Who knows with what objective. Seeing it is as fascinating as looking at the flames of a fire. And in the end, as his banderillero says, after King has survived by the hairs to a mortal cornada: “I love ‘a ma’ beer ‘cold that to’ his ‘dead’”. Well that.