Luis Rivera

Veterinary Doctor

“THE PANDEMIC IS THE PERFECT EXCUSE TO STIFLE BULLFIGHTING EVEN MORE”

October 2020

How is Mr. Luis Rivera doing?
Good. Excited, eager to finish some work that I haven’t finished yet and with many reasons to be thankful for what life and the Lord have given to me. Spiritually, I’m eager to do, eager to give. I’m in the last third of my life, with the red cape the only thing I ask for is for them not to lower their hands too much and to give me a break between batches, otherwise my hands might bend.

Mr. Luis Rivera, in one of his tackrooms, next to
the harness room at San Miguel Ranch.

Last year you were awarded the Peña Caballista Prize. Were you thrilled to receive this award?
I was very excited. I was born in Cordoba but I studied for my baccalaureate in Malaga. And recalling some verses by Antonio Machado:

Man is neither from where he is born nor from where he dies, but from where he does his Baccalaureate. When I have gone to Jerez, Seville… with my Anglo-Arabian horses, there have been many people who have been very eager to join their affiliation. “You are from Seville”, “You are from Jerez”, “… from Cordoba”. I have always replied:

“I’m from Malaga. “But you were born in Córdoba”. And I replied: “It’s just that we from Malaga are born where we want to be born”. I am a Malaga native who was born in Cordoba. The best part of my life has happened in Malaga. And I am in love with Fuengirola. I have had the pleasure and honour of knowing your father personally (he is referring to the stockbreeder Salvador Cortés García) and all the people who have been famous in the horse world in Fuengirola. I have known that fair of the 80’s. I have known the fervour and passion that that fair generated. For me, being in Fuengirola is a gift. To feel loved by the fans and the people of the horse world of Fuengirola is a gift that is more a consequence of your generosity than of my merits.

After a long struggle, you sold the San Miguel stud farm. Have you felt a certain liberation with the current situation?
More than using the term liberation, which in the end it is, what I have felt is sorrow. It is something very beautiful, very passionate, that demands a lot of dedication. They say that everything has a beginning and an end. Mine has come and I can tell you about it. I have been liberated. But deep down, as it is a culture that I love and with which I am tremendously respectful, it makes me sad that society has turned its back on it. There is a perversion in the scales of values. We have a society that does not know where it is going. It confuses love with desire. It mixes the filial relationship between humans with the filial relationship with irrational animals. I think it is a mental perversion for someone to say that they are in love with a dog. One cannot feel pity, as the famous philosopher Frank Wolff said: “What goes through a man’s mind when, in a situation of danger to another man, he allies himself with the animal? He does not feel sorry for his fellow man, but for the animal that is attacking another human being. When someone feels sorry for an animal rather than for another human being, he has a mental problem.

Do you think bullfighting will succeed?
After ten years, I have seen that it is a sector that will gradually disappear because society is no longer interested in it. This is not being catastrophic or pessimistic. It is realism. A bullfighter is not the reference point in any media. A bullfighting spectacle, with all its beauty and grandeur, is not understood. We have not been able to explain it. We have created a culture in which all living beings are equal, so we enter into contradictions. I feel sorry for the sector.

Moreover, the pandemic has aggravated the situation…
The pandemic is the perfect excuse to strangle bullfighting even more. They have not given aid to all the professionals in the bullfighting sector (banderilleros, picadors, sword fighters, aid…) as their activity has been suspended. The State Public Employment Service (SEPE) has not facilitated access to aid to professionals who pay their social security, their VAT… as if they were stinking people. This is a disease of our government. This is the pitiful thing. The pandemic is the perfect excuse. I’m not going to ban you but I’m going to punch you in the legs.

legs so you can’t get up. I don’t kill you but I let you suffer. This is what is happening in the world of bullfighting.

Changing the subject, what I’m sure you are proud of is your five children?
I feel tremendously proud. Two daughters and three sons. All very good students. Obviously, knowledge doesn’t take up space. It takes time but it doesn’t take place. And that time always has its benefit. Being a cultivated person is important for getting around in the world. What really gives you a place is your education. It’s not your purchasing power, your clothes. It’s your culture that gives you a place,

“I had a dream that I don’t know if it will
will come true. I wanted to have
to have done an oocyte aspiration
oocyte aspiration treatment on a cow, an in vitro
in vitro fertilisation to have
transferred eight or ten embryos,
siblings of father and mother, and
to be able to fight a novillada or a sibling bullfight
bullfight of siblings
bullfight. This would have been a milestone”.

your training, your communication skills, your poise. They are clearly better than their father. This is the pride that a father and a mother can feel. They are the only people who, without any complex, we want them to be better than us. I think my children have surpassed me, full of all the virtues that their mother has.

They have also been fortunate to have parents like Inés, a pharmacist, and you, a veterinarian.
I think so. With children something happens that we normally do with parents. The child is the only being in the world that first condemns, then judges and finally forgives. When it should be the other way around. First judge me, then see if you condemn me or forgive me, and if you condemn me, in the end, forgive me. There comes a time when we parents, when we have finished our life cycle, become suspicious lumps. (We both burst out laughing and he continues). We wander through the world because God is infinitely good.

Maximum respect for elders, please!
That is something that has always been cultivated and should always be cultivated. I say this phrase being exaggerated and extreme. The eldest

has a place, a respect. You have to listen to him very carefully. And if he makes a mistake, forgive him, don’t judge him. Forgive him directly, don’t put him on your level. He is already on another level.

Your son Luis became a novillero with picadors, does he still have the illusion?
No. I always told him, and his mother exactly the same, that his studies came first. He finished his veterinary studies. Now he fights in some festivals with friends. He fights in the countryside. And, above all, as he used to ride horses a lot with me, he has become a great “garrochista”. He has a couple of horses that he enjoys riding. He rides a lot of stalking and demolition competitions. He is focused on his professional life as a veterinarian in the animal nutrition sector. At the same time, he enjoys stalking in the field, which is his great passion. He has made some very good friendships in the world of bullfighting.

Which has given him more satisfaction, the fighting bulls or the horses?
Horses. I have been breeding Anglo-Arabians since 1993, when my first litter was born. I am in love with horses. I have dedicated my whole life to the horse. Professionally, as a veterinarian, then as a dressage rider, judge, vice-president of the National Association of Doma Vaquera. I have taken horses to morphological competitions. The Anglo-Arabian horse has been my weakness. I have always said one thing that my friends have understood and my enemies have not. When I talk about Anglo-Arabian horses, I never disparage other breeds. I like a good Spanish, Arab, Spanish-Arabian horse…. All good horses are alike because, before being of a breed, they are of a species. There is no need to cling to anything. All good horses have things in common and then they have the nuances that define that breed: their gaits, their hair, their mane, their face, their profiles. But their back, their trunk, their croup, their neck, their back, their withers are either good or not good.

I believe that you are now looking forward to the breeding of Arabian Fernández Bolaños.
Yes, we are taking embryos from some mares and implanting them in recipient mares, state-of-the-art reproduction technology. I am very excited about it. We are collaborating with two vets and a colleague who has spent three years in New Zealand and who only makes embryos. She and I are running the transfer programme. We are achieving success.

And any dreams you have yet to fulfil?
I had a dream that I don’t know yet if it will ever come true. I wanted to have done an oocyte aspiration treatment.

Luis Rivera at his beautiful country house Las Arboledas in Alhaurín El Grande.

in a brave cow, an in vitro fertilisation to have transferred eight or ten embryos, siblings of the father and mother, to have fought a novillada or a bullfight of their own siblings. This would have been a milestone. And technically it is possible. It needs time and work. It is not a pipe dream. It has some numbers but it is achievable. In the world of bullfighting, to see six bulls, brothers and sisters of the same age, with the same age, different behaviour or different reactions, would have been very interesting for the bullfighting fans. It is a veterinarian’s dream.

But you haven’t given up?
No. The idea is there. The cows are still calving. The means to do it are there. Who knows if tomorrow someone will join forces with me and want to make it a reality. I, for one, am going to say yes.

What surprised me was to discover that he is studying second year theology.
Yes, if anything that happens to you in life makes you a better person, that’s a good thing. If it turns you into something more energetic, you’re doing badly. Faced with the difficulties that life has presented me with, I have had, like the Lord, to take up my cross and adapt it, and for that I have needed and continue to need His word. From there, I am able to get up and, from there, I am able to do the things I do, say, dream, hope, desire or understand, but from there. I do not retreat. It is from there that I have the strength and from there that I am capable, if I don’t wander around like a suspicious lump.

Promise to go to Bangladesh to see the mission of Benjamín Gómez Salas.
I promise to go to Bangladesh. There is a very good phrase that says: The probability of existing is so small that, once it has happened, we cannot waste a single second. Think for a second about all the things that had to happen for you to be born. Life is a miracle. So, let’s give thanks every day. Doesn’t that make you breathe easier?