A Spanish matador has suffered horror injuries – after falling into a feed grinder at his country farm.
Alberto Álvarez became the latest in a string of bullfighters to be rushed to a hospital intensive care unit after a domestic accident came close to costing his life.
An emergency operation after he was airlifted to hospital reportedly spared him a double leg amputation following the drama at his rural property in Ejea de los Caballeros near Zaragoza in northern Spain.
Investigation
Juan Cano and Antonio M. Romero
It occurred just six months after Álvarez, 45, proposed to his girlfriend Verónica.
She said in an emotional interview after he was rushed to hospital: “He managed to get out of the grinder on his own, thinking about our daughter Macarena and using all his strength.
“He really is a very good and strong person.
“Anyone who knows him knows the strength he has. Bullfighters are made out of a different kind of material.”
Explaining he slipped when he went to cut a rope, she added. “He was doing the farm work he does every day to feed his animals.
“The doctors had to stabilise him because he had lost a lot of blood. They did an incredible job and saved his life which was their main focus at first, and then they saved his legs.”
Álvarez was admitted to intensive care at Miguel Servet University Hospital in Zaragoza after his life-saving operation.
Medics told local press the surgery was “long and complicated”. He is now being kept under constant watch to try to minimise the risk of complications including infections and thrombosis.
Álvarez, an active bullfighter until last October, began to learn his trade when he was just 13.
Previous incidents
On 20 April one of Spain’s top matadors was left seriously injured in the ring after being gored in the behind.
Jose Antonio Morante Camacho suffered the horror injury during a famous annual festival in Seville.
The 46-year-old admitted after his painful encounter with a 512kg bull named Cladestino left him with a 10cm wound to his posterior anal margin, which partially damaged his sphincter muscles and perforated his rectum: “It’s the one that has hurt me the most.
“I was in immense pain and also very afraid because I thought I was bleeding. I feared it might have reached my guts.
“When I got to the infirmary and saw the bleeding was slight, I relaxed, but it did hurt a great deal.”
Three days later Peruvian matador Andres Roca Rey suffered a “very serious” goring in his upper right thigh at the same Feria de Abril festival in the same bullring.
He had been gored just 18 months earlier in the gluteus, with shocking footage at the time showing the animal tossing him in the air like a rag doll after impaling him in the buttocks.
And on Sunday bullfighter Alberto Duran was rushed to hospital and underwent emergency surgery for a serious injury to his testicles after being gored during a performance in Madrid.