Juan José Padilla

Who is Juan José Padilla?

Juan José Padilla is a Spanish torero. He became a matador de toros, 'killer of bulls', in the town of his birth, Jerez de la Frontera, on June 18, 1994. He was 21 years old. He was known as the 'Cyclone of Jerez' and featured heavily, both personally and professionally, in Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, a shortlisted nominee for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 2011.

On October 7 that same year, he was gored by a bull in Zaragoza, almost dying from his injuries. From a single horn wound through his skull, he suffered multiple fractures to both jaw and skull, facial paralysis, loss of hearing in his right ear and of sight in his left eye.

Five months later in March 2012, he returned to the bullring with an eyepatch - gaining the nickname 'The Pirate' – in Olivenza. The author of Into The Arena, Alexander Fiske-Harrison, who had trained as a torero with Padilla and was now a personal friend, accompanied him for British GQ magazine and ended by describing the result of that day's triumphant return: "it is Padilla alone who is swept up to tour the ring on the shoulders of the crowd. Then I see that it is not the crowd, but other bullfighters. An entire profession is holding him up so that an entire nation can applaud him. That night Padilla is on every news channel; come the morning he will be on the front page of every newspaper. When I meet him at the hotel afterwards, he has tears in his eye."