Francisco Romero

Who was Francisco Romero?

Francisco Romero was a significant Spanish matador. He reputedly introduced the famous red cape into bullfighting in around 1726.

He was the founding father of a bullfighting dynasty, fundamental for bullfighting history. He was apparently the inventor of several characteristics that started to be used in a key period for bullfighting when the modern on foot system was defined, as the use of the muleta and estoque to kill the bull face to face. He was the father of Juan Romero, also a bullfighter, and grandfather of the great Pedro Romero.

During the first years of the 18th century, at Ronda, Francisco Romero, at the end of a bullfight, asked for permission to kill the bull by himself. Up to this moment, only nobles mounted on horses dared to fight a bull. That afternoon, after provoking the bull a couple of times with a linen, Francisco Romero killed the bull with his sword. He soon repeated the same feat at other bullrings and became an authentic professional, giving birth to the modern style of on foot bullfighting. The use of linens could have been done before Romero's feat. Those linens evolved step by step towards the modern muleta or red cape and capote or purple and yellow cape, but it is very plausible that was Romero the one that popularized his use as the bullfight essential prop.