A 51-year-old retired matador was gored to death on the eve of an annual bullfight in Malaga, Spain, on Friday, according to a statement from Lances de Futuro, the event’s organizers.
Ricardo Ortiz, a bullfighter from Malaga, was handling the bulls in the corrals of the bullring ahead of the event, known as the Corrida Picassiana, the organizers said.
“The tragic incident occurred,” Lances de Futuro said in a statement, “when one of the bulls gave him a severe goring that caused his death.”
The bullfight, which was sold out, according to the organizers, went ahead as planned on Saturday, with a tribute to Mr. Ortiz and a moment of silence at the start of the event.
Lances de Futuro could not immediately be reached on Sunday.
Mr. Ortiz started his bullfighting career in Malaga in the early 1990s, according to the Spanish bullfighting news site Mundotoro, following in the footsteps of his father, Manuel Ortiz Benítez.
Recently, Mr. Ortiz — who had retired from bullfighting — had been working with Lances de Futuro, which organizes, operates and promotes bullfighting events, including the Corrida Picassiana.
The Picasso-themed bullfight is held annually at the Plaza de Toros La Malagueta, a bullfighting stadium in Malaga that was first used in 1876 and that accommodates more than 9,000 people.
It was frequented by the painter when he was child. (Bullfighting is a recurring theme in Picasso’s works.)
Spaniards have long been drawn to bullfighting, but its popularity has declined sharply in recent years and opinions in the country are now more divided.
Bullfighting has also become a political issue, with many on the right equating its survival with the preservation of “the Spanish soul” while those on the left have criticized the practice as barbaric.
Internationally, animal welfare organizations have long worked to end the sport, citing cruelty against the animals involved. About 180,000 bulls are killed annually in bullfights, according to Humane World for Animals.
Bullfighting has been banned in several countries, including Britain, Canada and Italy. In the United States, bullfighting is not explicitly banned, but it is illegal to kill the bulls.
While injuries are frequent, human deaths in bullfighting are relatively uncommon.
In 2016, a 29-year-old matador was gored to death during a bullfight. In 1985, a popular young Spanish matador was killed by a horn through the heart.
In 2017, Ivan Fandino, a 36-year-old Spaniard, was fatally gored during a bullfight in France, which was the first bullfighting death in that country in nearly a century, according to the BBC.
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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