
Bullfighting Library José María de Cossío
Bullfighting has always been a subject that has always attracted writers, and so many authors have supplied their works with motifs and elements taken from the bullfighting world. Books, magazines and all kinds of works in various formats such as posters, photographs, prints, etc. They are located in the Plaza de Toros de Las Ventas. To the works belonging to the José María de Cossío Library of the Center for Bullfighting Affairs, we must add the funds from the Carriquiri Library, freely donated in deposit by D. Antonio Briones Díaz.
With the recent incorporation of the Carriquiri collection, the doors of the Las Ventas Bullfighting Library are reopened, remodeled for this purpose with new spaces that allow, in addition to housing these collections in the best conditions of conservation, to have a reading room so that scholars and researchers can consult the requested works.
The importance and volume of this specialized collection, which also houses works of great value due to their rarity, antiquity, originality or scarcity, make the bullfighting cathedral par excellence have a space that contains one of the most complete existing libraries on the world of bullfighting. bull, at the service of those who wish to delve into everything related to said Festival.
Where are we?
The "José María de Cossío" Bullfighting Library is located at:
Bullring «Las Ventas»
Lay 6 (Low)
C / Alcalá, 237 - 28028 Madrid
To access it, it is essential request an appointment at:
bibliotaurinalasventas@madrid.org
Telephone: 913834289 or 91 276 12 87
E-mail: museotaurinolasventas@madrid.org
Library hours are Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. at 14 p.m.
Check the Library catalog

The catalog offers access to the documents of the José María de Cossío Bullfighting Library: books, magazines, posters, audiovisual records and electronic resources.
Our literary jewels
Among the collections of Las Ventas, the most notable are from a Rule of the Real Maestranza de Sevilla of the year 1732 (the oldest copy in the library), to the original editions of great literary works on bulls ("Sangre y arena", " Las águilas "," La Fiesta Nacional "by Manuel Machado or the novel biography of Juan Belmonte, written by Manuel Chaves Nogales), passing through the famous bullfighting trilogy by Pascual Millán, rare copies of the editions for bibliophiles that Luis Carmena edited at the end from the XNUMXth century, the first mandatory bullfighting by right-handers such as Pepe-Hillo, Paquiro or Guerrita, or the now classic serial bullfighting yearbooks by Dulzuras, Uno al Sesgo, Enrique Minguet, etc.
As for its hemerographic backgrounds, the examples of large tauromachy headwaters from the Restoration period stand out, such as El Tábano, El Látigo, El Gallo Inglés or El Chiclanero; the complete collection of La Lidia; the well-known bullfighting almanacs of Sol y Sombra or El Tío Jindama; and already in later dates, a great part of the emblematic publication El Ruedo.
The birth of the Library
The Library's collection comes, for the most part, from the collection that belonged to the renowned bullfighting critic Celestino Espinosa ("R. Capdevila"), who managed to gather one of the most complete libraries in Spain about the world of the bull, very valuable collection of books and bullfighting pamphlets (many of them, dedicated in handwriting by their authors).
Celestino Espinosa Echevarría was born in Granada in 1900, was a poet, lawyer and great friend of Rafael Alberti in his youth, starting professionally in the bullfighting criticism at the end of the Civil War, after many years as an amateur and subscriber of the Plaza de Madrid. He was a bullfighting critic of the newspaper Arriba and was awarded, among others, the "Rodríguez Santamaría" Prize, instituted by the Madrid Association of the Press. In addition, he was the author of an important biography of the right-hander Marcial Lalanda, and was part of the Board of Trustees of the Bullfighting Museum of Las Ventas, since he was established in 1950, and was the founder and secretary of the board of directors of the Union of Bullfighting Bibliophiles, presided by the Count of Colombí.
Espinosa died on 29 in January of 1956 and a few years after his death, his widow Leonor García Sáenz donated it to the Diputación Provincial de Madrid, which deposited it in the premises of the Bullfighting Museum of the monumental arena, where there was even a opening ceremony of the «Capdevila library» the 15 of May of 1969, festivity of the Patron of Madrid. But lack of space and necessary conditions for its management was suspended, until in the year 2010 the Community agreed to initiate the reform of the Museum and in 2011 the definitive creation of the Library, placing it in the cultural hall «José María de Cossío» of the bullring of Las Ventas.
Manolete in the Library
In the funds of the José María de Cossío Library, the photo album that Santos Yubero dedicated to "Manolete" is kept like gold on cloth. The great Spanish photojournalist began his career as a bullfighting graphic editor and there were seasons when he would witness all the bullfights fought by "Manolete". In 1944 he produced an album about "the artist and the man" that the bullfighter himself "saw, commented on and praised", but which remained unedited. After his death, Santos Yubero decided to pay for a "second" edition, printed in September 1947 at Fournier's printing house –the card house–, whose brilliant success immediately led to a third. The "first", the original album, was donated by him to Las Ventas in 1969.
The Library also conserves the first biographical account that emerged just after the death of "Manolete" in Linares, with all its pulsating historical emotion and the testimonial contribution of a rigorously contemporary moment: "Gloria y tragedia de Manolete", written "al running from the machine "by the popular Sevillian critic Enrique Vila (" Guzmán de Alfarache ") in just 48 hours, and that three days after the irremediable mishap was already on sale at newsstands, quickly selling out several editions.
After the "hot" story of the moment, new books were emerging about the great bullfighter, of retrospective judgment and opinion, with greater serenity and another way - perhaps - of approaching the myth. Few writers better qualified to talk about "Manolete" from memory than José Luis de Córdoba, who saw him debut as a bullfighter in the old Cordovan plaza of Los Tejares, who treated him intimately and who in 1943 published, together with Rafael Gago, the the first great biography on the Cordovan sword, also extended by another bullfighting caliph, "Machaquito". The result, an essential book.
Bulls and poetry
There are numerous poets who have written verses capturing the beauty and crudeness that bullfighting hides: Federico García Lorca, Antonio and Manuel Machado, Miguel Hernández, Gerardo Diego, Alberti, Agustín de Foxá or Fernando Villalón have sung to the man and the bull , to life and death. Lorca himself declared: "Bullfighting is the greatest poetic and vital wealth of Spain." For this reason, to preserve this wealth, the José María de Cossío Library houses some of the best bullfighting books of all time ... and many first editions.
Curiosities
There is also no lack of books and curious documents in the Las Ventas Library, such as the dedication, written in Alberti's handwriting, to Celestino Espinosa Echevarría; a sticker album about famous picadors; the romance, from 1801, about the unfortunate death of the bullfighter Pepe Hillo; the typewritten manuscript of the essay "Racial bullfighting" by Fernando Villalón, or "Scientific bullfighting": Einstein's theory of relativity applied to Bullfighting. On the shelves, numerous titles published in other countries also attract attention: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the United States, Holland, Hungary, England, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland or Vietnam, which shows the fascination that the world of bullfighting it has always awakened outside our borders.