Ivan Fandiño, a celebrated 36-year-old matador known for taking on bulls considered too dangerous by others, tragically lost his life during a bullfighting event in 2017.
Fandiño, originally from Spain’s Basque region, was performing at the Aire-sur-l’Adour bullfighting festival in southwest France when the fatal incident occurred. While maneuvering in the ring, he became entangled in his cape and fell. A half-ton bull then gored him as he lay on the ground.
He suffered severe injuries, including damage to internal organs such as his lungs. Though he was rushed to a nearby hospital, he reportedly went into cardiac arrest and died shortly after. Witnesses say that on the way to the hospital, Fandiño told medics, “Hurry up, I’m dying.”
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| Matador Ivan Fandiño/ LUIS ROBAYO/AFP via Getty Images |
Fellow matador Juan del Alamo, who later killed the bull, expressed disbelief at the incident: “I can’t believe it. None of us understand how it could have happened; it was all so fast. The bull knocked him down with its hindquarters and he fell face down.”
Fandiño had narrowly escaped death on previous occasions. In 2015, he was tossed into the air by a bull in Spain, and in 2016, he was knocked unconscious during a fight in Bayonne, France.
His death marked the first fatal bullfighting accident in France since 1921, when matador Isidoro Mari Fernando was killed in the Béziers arena.
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| Matador Ivan Fandiño/ DANIEL VELEZ/AFP via Getty Images |
While Fandiño was honored by Spain’s royal family and prime minister—King Felipe referred to him as a “great bullfighting figure”—his death reignited debate around the practice itself. An estimated 1,000 bulls are killed annually in French arenas.
Bullfighting remains a deeply polarizing tradition. Though banned in the Catalonia region in 2010, Spain’s constitutional court overturned the decision in 2016, declaring bullfighting part of the nation’s “cultural heritage.”
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