Misfortune in the bullring in Madrid and death of the mayor of Torrejón

See How the ancient Spaniards hunted bulls on horseback in the countryside

Another of the most characteristic images of bullfighting. It narrates an event which, although its veracity is questioned by some authors, is usually identified with a real event that took place on June 1801 in the Madrid bullring, in which a bull leapt into the arena and carried off several people, killing two of them, one of them the mayor of the nearby town of Torrejón of Ardoz, who in the picture appears skewered, already dead, on the horns of the bull.

The most striking feature of the engraving is its unique point of view, its impossible and absurd perspective, which places the viewer at the same height as the audience. The composition is deliberately asymmetrical and unbalanced in the distribution of the masses, as Goya arranges the chaotic crowd grouped together in only a quarter of the available space, with sketchy, foreshortened figures, leaving the rest of the space almost empty, no doubt with the aim of increasing the sense of anxiety and unease that he intended to convey. Furthermore, the action takes place entirely in the stands of the bullring, without the arena playing a leading role, which breaks with the usual location of composition of bullfighting scenes. 

Although it refers to a specific event, Goya omits any detail that would allow us to identify the figures. Among the people crowded together on the right of the scene, we see how some figures flee to the left, while others are almost paralysed with fear, as in the case of a woman in the foreground on the right, whose face is unhinged with fright and who is being held by a man in a hat. There are bodies on the ground, crushed or trampled by the bull. The bull is on the right of the composition, in profile, its head covered by the skewered body of the mayor of Torrejón, from which one of the animal's horns is sticking out.

Count la Viñaza has already drawn attention to an enigmatic figure with his head peeping out from the outside of the barrier, observing the scene with a calm look, who seems to have Goya's physiognomy and could therefore be a self-portrait. Perhaps Goya's intention in this print was to denounce the insecurity of bullrings.

Martínez-Novillo relates this engraving, because of its crude bullfighting drama, to that of the death of Pepe Hillo, entitled The Unfortunate Death of Pepe Illo in the Bullring in Madrid, although in that case he changes the scene of a spectator being caught for that of a bullfighter.

Bagüés and Lafuente Ferrari were the first to situate the action depicted on the 15th June 1801, when the fourth bull from a Palaciosrubios (Salamanca) bull-ranch jumped into the bullring in Madrid and fell in the passage of the marshals' exit gate. Mayer and Martínez-Novillo, for their part, also speak of the royal functions of 1789, with historical references to bulls that jumped the barrier.

This print, despite grouping the figures in a very small part of the composition like the one immediately before it, entitled Lightness and Daringness of Juanito Apiñani in the one in Madrid, contrasts sharply with it, as that one had a playful sense and this one has a dramatic one.

Goya made a preparatory drawing for the present engraving, although very different, also entitled Misfortune in the bullring in Madrid and death of the mayor of Torrejón