WHEN Spain’s star bullfighter, Jose Tomas, took on six half-tonne bulls in the Roman amphitheatre at Nimes, in southern France, fans wept and critics hailed him as a god.

His gory trophy haul of eleven ears and one bull’s tail from a single afternoon’s fight on Sunday made him one of the greatest matadors ever.

The unusual pardoning of one his bulls, deemed too noble and brave to kill at the end of the fight, added to the legendary nature of a bullfight that propelled Tomas’s face to the front page of El Pais, El Mundo and other major Spanish dailies on Monday.

“Extraordinary,” wrote Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, who was among those present. “I have never seen a bullring so packed, and the people so overwhelmed.”

“Some of us wept at the sight of such excellence, of perfection,” wrote El Mundo’s respected bullfighting critic, Zabala de la Serna. “I write this with sunny tears, blinded by emotion.”

Write-ups of the historic fight featured, like all such reviews, in the arts pages of newspapers that continue to treat the bullfight as culture, rather than sport.

Tickets had long ago sold out for the comparatively rare opportunity to see one of the greatest living bullfighters face six bulls. Most bullfights see three matadors take on two bulls each but, as the beleaguered bullfight seeks salvation from an onslaught of criticisms over its cruelty and dwindling public funding in crisis-hit Spain, fans had long seen this fight as an opportunity to stem the anti-taurine tide.

“Catalonia is here!” was one of the cries heard, as bullfight fans from Spain’s northeastern region crossed the border to watch a pastime that also has historic roots in southern France.

Bullfighting was banned in Catalonia at the turn of the year when the region’s parliament acted on a popular petition.

Controversy was stirred over whether the ban was really about protecting animals, or about the identity politics of Catalonia as nationalists and separatists seek to differentiate it from the rest of Spain.

Tomas fought at Barcelona’s La Monumental bullring a year ago, bringing to an end what fans claimed were six centuries of Catalonian bullfighting.

After Monday’s performance, critics agreed that Tomas now deserved a place in the pantheon of great matadors, alongside legends like Manolete, Juan Belmonte or Gallito.

“Jose Tomas is an exceptional bullfighter. . . There have always been stars in bullfighting, but Jose Tomas is different to them all,” wrote Vargas Llosa in El Mundo. The number of Spanish bullfights has fallen by a third in recent years as town halls, which funded many fights, run out of money. Some 1,700 fights were registered in 2010, with around 7,000 bulls killed. — The Guardian, London