Isabel Laguna I El Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz), (EFE).- The iconic Toro Osborne celebrates this Monday the 25th anniversary of its pardon, when the Government accepted the Supreme Court ruling that established that the famous silhouette had exceeded initial advertising sense” and had become “a decorative element of the landscape”.
The agreement of the Council of Ministers of March 20, 1998 pardoning this landmark of Spanish advertising allows 92 horned giants to continue today on the side of the country’s highways. They are joined by others in Mexico, Japan and Copenhagen.
“We are very proud that more than 25 years ago a popular movement was started that asked to keep the Osborne Bull on the roads. The favorable ruling of the Supreme Court in 1997 was certainly great news for us, but the best part was experiencing the affection shown by so many people at that decisive moment.
Today, the Osborne Bull has become synonymous with our culture and way of life,” Rocío Osborne, director of Communications and Public Relations at the winery, told EFE.
The problems for the silhouette of the animal, “black and big as night”, as a poet wrote, began in 1988 when the Highway Law was approved, which gave one year to remove advertising from the roads to avoid the risks of that distracted drivers.
Years of efforts to save it
Osborne ordered the red letters with the brand of his brandy to be erased from the backs of the 97 bulls that he had distributed throughout the country, thinking that this was in compliance with the legislation.
But in September 1994, the BOE published the royal decree of the New General Highway Regulations, which insisted on the 1988 prohibition and which understood that, despite the erasure of the letters, the silhouette was still an advertising element.
The winery filed an appeal. And even in November 1994, the then Minister of Public Works, Transport and the Environment, José Borrell, announced that he would promote the change of the Highway Law to preserve the figures, following the recommendation made by the Congressional Infrastructure Commission.
The bull did not breathe until the Supreme Court ruled in a sentence: “the silhouette of the Bull has overcome its initial advertising sense and has been integrated into the landscape as an element of setting that is alien to the propaganda message of a brand.”
“In these moments, for the majority of the citizens who contemplate it, even knowing its primitive meaning, it has ceased to be the emblem of a brand to become something decorative integrated into the landscape,” insisted the Supreme Court.
Estimates the appeal that the winery had filed against the penalty of one million euros and one peseta that was imposed for displaying visible advertising on the road and against the prohibition that the famous bulls were near the tracks.
since 1957
In compliance with that sentence, the Governing Council approved what may have been the least controversial pardon in history, with which the famous bulls were definitively left on the edge of the roads.
Designed by the publicist Manuel Prieto, the figure was born in 1957. Chestnut black, caramelized with pythons, saddled and with a generous chin, the Road Bull, as it was also known, had its first presentation at kilometer 55 of the NI, in Cabanillas de la Sierra (Madrid), made of wood and four meters high.
At the beginning of that decade and despite his success, he received his “first goring” when the state highway regulations established that, in order not to distract drivers, the morlaco had to stay away from the tracks. So they gave raisins back and grew in size.
From five meters and wood, they went to metal, fourteen high and 4,000 kilos in weight supported by four metal turrets anchored in concrete footings.
The cover of the New York Times Magazine
By the time legal problems began in 1988 that threatened to give him the last straw, in 1972 the Bull was on the cover of The New York Times Magazine to illustrate a report on late-Franco Spain.
Listed in 2011 as an Asset of Cultural Interest by the Junta de Andalucía, the iconic Bull has inspired great artists of the 20th century, including Salvador Dalí, Annie Lebovitz, Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton and Keith Haring, to the point that The Osborne Foundation, in its hundred-year-old wineries in El Puerto de Santa María, has dedicated the “Toro Gallery” to him.
Because beyond the roads, the most famous bull has claimed multiple lives. It is transformed into a 500-kilo glass sculpture with 2,000 Swarovski pieces embedded. It is also part of the set design of the musical “Viva Forever” inspired by the songs of the Spice Girls that opens in London. A performance that brought together the five members of the group, while also witnessing such passionate encounters as the one that Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem had at their side in the film “Jamón, jamón”. EFE
