In 1956, Bodegas Osborne (Osborne Winery) commissioned the AZOR Advertising Agency to create an advertisement to promote its cognac "Veterano", a billboard that would be distributed throughout Spain. At that time, Manolo Prieto was the Art Director of the advertising agency, and the assignment fell to him. It was at this time, therefore, that Manolo Prieto designed the famous silhouette of the Bull, a defiant Bull, looking straight ahead, attentive to what was happening on the horizon.
His bull was rejected by Osborne on the pretext that it was more appropriate for a stud farm. Far from giving up, Manolo Prieto insisted on going to El Puerto de Santa María to defend his creation. The artist knew as soon as he created the Toro the fame it would achieve, so he fought with Osborne to get his design off the ground, he had to convince them why his silhouette was good. They finally accepted it and tried it out to see what would happen... And the rest is history.
The first billboard, the first Toro, was installed in May 1957, at kilometre 55 of the Madrid-Burgos Road, in the town of Cabanilles de la Sierra. This first silhouette was 7 metres high, had a surface area of 40 square metres and was made of wood. In its golden age, the seventies, the "herd" grew to more than 500 specimens, which were dispersed as far as Ceuta, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Guinea and even the Sahara.
Those first bulls were slightly different from the ones we know today. They had black bodies, and white horns, and on their body, in large red letters outlined in white, the legend "Veterano Osborne" stood out, with a glass of Brandy drawn over the "N" of the word Veterano (Veteran). In 1961, the first bull was manufactured in sheet metal. The white horns disappeared and became black like the rest of the silhouette. The legend Veterano still appears in large red letters.
This structure is made of sixty metal sheets, measuring 190×90 cm, covering an area of 150 square metres, and weighing 4,000 kilos. More than a thousand bolts fastened by double nuts, four metal turrets supported by six cubic metres of concrete, with a total weight of approximately 50 tonnes.
The retouching of the original silhouette of the Bull, which was done later, for the convenience of the blacksmith, was not to the liking of the artist, who even said on one occasion: "They are leaving me with a bull like a goat", which is why he sometimes sent the blacksmith the silhouette of the bull squared off to make his work easier.
In 1988, to save the road law, Osborne withdrew any type of advertising on the silhouette, as Manolo Prieto himself had previously suggested to the winery, leaving the silhouette as we know it today, a huge black bull.
In 1994, the Ministry of Transport and Public Works, under the then Minister Josep Borrell, decided that the 97 bulls should disappear from the Spanish landscape along with the rest of the billboards located on the margins of Spanish roads to enforce the 1988 Roads Law which ordered the removal of visible advertising from the roads. It was at this precise moment that the silhouette experienced one of its greatest moments and where its enormous popularity could be seen. Manifestos of support were written, and signatures were collected by thousands of anonymous citizens asking for his pardon. Writers and columnists, such as Antonio Burgos, Francisco Umbral, Andrés Aberasturi, Consuelo Álvarez de Toledo, Antonio Gala, Fernando García Tola, etc., wrote articles on the matter in the main national newspapers calling for a pardon for the silhouette, and the controversy even went beyond national borders and was written about in international newspapers. Graphic artists such as Martín Morales, Mingote (a moving cartoon in homage to Manolo Prieto), Ricardo and Nacho, drew cartoons in their respective newspapers in homage to the bull and the figure of Manolo Prieto.
That same year, and after popular pressure, the Parliament pardoned the billboard, designed by Manolo Prieto, in application of the legislation on artistic cultural heritage. "The artistic and cultural significance of the bull on the roads and its integration into the Spanish landscape must be protected", reads the proposal approved by the deputies, thus excluding it from the restrictions imposed by the Roads Act of 1988.
The Ministry of Culture of the Andalusian Regional Government went further, and in December 1996 it registered the billboard in the General Catalogue of Andalusian Historical Heritage and in February 1997 the 21 bulls resting on Andalusian soil officially became an Andalusian Historical Monument, thus guaranteeing their future survival, the billboard designed by Manolo Prieto being declared "a symbol of Spain and, in particular, of Andalusia".
However, it was in 1998 when the Supreme Court definitively pardoned the silhouette of the bull on the roads as it understood that "it had ceased to be the emblem of a brand, and had become something decorative, integrated into the landscape".
There are currently 91 bulls left in Spain, a work of art that now belongs by right, not only to the history of Spanish graphic design but also to the Spanish people themselves.
Source: https://www.fundacionmanoloprieto.org/obra-grafica/toro-de-osborne/
