How many Picadors are allowed to address the bull during the first thirty minutes in the bullring?

When I was young and pretty I was at a bullfight getting a little experience as a bandillero during the school holidays and one of the picadors had his eyes on me and was trying to chat me up , eventually he asked me for my phone number and he looked around for a place to write it down and seeing the bull he wrote my number on the bulls back. So that is the closest thing to addressing a bull that I can personally recall.

However I do know that bulls are sometimes posted from one location to another and on those occasions it is necessary for the sender to write the delivery address on the side of the bull before sticking on the stamps and sending him off. But it would be unusual for the picador to be given that job of addressing the bull as usually the bulls owner or his secretary would do that.

This raises serious freedom of speech issues. In some principalities and some centuries Picadors have been allowed unlimited time to address the bull before a fight and their speeches have been known to ramble on for several hours touching on all sorts of interesting and pertinent subjects such as was Voltaire the first bullfighter , but also progressing into various unusual directions like is the prime minister actually a Martian in disguise. As you can imagine with several Picadors each making similar long addresses to the bull and trying along the way to outdo each other , it was often close to midnight before the last Picador had finished his address and by then the spectators and the bull were fast asleep. This problem led to the decision at the annual Bull Congress of 1784 in Madrid that Picadors must limit the length of their address to the bull to five minutes and a maximum of four Picadors could address a bull. Obviously the Picadors considered this resolution an infringement of their freedom of speech and went on strike refusing to jab any bulls with their lances and instead just riding once around the ring before retiring. The king of Spain was outraged at this uncooperative behaviour of the Pics. and had them sent off to the salt mines. The remaining Pics. abandoned all resistance and obeyed the rules from then on.