‘By The Sword’ – My column in Taki’s Magazine

Despite what I said below, my column is to be titled ‘By The Sword’, for it’s wider scope. The pen is not always mightier than the sword and those who live by the sword don’t always die by it. (Espada, ‘sword’, is also the old word for a torero, professional or amateur, who kills. Matador de toros, as I explain in the post below, is a professional term I have never warranted.)

My first column under this sobriquet is on the dark and sanguine issue of abortion and homicide, called ‘The Difference Between Killing And Murder’. It is online here. The archive for the column is here.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Author in the ring

Welcome

This blog was begun in October ’08 to keep track of my research into the world of bullfighting following my essay for Prospect magazine on the topic. To read it, see the ‘Page’ tab on the right hand toolbar, alongside pages on the author, the structure of the bullfight, a more scientific piece on the nature of the Spanish fighting bull, pages on the ethics and the aesthetics of bullfighting, and my contact details. Two other posts I would mention here are this one on the popularity of bullfighting in Spain and the often quoted ‘Gallup’ polls, and also this one on the 533 famous professional bullfighters killed in the ring in the past three centuries.

Since then I have watched 1,000 bulls toreado (‘fight’ is not the word, there is nothing fair here), run the bulls myself in Pamplona, danced alongside Spain’s flamenco dancers, trained alongside her matadors in the arena with young bulls and killed a single bull myself in a ring in Córdoba and written the entire experience as a book, Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight.

Into The Arena can be purchased at all major British bookshops or from Amazon UK at a discount by clicking here (in paperback, eBook or audiobook.) In the US, it can be purchased from Amazon in all these formats by clicking here. In Canada here. In Australia here. In India here. In Singapore and South East Asia here. It also available from iTunes, via its recommendation by Condé Nast’s GQ magazine here.

The book was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011 and listed as essential reading for both the Summer and Christmas in the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph. As the reviewers said,

“Complex and ambitious, compelling and lyrical.” Mail on Sunday *****
“An engrossing introduction to Spain’s ‘great feast of art and danger’. Brilliantly capturing a fascinating, intoxicating culture” Sunday Times
“A compelling read, unusual for its genre, exalting the bullfight as pure theatre.”Sunday Telegraph
“He did not expect to fall in love with bullfighting, but then he had his eyes opened by the beauty, dignity and art of the sport.” The Times
“Thrilling. An engrossing introduction to bullfighting.” Financial Times
“An informed piece of work on a subject about which we are all expected to have a view.”Daily Mail
“Fantastic. A fascinating insight into a world we know little about but are quick to judge.” Metro
“An informative and breathtaking volume of gonzo journalism” The Herald (Scotland)
“Intoxicating. Pulses with the writer’s love of the world and the people he has found himself among.” The Australian (Australia)
“A thoughtful, well-researched and deeply felt investigation… vivid evocations of men who risk their lives in a beautiful, vulgar battle with the bulls.” The Prague Post (Czech Republic)
“An entertaining account which seeks a demonstration of the values which distinguish bullfighting from butchery.” The Spectator
“Particularly good. Transposes spectacle into words with great success, conveying the drama with eloquence and precision.” Literary Review
“Acknowledges the morally questionable nature of the bullfight. Interesting explorations of fear, bravery and drive.” League Against Cruel Sports
“A larger than life character. Hugely enjoyable and easy read. Moving and instructive.” Club Taurino of London
“One of the most engaging books on the Bulls I have ever read. Feel every failure, every success, every thrill.” Taurine Bibliophiles of America

They also say,

“Although Fiske-Harrison develops a taste for the whole gruesome spectacle, what makes the book work is that he never loses his disgust for it.” (Daily Mail), “It’s to Fiske-Harrison’s credit that he never quite gets over his moral qualms about bullfighting.” (Financial Times), “Uneasy ethical dilemmas abound, not least the recurring question of how much suffering the animals are put through.” (Sunday Telegraph), “Fiske-Harrison admits that with each of his fights he knows more, not less fear. When he kills his first and only bull he feels not triumph but overwhelming sadness for a life taken.” (Mail on Sunday) and “The question of whether a modern society should endorse animal suffering as entertainment is bound to cross the mind of any casual visitor to a bullfight. Alexander Fiske-Harrison first tussled with the issue in his early twenties and, as a student of both philosophy and biology, has perhaps tussled with it more lengthily and cogently than most of us.”(Literary Review)

Website of the book here for full reviews.

What is on this blog is for those who have read the book and wish to go even further into the world of the bulls, which has now and forever become a part of my life.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Manzanares in the Maestranza, El Juli in Hospital

José Mari Manzanares by Antalya Nall-Cain

I have written about the terrible reality of the corrida before. However, when my girlfriend and I went to La Maestranza yesterday for what we hoped would be the most interesting corrida of the entire feria de abril, the last thing I expected was to see Julián López Escobar, ‘El Juli’, carried out of the ring in front of me and rushed to intensive care.

Juli is, with the possible exception of Enrique Ponce, the most complete torero ‘on the sand’ in Spain today. At thirty years of age, he has been toreando fighting cattle for twenty-one years, sixteen of them professionally. A child prodigy, he stunned Mexico and later his native Spain with his surety in front of the bulls, and his phenomenal skill at reading the animal and developing even the most recalcitrant of beasts into a charging spectacle. Although when I researched for my book, Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, in 2009 I was not quite so admiring of him, I still gave him his due. In 2010 I remember my teacher, the former matador Eduardo Dávila Miura, and I agreeing that Juli did not transmit emotion, the very purpose of any artistic endeavour. However, since then I remember the Welsh aficionado Noel Chandler explaining to me how Juli was something almost unnatural in his breadth of knowledge, ‘an encyclopaedia of toreo’. And I remember seeing him in Pamplona in 2012, when all the crowd were busy celebrating the triumphant reappearance of the newly one-eyed Juan José Padilla, while he performed some of the most beautiful passes I have ever seen, seemingly for his own pleasure alone. Among the breeders of bulls he is known most of all for his aficion for the toros bravos themselves, which he spends months every year studying in the countryside. (I met him once in the Aero Club in Seville when he was being awarded a prize. He was charming and polite, although unnervingly young and humble for such a colossus in the plaza.)

So, given our current favourite torero’s (José Tomás doesn’t count), José Mari Manzanares, inability to repeat his stunning triumphs of the last two years when we saw him with six bulls last weekend, we had hoped that the presence of this Maestro would lead to some amazing faenas. However, the very first bull, with the brand of Toros de Cortés (which means Victorinao del Río, which means Juan Pedro Domecq), which had been unwilling to charge, and when charging had frequently stopped, or hooked his horns from side to side, somehow caught this technical virtuoso, and opened up his femoral artery with a 15cm deep horn wound and also knocked out three of his teeth. Had he been gored like this fifty years ago, he would have died.

(Photo: EFE / Julio Muñoz)

As you can see from the photo, he was swept out of the ring by the other bullfighters, Manzanares (on his right) then killed the bull. The other matador, Antonio Nazaré, a young Sevillano went on to have a great triumph with his second bull, receiving two ears, while Manazanares also did with his last, although he was denied the second ear by the presidenta for losing his muleta when he tried naturales on the left.

It is so strange that the finest toreo, and best toros, I have seen so far in the feria (which isn’t saying much) have been on the day that such a fine torero should come so close to losing his life. (And certainly losing his ability to torear the bulls of Miura on Sunday, something which was to be unique in having such a gran figura with such famously difficult bulls.) However, the one thing about the corrida de toros that we say time and time again, is how incredibly real it is. Men risk their lives for this, whether you like it or not….

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

My column for Taki’s Magazine: ‘Among the Gold and the Gore’

Last night I filed my copy – and I fear as a result missed the birthday party of Don Tristán Ybarra n the feria – about bullfighting and reality television, the corrida and Made In Chelsea for my column in Taki’s magazine. It has been edited, as is always the case. However, this time I prefer the long version, not least as is is not quite so savage to dear Ollie Locke – a former flat mate of my girlfriend – and his amusing little book, Laid in Chelsea. After all, it was she who introduced him to reality television in the first place, while turning it down herself.

P.S. The photo in the blog post below is of us at the very corrida discussed from the Spanish newspapers.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Last night, while seated in the La Maestranza bullring of Seville to watch the great matador José Marí Manzanares dance with and dispatch six bulls, I was reminded once again why I became so fascinated by the spectacle we ‘Anglo-Saxons’ incorrectly call bullfighting. (It is not a fight, but a highly structured drama centring on a ritual sacrifice. Nor is it a sport, but is conceived of as an art-form, unique in having a risk of death for the practitioner, but reviewed between the ballet and theatre in the newspapers and spoken of in terms of its aesthetics rather than its athletics.)

My girlfriend, a recent convert but still possessed of strong and valid doubts about the activity, asked what it was amongst the gold and the gore that draws me back to the plaza de toros time and time again. The answer I gave was the absolute reality of the corrida. As an art-form, it represents man’s struggle with death, and how it should be best faced, which is with a striking and elegant defiance. However, it is the only art-form that also is what it represents, which is a man standing alone on the sand with an animal intent on killing him. And kill they do: 533 noted professional toreros have died in the past three centuries, and a far greater number number of less famous ones and amateurs. My first instructor in how to torear, the matador Juan José Padilla, almost joined their ranks two years ago when a bull removed his eye and a chunk of his skull. Needless to say he was back in the ring five months later, sans depth perception, a triumphant return which I covered for GQ magazine here.

I come to Seville whenever I can to see these exceptionally brave men stand in front of these beautiful bulls, the best time of year being now as the town prepares for its annual celebration of the death of winter, the feria de abril, ‘April Fair’. This year I am not here on holiday, but have come to meet with another matador, Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez, about whom I am co-producing and writing a documentary. Cayetano has risen to fame and riches through risking his life in this way, a risk he knows all too well. His father, the matador Paquirri, was killed by a bull when Cayetano was just seven years old.

Whatever one thinks of the ethics of injuring and killing an animal as part of a public spectacle – personally I find it no less reprehensible than killing one at a third the age and after a far worse life for meat I do not medically need to eat – there is an undeniable honour and glamour in earning your status and fortune by dancing with death.

Which is why it stands in such stark contrast to what passes for honour and glamour in my home country of Great Britain. I say this having just attended the book launch of an acquaintance who had brought out his memoirs at the ripe old age of 26. I say memoirs, it is more accurately described as a travelogue of his sexual adventures, something made clear by its title Laid In Chelsea. It is currently at number three in the Sunday Times bestseller list. The reason for this literary success is because the author, Ollie Locke, is famous for being in a reality television show called Made In Chelsea.

Now, I must admit up front my envy at his book sales. My own travelogue Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight didn’t make it onto the bestseller lists, even after it was erroneously but flatteringly shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book Of The Year Award. (See earlier comments about the corrida not being a sport.)

The fact that having your life filmed and broadcast, and then writing about your carnal exploits, can bring wealth and glory neatly sums up so much that is wrong with modern Britain, a generalisation that extends to our Saxon cousins in the US. Spain may be financially bankrupt, but at least it isn’t morally so.

I should add here that the book is actually quite readable, although that is helped by the fact that I know some of the people in it. Indeed, I’m even related to one of them. The author himself, Ollie Locke, is a witty and charming young man, with the bizarrely marketable talent of being good at being himself. However, he is also the sort of person – I’m sure he won’t mind me remarking on this – that had to have explained to him for an hour why the girl to whom he lost his virginity might not like that event written up and published.

Having the sexual ethics of an alley cat to one side, the reason I cannot watch Made In Chelsea, despite having grown up there and knowing some of the cast, is that no one on it ever does, or has ever done, anything worthy of note. It is a parade of moderately good looking people having rather stilted conversations about one another’s utterly irrelevant and pedestrian personal lives. I know these people and find it unspeakably dull; God knows what anyone else sees in it. Fiction was invented to get away from exactly this sort of tedium.

However, when people use that oxymoronic and false phrase ‘Reality Television’, it is not Made In Chelsea, or Big Brother, or any of those other monstrosities that spring to mind. It is the television footage of Cayetano’s father, being tossed by that bull in 1984, and then the footage afterwards of him in the hospital, fully conscious, reassuring and calming the panicking surgeons as they struggle in vain to stop his life from haemorrhaging out onto the bed sheets where he lay. That was how Paquirri justified his salary and his celebrity, by paying the ultimate price, and facing it with a courage and grace at the end that beggers belief.

That his son – both sons in fact – should follow in his shoes, makes him truly deserving of having his life told as a story, on film and in print. Something Ernest Hemingway felt similarly about when he wrote the articles about Cayetano’s grandfather Antonio Ordóñez that were posthumously published as the book The Dangerous Summer. And when he fictionalised his 1924 encounter with Cayetano’s great grandfather, also called Cayetano, in Pamplona as The Sun Also Rises. Some people are deserving of recognition and others not. The British and American inability to distinguish between them is at the heart of our ethical, and aesthetic decline.

La Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla

ABC de Sevilla

PUERTA DEL PRINCÍPE: SÁBADO DE PREFERÍA
[Gate of the Prince: Saturday of the Pre-Feria]

13/04/2013

Máxima expectación y rostros conocidos en el encierro en solitario de José Maria Manzanares
[High expectations and familiar faces at the bullfight of José Maria Manzanares as sole matador]

El torero y escritor inglés Alexander Fiske-Harrison con su novia La. Hon. Antalya Nall-Cain
(Photo: Mario Niebla del Toro / ABC de Sevilla)

A Dedication to Seville

Ten years ago, I arrived in Seville with a broken engagement behind me and a career as investment banker in front of me. I had come to Andalusia to recover from the horrors of the one and prepare myself for the horrors of the other. I had been to the city a few times – I discovered it on the way back from an early attempt to ‘be an author’ in the Sahara desert – and seen a few corridas de toros, that we English wrongly call bullfights, as though it were a sporting contest rather than what it is, a scripted drama culminating in a ritual sacrifice. The Spanish word for the activity, toreo is as well translated by the word ‘bullfighting’ as flamenco would be by ‘heel-dancing’.

(We had the word bullfight and its cognates sitting idle in our vocabulary since we banned our own grim ‘sport’ of bull-baiting with dogs, which gave us our national symbol, the bull-dog, as Spain was given its, the toro bravo by the corrida, hence it is also called the fiesta nacional. For discussion of its current popularity and the oft-quoted ‘Gallup’ polls, see this post. On the ethics of the corrida, see this one.)

The corridas confused and fascinated me – when done well, they were beautiful, when badly a sin: they appeared to exist on a moral precipice – while the atmosphere of Seville – the buildings and people so clearly European when seen on my way back from Africa, yet somehow alien when arrived at from London – had a similar effect. And underneath both was the soul-twisting lament of the flamenco voice with its dark rhythms that pulse like the inevitable approach of death.

Author, Algerian border, 1998

So I came back to Seville in 2003, staying at the Hotel Alfonso XII according to my copy of that poet of flamenco, toreo and Andalusia, Federico García Lorca. My copy of the aficionado’s bible, Ernest Hemingway’s Death In The Afternoon, charts my progress through the town to what was the bullfighter’s hotel in those days, the Colón, and on east to Cordoba.

Now, ten years later, I am coming back to a different Seville as a different person. Spain’s economy, like a bull stumbling after a bad wound from the picador’s lance, is being watched by the world to see if it will get up to charge again – something even the bull does not know – or will have to be replaced with something different. I, however, have moved from my seat in the audience to the callejón, the alleyway around the ring where the toreros stand.

After that first visit in 2003, I came back a few times, most notably for the feria de abril, the ‘April Fair’, of ’07, when I saw the matador El Cid torear a bull of Victorino Martín so well that I based an entire essay for Prospect magazine on it. As a result of that, I was sent back to Seville to write a book on toreo, and it was then that first met a series of people who would both populate my book and change my life.

This history of a taurine tribe

The Dedication of a Friend

Among the most important of these are the family that bred the only bull I have ever killed with a sword.

I first met Enrique Moreno de la Cova in the Spring of 2009, as I described in chapter five of my book Into The Arena: The World Of The Spanish Bullfight, and he invited me to come and face his cattle along with the now one-eyed – and world famous – matador Juan José Padilla. Enrique and his elder brother Félix had inherited the ‘mark’ (literally a ‘brand’) of cattle called Saltillo, now more famous as an encaste, a ‘strain’ of the breed that is the toro bravo. The original Saltillos still exist, though. (They are named after their first owner, the Marquess of Saltillo, from whom Enrique’s grandfather, Félix Moreno Ardanuy purchased them in 1918.) However, their decline was noted as long ago as 1937, when the matador and father of modern toreo, Juan Belmonte remarked in his memoirs, “What has happened to the breeds of Parladé, Saltillo and so many others?”

When I faced the Saltillos, I had only been in the ring once before – with the far simpler and smoother cattle of Fuente Ymbro with Padilla and our friend Adolfo Suárez Illana, son of the founding Prime Minister of Spanish Democracy – and the account of my injuries on their horns is fully recorded in chapter six of the book.

Matadors Finito de Córdoba & Juan José Padilla give a lesson(Photo: Nicolas Haro)

For me the Saltillos are Seville, and so I was sad to hear from Enrique that he and his brother no longer had them. However, they remain within the family, having moved to a cousin, José Joaquín Moreno Silva. One of my greatest memories of my two years living in Spain is an afternoon spent with the Saltillos at their ranch Miravalles under the tutelage of my friend, the former matador Eduardo Dávila Miura (whose grandfather bred the most famous bulls of all, including the one that killed Manolete). We then returned to the former ranch of the Saltillos, La Vega, with all three grandsons of Don Félix, who, along with Maestro Dávila Miura, inscribed a copy of their forebear’s philosophical musings on the bulls.

Now, I must pack for my return to Seville, where I shall be watching corridas with Enrique, drinking at La Fresquita with him, his wife the artist Cristina Ybarra (who has an excellent blog here) her brother Tristán and his aficionada pura wife Maria O’Neill, joking with Adolfo and Padilla as he dresses before going to torear in the Maestranza, and returning to the ring myself with Eduardo.

 

Spring is here, and Seville, she has not abandoned me .

(The heraldic motto ‘NO8DO’ is to be found all over Seville, from the drain covers to the police cars. The skein of wool in its centre represented by an ’8′ is called a madeja in Spanish, so it reads, “no madeja do”, a play on the words no me ha dejado, ‘she has not abandoned me.” These were reputedly said by King Alfonso X when the city remained loyal to him against his son, Sancho IV of Castile.)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

P.S. Obviously, I never became an investment banker, although in a strange twist of fate and friendship Enrique and Cristina’s eldest son did come and work for a summer with my father in the City doing exactly that, exchanging Saltillo for Fiske & Co PLC.

Enrique Moreno de la Cova and the author en route to the bullring of his Saltillos (Photo: Nicolás Haro)

Hemingway’s Fiesta, “condemned to being very good.”

Today sees the final performances of the West End show, Hemingway’s Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises). If you have not been to see it, good luck on getting tickets now – I was told by the producer ten days ago that they only had ten tickets left for evenings performances, and a few more for matinées (there is one today.) There’s always a chance: details are here.

I very much like the cast and crew. I first met with them at the best tapas bar in London, Capote y Toros on the Old Brompton Road, to ‘assist’ the production as detailed in The Daily Telegraph.

7 February 2012

by Tim Walker

Curtain also rises

Ernest Hemingway’s granddaughter Mariel will attend the first night of Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises) at the Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall on Thursday night.

The cast of the show, which is based on his first novel, about bullfighting, were given tips on the Spanish “art” by Alexander Fiske-Harrison, an Old Etonian, who trained as a matador.

“I tried to convey the essence of what it is to be a bullfighter,” says Fiske-Harrison, who is courting Antalya Nall-Cain, the daughter of Lord Brocket.

I met them again at the First Night after-party at Boyd’s Bar in the old Grand Hotel and at the same place venue last Friday to listen to their excellent on-stage supporting jazz band Trio Farouche.

So I was, in some ways at least, happy when The Spectator told me they couldn’t fit my review in. The production has had largely excellent reviews, as well as selling out. However, I am most inclined to agree with Michael Billington’s review. It is worth saying that we saw the play the same night, and even discussed it before, during the interval and after. His award of three stars seems about fair, and not just because that was the same number my own last venture on stage got in Billington’s review.

Anyway, given that it is now far too late for any negativity in my piece to have an effect, I hope the producers, director, cast and crew take this in the spirit of honest appraisal it was intended. After all, being “condemned to being merely very good” is still very good, n’est-ce pas?

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

From left to right (foreground): Cayetano Ordóñez – ‘Niño de la Palma’, Ernest Hemingway & Cayetano’s son, Antonio Ordóñez

The Sun Is Now Set

I first read Fiesta, Ernest Hemingway’s debut novel published as The Sun Also Rises in the US, in 2008 while researching for a magazine article on bullfighting for Prospect magazine (online here). At the time I was also rehearsing to act in a play I had written in a theatre in London’s West End. Which was why I got talking to another cast of actors in a nearby pub who told me they were ‘workshopping’ a stage adaptation of Fiesta the Old Vic.

The vagaries of a life are strange, and as the scenery came down on my play, and I was once again unemployed, my literary agent suggested I turn my magazine article to a book on bullfighting and so I set of to Spain. During my two years, I went from spectator to participant, briefly becoming a torero myself.

Since publishing that book, Into The Arena, I have returned to Spain many times, sometimes to run with the bulls in Pamplona (as described in The Spectator last July) – often alongside Ernest’s grandson, John Hemingway – sometimes to get back in the training ring (no animals harmed) alongside matadors like the great Cayetano Rivera Ordóñez – great grandson of Cayetano Ordóñez, on whom the matador in Fiesta, Pedro Romero is based. (In fact, the book was originally drafted as a non-fiction short-story under the title ‘Cayetano Ordóñez’.)

It is illegal to touch the bulls.

El Juli, José Marí Manzanares, Curro Vázquez and, behind, the empresario Simon Casas, yesterday in the Congress. (Photo: Luis Sevillano/El País)

Yesterday, the lower chamber of the Spanish parliament voted on the matter brought before them by 590,000 signatures on a petition to make Los Toros Bien de Interés Cultural, protected cultural interest. Given that the vote was a landslide, 180 votes against 40, with the 107 socialist congressmen abstaining, it seems a given that the senate will nod it through, passing it into law, and, among other things, federally overturning the vastly, and distortingly, over-reported regional ban on corridas de toros, novilladas and rejoneo in the autonomous community of Catalonia which came into effect in 2011.

All I can say in this brief post, is that this is yet another step forward for animal welfare in Europe. And if you want to know why, read the post on this blog – you can find it on the list of posts on the right – about how bullfighting is not a moral wrong.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Taki’s Magazine: Barnaby Conrad, Ernest Hemingway and Los Toros

Barnaby Conrad in his San Francisco bar, ‘El Matador’ (Photo: Neils Mortensen)

I have written an ‘appraisal’ of Barnaby Conrad for Taki’s Magazine (I prefer the term to ‘obituary’, as it is marked. It is certainly far from the eulogy I wrote for my friend Bomber below.)

Conrad was an early influence on me, being one of the taurine authors I read between Summer 2003 – when I read Ernest Hemingway’s Death In The Afternoon – and Summer 2008 – when my own first article on the bulls was published in Prospect magazine (see the ‘Page’ menu on the right). In fact, I think his bestselling fictionalised account of the death of Manolete, Matador, was the second book I read on the subject, followed by the English theatre critic – and co-founder of our National Theatre with Sir Laurence Olivier – Kenneth Tynan’s Bull Fever. Both Hemingway and Tynan are formidable, and in this case overwheming, acts to follow or precede. Sadly, I never got to meet Don Bernabé, despite an invitation from a mutual friend to do so last year. Now I never will.

This article marks my debut in ‘Takimag‘, an online magazine founded six years ago by Panagiotis ‘Taki’ Theodoracopulos, the well-known paleoconservative and writer (Among many, many other things, Taki has written the ‘High Life’ column for The Spectator since 1977, for most of those years twinned with the ‘Low Life’ column of the great Geoffrey Bernard.) I have been invited to contribute a bi-weekly column. God knows what my next one will be on…

Anyway, my initial contribution on this other bon viveur, gentleman-amateur and author, Barnaby Conrad can be accessed by clicking here.

Alexander Fiske-Harrison

Barnaby Conrad standing in front of the poster that lists him and the greatest matador in history, Juan Belmonte, fighting on the same ticket

“He came to Seville, and he is called Manzanares”

Matador José Mari Manzanares dances a ‘chicuelina’ with the 510kg, 4-year, 10-month-old J P Domecq bull ‘Rasguero’ (Photo: Alexander Fiske-Harrison)

Gregorio Corrochano, the bullfighter critic of the influential newspaper, A. B. C., in Madrid, said of him, “Es de Ronda y se llama Cayetano.” He is from Ronda, the cradle of bullfighting, and they call him Cayetano, a great bullfighter’s name; the first name of Cayetano Sanz, the greatest old-time stylist. The phrase went all over Spain.

from Ernest Hemingway’s Death In The Afternoon

In this year’s Feria de San Miguel, which ends the season’s bullfights in Seville, Spain, I watched the new hero of that city return to the sand to confirm yet again his supremacy in a mano a mano with another very skilled young matador named Alejandro Talavante.

* * *
Note

From here on in, I shall refer to what we English call a ‘bullfight’ as a corrida de toros (literally ‘running of bulls’) or just a corrida, and bullfighters as toreros (lit. ‘those who play with bulls’). All activities involving bulls in Spain come under the blanket term fiesta de los toros, aka the fiesta brava or fiesta nacional or just the Fiesta, the activity of bullfighting is called tauromaquia – we have the old word tauromachy in English – and the art, technique and style of bullfighthing is called toreo.