Word: cordob
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...news, gasped Madrid's daily Pueblo, "has come like the explosion of a hydrogen bomb, like the alighting of 100,000 fiery angels." Or so it seemed to Spain's aficionados. The man who dropped the bomb, Bullfighter Manuel Benitez, 29, better known as El Cordobés, seemed unshakable in his decision. The night before, he explained, "I fell asleep, but suddenly at 3:20 in the morning I leaped out of bed ready to break the news. Providence told me to do this." So, after seven professional years that earned him some $7,000,000 plus...
Electrifying! Breathtaking! Scary! Bravado Bullfighter Manuel Benítez (El Cordobés), was performing again. Had the bulls been good? No, but the hailstorm was terrific, gasped the flamboyant matador as his six-seater Piper Aztec landed at Córdoba airport after passing through gusts at 10,000 ft. "It was awful. I've never been so scared in my life," marveled El Cordobés. A good thing he's been taking flying lessons, Manolo said, because at one point, "a gust hit the plane and the pilot was hurt, and I had to take...
More often, however, the crowd ignores his faults and cheers him for all it is worth. "The most interesting thing about El Cordobés' bullfights is the crowd," says AntÓnio DÍaz-Cañabate, one of Spain's most fastidious critics. "They don't care at all about bullfighting. They want to go mad in the physical presence of a fetish...
...Symbol. And a fetish is what El Cordobés is. An orphan named Manuel Benitez who grew up on the streets of Cordoba and broke into bullfighting the hard way-by jumping into the Madrid ring from his seat in the stands-he is every Spaniard's dream of the poor boy who made good. He owns four ranches, a fleet of Mercedes and a six-seat private plane, and is building a seven-story hotel in Cordoba. With his serious young face, battered body and brilliant white smile, he has also become Spain's leading...
...alarm of dedicated aficionados, El Cordobés' success has encouraged a group of imitators who threaten to transform bullfighting from a dramatic and highly emotional art into a crazy circus act. His imitators are even worse than he is. Significantly, one of them calls himself "The Disaster," another "The Assassin," and a third, whose outlandish caricature of the El Cordobés style has brought him warnings by bullfight authorities, fights under the name of "Little Banana." Last month at a town just outside Madrid, one young apprentice tried to introduce a new dimension to bullfighting by parachuting...