Word: cordobes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Sixteen Stabs. Yet, to true aficionados of the world's only blood art, El Cordobés is the death of the afternoon. "He's like Chubby Checker playing Bach," sniffs one ardent detractor. "It's pop bullfighting...
...taurine odyssey," proclaimed one Madrid newspaper this month, and to his flocks of worshipers, some of whom have paid $65 a seat to watch him, the 29-year-old El Cordobés is the most exciting bullfighter who ever strode the sands. Brushing his great shock of sandy hair out of his eyes, he dances in front of the bull's horns, pulls its tail, turns his back on it, and usually manages to smear its blood all over himself. If the bull won't charge him, he charges the bull; and to keep things exciting...
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...