Dominguin: Spain's Greatest Bullfighter

by Keith Botsford

Glory was all the pay I wanted,"" said the juiced, jaded old bullfighter to Botsford as they sat in a hotel room in Madrid and talked of cabbages and kings and Love and Death and Spain and how the bull must die so the matador can live and how Hemingway ""drank a lot and was a liar in all sorts of ways"" and didn't know much about bullfighting apart from the bravura. Wisdom, lust, the killer instinct -- it's all in the blood, eh, amigo, says Luis Miguel Dominguin who was gored at least 20 times while he was the prince of the matadors in Spain during the '40's and '50's. Yes, yes, he reaped many pestas which he freely disbursed to his predatory relatives and his sycophants and his whores and his children, but never forget ""there is a clear and beautiful emotion in killing"" and ""fighting bulls is a sexual act"" and there was a time when both pretenders to the Spanish throne sent their cards to Miguel and Picasso asked to paint his portrait. Lots of machismo and chestthumping, gypsy dancers and the strains of Carmen and those smoldering fires in the Spanish soul. Ole -- if you enjoy this bloody mystique; otherwise just plain old Yankee bull.

260 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Novelist, essayist, journalist, biographer, memoirist, teacher, translator, and editor.

See obituary at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/bo....