Juan Belmonte biography
Juan Belmonte, in full Juan Belmonte y García, (born April 14, 1892, Triana, close to Sevilla, Spain—died April 8, 1962, Utrera), Spanish bullfighter, one of many biggest toreros and probably the most revolutionary in his fashion.
About 1914, early in his profession (which prolonged from 1910 to 1935), Belmonte launched the strategy of standing erect, practically immobile, and far nearer to the bull’s horns than earlier matadors had dared. Rather than utilizing footwork to flee damage (accepted as the usual process earlier than his time, however thought-about an indication of cowardice afterward), he diverted the bull’s cost with skillful capework in order that the horns would barely miss him. The American novelist and aficionado Ernest Hemingway wrote (in Death within the Afternoon, 1932) that Belmonte “would wind a bull around him like a belt.”
In 1919 Belmonte set a Spanish bullfighting document (unbroken at his loss of life 43 years later) for a single season by showing in 109 corridas (bullfights). For eight years the good Joselito (José Gómez Ortega) was his chief rival and shut buddy till Joselito’s deadly goring in 1920. Belmonte himself survived quite a few near-fatal gorings. After his retirement he reared preventing bulls on his ganadería (ranch) at Utrera, Spain. His autobiography, Juan Belmonte, matador de toros: su vida y sus hazañas (1935), as instructed to Manuel Chaves Nogales, was translated into English as Juan Belmonte, Killer of Bulls (1937) by the novelist Leslie Charteris.