The life, the legend, the biography of one of the greatest bullfighters in the history of bullfighting. It all begins in Spain, in the south where passions run high, if not violent.
We are in the year 1936, the republic is shaken by a military sedition that will escalate into a civil war where on both sides, those known as the Republicans and the Falangists, will commit acts of brutality and atrocious crimes from which Spain will take time to recover.
In 1936, a little boy in his village survives with his mother and sisters, the father is one of the many victims of the civil war which has now become internationalized. This war is the testing ground for the Germans and the Italians where they refine their weapons and techniques.
Spain is poor and will become even poorer with this conflict. The authors describe the history of this country and that of this little boy who will become, not without difficulty, El Cordobรจs.
We discover this world of bullfighting where death is a cult, that of the glorious demise of the bull or the man. A magnificent work about this country where the deep poverty of the people and the wealth of an aristocracy were, until the end of Francoism, which is not so long ago, a thorn in the heel of Europe. This little boy, thanks to bullfighting, rose to the top of social classes.
It is, in a way, a fairy tale, that of a miserable street urchin who fell to the ground many times before being able to say to hell with Rousseau and Voltaire. It is also a lesson, one of hope and the determination of a man. Perhaps this is especially the moral of this book.
