Juan Belmonte

Juan Belmonte García (14 April 1892 – 8 April 1962) was a Spanish bullfighter. He fought in a record number of bull fights and was responsible for changing the art of bullfighting. He had minor deformities in his legs which forced him to design new techniques and styles of bullfighting.

Life Born in Seville, his family moved to the Triana neighbourhood when he was three, according to the biographer A. Diaz Canabate. Belmonte began his bullfighting career in 1908, touring around Spain in a children's bullfighting group called Los Niños Sevillanos. He killed his first bull on 24 July 1910. As an adult, his technique was unlike that of previous matadors; he stood erect and nearly motionless, and always stayed within inches of the bull, unlike previous matadors, who stayed far from the animal to avoid the horns. As a result of this daring technique, Belmonte was frequently gored, sustaining many serious wounds.

One such incident occurred during a November 1927 bullfight in Barcelona, Spain. Belmonte was gored through his chest and pinned against a wall. Several other toreros rescued him. Among the spectators that day were the King and Queen of Spain and the Infanta Beatriz.

Belmonte's rivalry with José Gómez Ortega (a.k.a. Joselito or Gallito), another contender for the appellation "greatest matador of all time", from 1914 to 1920 is known as the Golden Age of Bullfighting. The era was cut short when Joselito was fatally gored on 16 May 1920, at the age of 25, at a bullfight in Talavera de la Reina, a small town not far from Madrid. Belmonte then had to carry alone the weight of the whole bullfighting establishment, which proved to be unbearable, and which in 1922 led to the first of his three Belmonte moved to a 3,500-acre (1400 ha) ranch in Andalusia, where he "lived the life of a gentleman bull-breeder".

Juan Belmonte was the single matador that changed the style of bullfighting. Born with slightly deformed legs, he could not run or jump like other boys pistol from a drawer in his study and shot himself. suggest that this may have been a 'copycat suicide'; on hearing of his friend Hemingway's suicide in 1961, Belmonte is said to have answered 'Well done.'

The circumstances surrounding his death are the source of some controversy. A popular version, described in Life, has Belmonte's doctor telling him that, because of his lifelong injuries and trauma, he could no longer smoke cigars, ride his horses, drink wine or perform sexual acts with women. He decided he was ready to die, had his favourite horse be brought to him, took a handful of cigars, two bottles of his favourite wine, and rode out to his finca.

A film about his life, Belmonte, was released in 1995.

He is interred at the cemetery of Seville, 18 m from the grave of his rival of seven seasons, Joselito.

Ernest Hemingway features Belmonte in Death in the Afternoon and as a minor character in The Sun Also Rises.

He is also mentioned in Shadows Over Loathing