Michael Coy
ON June 6, 1891 in the city of Sevilla, Ignacio Sánchez Mejías was born.
43 years later, he was dead.
His story is tragic and full of ironic details, and it gave rise to one of the greatest poems in the Spanish language.
Ignacio’s father was a well-known doctor, and he expected his son to study medicine. Although very intelligent, the boy had no interest going to university. He wanted to be a bullfighter.
Some time around 1910, he ran away from home, and stowed away on a ship to Mexico. There, he became a professional torero.
During the First World War he returned to Sevilla, where he married the sister of the great matador, Joselito. This was unusual, but Ignacio was an unusual man.
Joselito was a gypsy, and even today it is not normal for gypsies to ‘marry out’, but Ignacio was totally accepted by the gypsy community. As we would say today, he “ticked all their boxes”.
Ignacio Sánchez Mejías loved flamenco music. A century ago, all the important bullfighters were gypsies. He fitted in effortlessly.
His most successful years as a matador were 1919-22. At the age of 31, he retired, because he wanted to be a writer. He would make several comebacks over the next dozen years.
In May 1920 he was a spectator in the bullring of Talavera de la Reina, and witnessed the fatal goring of Joselito. There is a famous photograph, taken in the bullring’s infirmary, showing Ignacio cradling the head of his dead brother-in-law.
Throughout the 1920s Ignacio clocked up remarkable achievements in various fields of endeavour: he wrote a regular and much-admired column on bullfighting, starred in a major film and wrote a stage play which was performed in Madrid.
The play, set in a lunatic asylum, dealt with the ideas of Sigmund Freud.
He also befriended the andaluz playwright and poet, Federico García Lorca. The two men, whose fates would prove to be inextricably tied, would both die young.
In the early 1930s Federico and Ignacio were together in New York, giving lectures. It seemed that Ignacio had a strong future ahead of him as a writer and teacher.
But he couldn’t leave the bulls alone.
He fought all over northern Spain in the summer of 1934, and he assured his friends that, once the Pontevedra corrida was over, he was definitely hanging up his suit of lights for ever.
But things started going wrong.
His friend Domingo Ortega was fighting the bulls in La Coruña on 6 August when a matador’s sword went flying into the crowd and killed a spectator.
On the same day, news arrived that Domingo Ortega’s brother had died suddenly. The matador left immediately for Madrid, asking Ignacio to complete his programme of contracted fights.
The next corrida was to take place in Manzanares, a small town a hundred miles south of Madrid. Ignacio felt obliged to go, but there were two problems.
First, he wanted to be in Pontevedra for his retirement ceremony, and Manzanares made that difficult. If he could fight out of turn as the first matador, perhaps he could make it.
Second, he felt that the infirmary of the Manzanares bullring was inadequate. In the event of a goring, he insisted, he wanted to be taken by ambulance to Madrid.
When the car taking him to Manzanares broke down, Ignacio decided to drop out, but a friend pointed out that he would be accused of cowardice, so he pressed on by public transport.
In Manzanares the management team would not allow him to fight out of turn. He had to face a bull named “Granadino”, the one all of the matadors were trying to avoid.
Inevitably, Ignacio was mortally wounded by a bull he hadn’t wanted to fight, at a corrida he was never scheduled to attend. The ambulance journey to Madrid was badly delayed, and he didn’t reach the hospital until seven the following morning.
It was too late to save his life.
The poet Lorca (who himself had less than two years to live) wrote “The Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías”, one of the most beautiful tributes ever dedicated to a lost friend.
“It will be a long time, if ever,
Before another Andalucian is born
Who was so noble, so rich in adventure.
I sing his elegance in words that moan,
And remember a sad breeze in the olives.”
