A hotel, a photograph, and a death foretold

Photo: Casa Palacio Conde de la Corte

“Are you sure you’ve got the right hotel?” Julia asked. I was booking a Valentine's night stay at the Casa Palacio Conde de la Corte in Zafra. We’d been there once before, escaping the blazing sun in its cool patio. Back then, it was a shrine to the bullfight—it is the former home of the Count of the Court, a prominent breeder of fighting bulls. Now, there appeared to be just one painting of toros bravos lazing in a paddock.

When we arrived at the hotel—at five in the afternoon—all became clear. Piles of framed photographs, furniture and other memorabilia were stacked against a wall. A sign said the hotel’s erstwhile decor was for sale.

Before we had even checked into our room—with its four-poster bed and elaborately tiled bathroom—we were riffling through the stacks like vinyl fiends at a record fair. We agreed to buy just one memento of our stay. 

The photograph we bought, for €20, resembles thousands you'll see in traditional tabernas across Spain. A matador in a suit of lights stares out, bored or distracted, surrounded by local aficionados who are thrilled to meet their hero. An early celebrity selfie. We chose this one because it seemed a perfectly composed example. It wasn't until we got it home that we discovered its significance.

A handwritten note on the back identified it as “La reaparición (return to the ring) of Ignacio Sánchez Mejías in Cádiz, 1934”.

Mejías was no ordinary bullfighter. Unlike most, who came from the tough gypsy barrios of Andalucía, he was a wealthy surgeon’s son who grew up in one of Seville's better neighbourhoods. Even more unusually, he was a leading intellectual, a founding member of the Generation of '27 group of poets and playwrights that included Federico García Lorca. His partner was the celebrated flamenco singer and dancer, La Argentinita. 

Early in his career, Mejías had been immortalized in a photograph taken at the deathbed of his brother-in-law Joselito, the legendary matador killed in 1920 at a corrida where they had shared the billing.

Later, when the actress Margarita Xirgu broke the news to Lorca that Mejías was planning a return to the ring after a seven-year retirement, Lorca is said to have turned pale and replied:

"Ignacio, you have just foretold your own death."

Lorca was right. A month after our photograph was taken, Mejías, standing in for another fighter at a corrida in Manzanares south of Madrid, was badly gored in the thigh. Doctors at the scene wanted to amputate, but Mejías refused and instead travelled to Madrid for treatment. He died of gangrene two days later.

In response, Lorca composed one of his most famous poems: Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, a lengthy, despairing lament.

Here's how it begins:

At five in the afternoon.

It was exactly five in the afternoon.

A boy brought the white sheet

at five in the afternoon.

A trail of lime ready prepared

at five in the afternoon.

The rest was death, and death alone.

The handwritten note on the back of the photograph claims that Lorca is there too, but that is surely wishful thinking. The only plausible candidate is the smiling figure in the centre of the back row. The widow’s peak and dark eyes may resemble his, but the shape of the face is all wrong. Given how horrified Lorca was at Mejías’ return to the ring, it is more likely he stayed away, and if he was there he would hardly have been smiling.

So no Lorca, but a combination of scribbled clues and online detective work revealed the identities of several of the other characters in the picture—and they were an A-list bunch.

The focus of the picture, besides Mejías, is the assured-looking figure in a dark jacket and light trousers standing slightly to the fore. That appears to be Manuel Camacho, an Andalusian landowner and one of the period’s most celebrated bull breeders. 

He represents the beasts that Mejías is returning to face. And between them—spookily given what would happen next—stands Guillermo Bosch Arana, a pioneering Argentinian surgeon, all in white.

Behind him, slightly obscured by the matador’s montera hat, is Manolo Caracol, the great flamenco singer of the era who, alongside La Argentinita and Lorca, led the revival of the art form in the 1920s. The shorter man at Mejías’ left elbow is his brother Aurelio, described in his youth as Spain’s finest horseman.

On the far right, according to the handwritten note, is Domingo Dominguín, patriarch of one of Spain’s great bullfighting dynasties. On the far left is Pepín Bello, a member of the Generation of ’27 and friend of Lorca, Dalí and Mejías—with his trademark pencil moustache. Who is the boy on whose shoulder his hand is resting?

My unproven theory is that that is Luis Miguel Dominguín, Domingo’s son, who went on to become one of Spain’s biggest celebrities of the 20th century. A child prodigy, he fought his first bull aged 11 (he would have been around 8 years old in this photograph). As a 20-year-old, he was on the bill when Manolete died in the ring at Linares in 1947; in the 1950s, he had a scandalous affair with Ava Gardner, on the rebound from Frank Sinatra; and late in his career became a central character in Hemingway’s The Dangerous Summer.

I can find no confirmed picture of Luis Miguel as a child, but compare the fluffy hairline and wide, thin-lipped mouth with a later picture. It is documented too that he and Pepín Bello were close. In the 1950s they teamed up to launch Spain’s first drive-in movie theatre.

This, and my other assumptions about a 90-plus-year-old photograph, could of course be mistaken, and I’d love to hear from aficionados who may have more information about these ghostly characters. 

But I'm pretty sure about the identity of the tall, smiling figure in the black fedora on the right of the photograph. That is Agustín Mendoza, the 6th Conde de la Corte, at whose palatial home we had such a serendipitous stay.