The Sun Also Rises
How Cayetano appears in its pages: Nineteen, from Ronda, and the real thing — the young matador the book offers as the one unruined man in it.
Read the character guide- Matador
Cayetano Ordóñez
The Ronda matador who was the sensation of the 1925 season, became Pedro Romero in The Sun Also Rises, and founded a bullfighting dynasty his son Antonio completed.
Details
- 1904–1961
- 24 January 1904
- Ronda, Andalusia
- 30 October 1961
- Madrid
- Spanish
- Matador
- Niño de la Palma · Cayetano Ordóñez y Aguilera
About Cayetano Ordóñez
Ronda is the town where the modern bullfight was largely codified, and Cayetano Ordóñez came out of it at the moment Spain most wanted a new figure. The 1920s belonged to the rivalry between Juan Belmonte and José Gómez Ortega, called Joselito, until Joselito was killed in the ring at Talavera in 1920 and Belmonte retired. The vacancy was real, the money in bullfighting was enormous, and a twenty-one-year-old from Ronda who worked close to the horns walked straight into it.
Cayetano Ordóñez was born at Ronda in Andalusia in 1904, the son of a family who kept a shoe shop called La Palma — which is where the name he fought under, Niño de la Palma, came from. He was appearing in small rings by his teens, and on 11 June 1925 he took his alternativa in Seville from Juan Belmonte, the most famous matador alive. He was twenty-one, and that season he was the sensation of Spain.
Ernest Hemingway saw him at Pamplona in July 1925, weeks after the alternativa, and put him almost directly into The Sun Also Rises as Pedro Romero — nineteen in the novel, disciplined, working close to the horns without tricks, and the one person in the book the crowd cannot spoil. The ear was real: Ordóñez cut one at the Pamplona feria and presented it to Hadley Richardson, who kept it. Belmonte, on the same cartel and out of retirement, is in the novel under his own name, so the two men share the page as they shared the season.
The career did not hold that height. Gorings took the edge off his nerve, and Hemingway — who had made him immortal at twenty-one — wrote about the decline without mercy in Death in the Afternoon. He fought on after the Civil War, working at times as a banderillero, and retired for good in 1950. He had five sons who all went into the ring, and one of them, Antonio Ordóñez, became the finest matador of his generation and the hero of Hemingway's The Dangerous Summer — so the father's disappointment and the son's triumph both ended up in the same writer's books. Cayetano Ordóñez died in Madrid on 30 October 1961, four months after Hemingway.
Life events
Born at Ronda on 24 January, to a family who kept a shoe shop called La Palma.
Fighting in small local rings while still a boy.
Takes his alternativa at Seville on 11 June from Juan Belmonte, and becomes the sensation of the season. At Pamplona in July, Hemingway watches him and cuts him into the novel he starts days later.
Published as Pedro Romero in The Sun Also Rises, aged twenty-two and unnamed.
Hemingway records his decline in Death in the Afternoon.
Retires from the ring for good, after fighting on through the postwar years.
Dies at Madrid on 30 October, four months after Hemingway. His son Antonio is by then the leading matador in Spain.
Featured in these books
People they knew
Ernest Hemingway
- Author
- Journalist
Met
Hemingway sought him out at Pamplona in July 1925, the season of his alternativa, and wrote about him again in Death in the Afternoon when the nerve had gone.
Questions about Cayetano Ordóñez
Who was Cayetano Ordóñez?
A Spanish matador from Ronda, born in 1904, who fought under the name Niño de la Palma. He was the sensation of the 1925 season and the model for Pedro Romero in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
Is Pedro Romero based on a real matador?
Yes — on Cayetano Ordóñez, whom Hemingway watched at the Pamplona feria in July 1925, weeks after Ordóñez became a full matador. The novel makes Romero nineteen; Ordóñez was twenty-one. The name Pedro Romero belonged to an eighteenth-century matador from the same town, Ronda.
Why is he called Niño de la Palma?
His family in Ronda kept a shoe shop called La Palma, and the name followed him into the ring. Spanish matadors commonly fight under such a name rather than their own.
Did Cayetano Ordóñez really give an ear to a woman in the crowd?
He presented one at the Pamplona feria to Hadley Richardson, Hemingway's first wife, who kept it. In the novel the ear goes to Brett Ashley, which is one of the closest transpositions in the book.
What happened to Cayetano Ordóñez after 1925?
Gorings took the edge off his nerve and his career never matched that season. Hemingway wrote about the decline unsparingly in Death in the Afternoon. Ordóñez fought on after the Civil War, retired in 1950, and died in Madrid in 1961. His son Antonio became the finest matador of his generation.
Sourced claims
Met
Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway sought him out at Pamplona in July 1925, the season of his alternativa, and wrote about him again in Death in the Afternoon when the nerve had gone.
Depicted in
The Sun Also Rises
Pedro Romero is drawn from him, weeks after his alternativa, when Hemingway watched him at the Pamplona feria of July 1925. The novel makes him nineteen; he was twenty-one.