The Sun Also Rises
How Juan appears in its pages: The one real name in the book: Juan Belmonte, greatest matador of his age, caught mid-comeback on the afternoon the novel hands to a boy of nineteen.
Read the character guide- Matador
Juan Belmonte
The matador who revolutionized the art by standing still — subject of the era's greatest as-told-to memoir, and the one real name in The Sun Also Rises.
In images
Details
- 1892–1962
- 1892
- Triana, Seville
- 1962
- Spanish
- Matador
- Juan Belmonte García
About Juan Belmonte
Juan Belmonte García rose from poverty in Triana to remake bullfighting itself: too frail for the classical style, he stood his ground and made the bull move around him, and the heresy became the foundation of the modern art. His golden-age rivalry with Joselito burned until Joselito's death in the ring in 1920; his own life ran to 1962, on his ranch near Seville. He appears twice in these pages — jeered mid-comeback in The Sun Also Rises, and telling his own story in Juan Belmonte, Killer of Bulls.
Featured in these books
Juan Belmonte, Killer of Bulls
How Juan appears in its pages: The subject and the voice — the matador telling his own life, from the moonlit river to the top of the golden age.
Read the character guidePeople they knew
Manuel Chaves Nogales
- Journalist
- Author
Met
A year of afternoons: the reporter sat with the matador and turned his voice into Juan Belmonte, matador de toros — the as-told-to masterpiece that binds the two names permanently.
Sourced claims
Met
Manuel Chaves Nogales
A year of afternoons: the reporter sat with the matador and turned his voice into Juan Belmonte, matador de toros — the as-told-to masterpiece that binds the two names permanently.
Depicted in
The Sun Also Rises
The one real name in the cast: Juan Belmonte, mid-comeback and fighting in pain, shares the Pamplona cartel with the fictional Pedro Romero. Chapter XVIII gives him the fistula, the jeering crowd, and the afternoon the novel hands to Romero.