History remembers the evenings that left an imprint on the world stage, where crowds from across continents gathered in the arenas, drawn by a name that carried more than courage. Jose Maria Manzanares, a figure rooted in Alicante, emerges in a portrait built not from words alone but through lasting images—photographs that trace the arc of a life lived under the sway of the cape and the theatre of bullfighting. The narrative here is told through pictures: a biography expressed in frames, a chronology captured by photographers Soriano, Antonio Vigueras, and Perfecto Arjones who watched closely as the man and his craft evolved side by side with the times.
The story widens as it marks a milestone: the 50th anniversary of a path that many called an alternative route for a bullfighter. The Alicante city council organized a small, meaningful homage and opened a window into the past by recovering a trove of photographer files that helped to illuminate the moments when a city and a matador intertwined their destinies. From the shelves to the light, the images traveled into a printed volume that found its home at the Plaza de Toros Bullfighting Museum on a Friday evening at 19:30, a moment that linked memory with the public present in the arena.
More than two hundred photographs fill the volume, a project born from the initiative of the municipal councillor for the Plaza de Toros, Mari Carmen from Spain. The book gathers articles penned by various personalities connected to the world of bullfighting, assembling a portrait of a life lived under the glare of the arena and the scrutiny of the public. The project rests not on glossy myth but on a collection of documented moments that reveal how the art, the sport, and the personal journey of a torero become a shared public narrative.
The photographs chronicled by Soriano capture those intimate seconds that the photographer watched as they unfolded around the matador. They are moments when the performer is always accompanied by the lens, moments that reveal a singular era of both professional milestones and private life. Vigueras endowed the images with a documentary clarity, turning the pictures into a record of important happenings, while Arjones provided a journalistic eye that highlighted the life events that shaped a right-handed bullfighter’s career and character.
For Spain, this publication stands as an excellent biography in pictures of a bullfighter whose presence turns every performance in Alicante into a social and bullfighting event. It is a life where the arena becomes a stage for personal triumphs and public moments alike, a narrative that blends art, culture, and sport into one continuous experience that residents and visitors alike can witness and reflect upon. The work stands as a testimony to memory, to the way a city and a torero grow together, and to the enduring power of photography to tell a life beyond words.