POE_07-56

Alfredo Corrochano, the bullfighter who was part of the line-up and who stabbed Granadino after the fatal gore, told the story in an interview in El País on April 11, 2000: “The gore was… foolishly. The bull was not bad. When he took the sword and the muleta he went to take a pass in the stirrup. The bull was coming in a little. The banderillero warned him: ‘Be careful, maestro, the bull is pressing in’. He caught him between the boards and pierced his thigh. I “came to his defense”. When they got hold of him, he was dead.

Alfredo, son of the critic Gregorio Corrochano, shared the trip from Madrid, aboard the Expreso de Andalucía, which led to the death of García Lorca in July 1936. “Federico had a feeling that something serious was going to happen to him.” It was not the first time he treated the poet: “In 1934, when Sánchez Mejías returned to the fiesta, I was recovering from a gore and we were doing physical training together, in the countryside. And Federico came. He was a charming man, a great conversationalist, admired by women. We were teasing each other and talking about things. At the last minute we talked about metaphors. Federico laughed a lot at what I said. The next day we went bullfighting. García Lorca accompanied us. I gave the heifer some natural passes and a brush with my feet together and I said: ‘Federico, this is a metaphor’. And he laughed enthusiastically. Alfredo lived the last years of his life in Granada.