When Manolete died, a British newspaper reported that his funeral went on for four hours, and a military plane flew low overhead, showering the 100,000 mourners in attendance with red carnations. He was known as Manolete and is almost invariably described as the best bullfighter of the 1940s and among the greatest of all time. Even my mother recognized instantly that I and this anonymous Spaniard looked identical, which seemed to rattle her core belief that, in all the universe, her boychik was unique and special.Įventually, I learned who the man in the photograph was. It smacked people with an eerie jolt, joggled them into befuddled laughter or downright creeped them out. For years, I would show that picture to people at parties without a word, and every time there was a profound shock of recognition. But this photo of the matador was different.
Sometimes all you get is a lot of skepticism and squinting, people searching for a sliver of correspondence between the two supposed doppelgängers just to be polite: Maybe around the mouth, I guess. I understand how subjective these things can be, how a resemblance that feels uncanny and self-evident to one person can elude everyone else.
