- October 30, 1961, Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

) is the founder of the Ordóñez

Ordóñez (bullfighter family)

Ordóñez is a bullfighter family that has flourished since 1917 in Ronda; it is one of two significant bullfighter families from the same city; the other one is the Romero family.Notable members of the Ordóñez family are:...

 family of bullfighters.

His parents owned a shoeshop called La Palma, which gave him his nickname (Nino de la Palma). In 1917 he first began to perform as a bullfighter in the ranches of the area were he lived. In 1923 he had his debut in Ronda, where he became the first bullfighter to be carried in triumph through the main gates of the Maestranza, and in 1924 he caused great commotion again when the same thing happened in Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

. From that point on he was greatly in demand by all the professional and amateur rings in Spain. He was used by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...

 as the model for "Pedro Romero", the talented young bullfighter in The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises is a 1926 novel written by American author Ernest Hemingway about a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of San Fermín in Pamplona to watch the running of the bulls and the bullfights. An early and enduring modernist novel, it received...

. Hemingway later stated that "everything that happened in the ring was true, and everything outside was fiction. Nino knew this and never complained about it."

His last bullfight was at Aranda de Duero in 1942. He was the director of the Lisbon School of Bullfighting and died in Madrid on 30 October 1961.

See also

• List of bullfighters
• Plaza de Toros de Ronda
  Plaza de toros de Ronda
  The Plaza de Toros in Ronda, Málaga is one of the oldest operational bullrings in Spain. The arena has a diameter of , surrounded by a passage formed by two rings of stone. There are two layers of seating, each with five raised rows and 136 pillars that make up 68 arches...