Spain bullfighters lock horns in paternity suit

Legendary Spanish bullfighter Manuel Benitez, “El Cordobes”, is locked in a legal battle with another popular matador who openly uses the same nickname and has for years claimed to be his son.

The scandal broke in February when Manuel Diaz told Hola! magazine he had filed a paternity suit against his supposed father in the southern city of Cordoba after trying in vain to form a relationship with him.

“I thought that being a matador I would be able to reach him, but my father remains elusive,” the 47-year-old told the celebrity magazine.

“The straw that broke the camel’s back was the day when he was asked about me during a television interview. Benitez turned away from the camera as if I were the devil. My children asked me ‘Why doesn’t your father want to talk about you ’,” he said.

Diaz says Benitez (79), who revolutionised the conservative bullfighting world in the 1960s with his acrobatic style, had a brief affair with his mother when she worked as a maid in Madrid.

But when she became pregnant, Benitez did not want to have anything to do with the child, according to the younger “El Cordobes”.

Diaz says he does not want to make any claims on Benitez’s estate and just wants to claim a lineage that he is proud of.

Benitez, whose fame in the bullring lifted him out of poverty, has five children with his wife Martina Fraysse, whom he divorced earlier in 2016.

The two men bear a striking resemblance which Spain’s eager gossip press like to highlight regularly.

To file a paternity suit, Diaz needed evidence to backup his claim so he turned to a detective who seized a napkin used by the senior matador at a bar to wipe his lips, Diaz’s lawyer Fernando Osuna said.

Diaz said DNA analysis of the napkin indicated with 99.9 per cent certainty that he is Benitez’s son, and the paternity suit was accepted in December by a court, which will rule on the case on April 28.

Osuna said both bullfighters had separately taken DNA tests on Friday, and the results are due next week.