Or I'll Dress You In Mourning Author:Larry Collins, Dominique Lapierre May 20, 1964 On the rain-soaked, treacherous sands of Las Ventas, the great bullring of Madrid, the most idolized, most controversial, most highly paid matador in Spain's history faced the moment of truth with a peculiarly dangerous, half-blind, infuriated bull. For Manuel Benitez, "El Cordobes" this corrida confirming his elevation to the rank... more » of matador de toros for an unprecedented fee of one million pesetas was the culmination of half a lifetime of bitter struggle. Twenty-eight years before, in the spring of 1936 Benetez was born the last of five children of a poor Andalusian family in the small town of Palma del Rio only months before his family, the town and all Spain were plunged into the fatal violence of the Civil War. This is the story of Manuel Benitez and the long road that he and his country traveled from those desperate times to that triumphant hour at Las Ventas with Spain stood still sharing the climatic ordeal of its hero El Cordobes.« less