Henry Higgins

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Henry Higgins ( Enrique (Eduardo) Cañadas , born October 26, 1944 in Bogotá , † August 15, 1978 in Mojácar ) was a Colombian-English bullfighter .

Life

Henry Higgins was born in Colombia to an Englishman and a Mexican. As a child he was fascinated by bullfighters. At the age of eight he was sent to a school in England, and at 16, with the agreement of his father, he prematurely finished his schooling. After a brief stay in Granada , he returned to England to study at the Guildford School of Art.

In the meantime, Higgins had started to study flamenco intensively . He decided to move to Spain to perfect his guitar playing there. Soon, however, his old enthusiasm for bullfighting caught up with him again, and he tried to gain a foothold in the profession instead. Brian Epstein loaned him money to help make this dream come true. The Beatles manager was a bullfighting lover himself. In 1967 Henry Higgins fought his first fight in Tenerife .

The Spanish stage name Enrique Cañadas goes back to his friendship with the Sevillian family Morales-Cañadas, which had supported him in his early days. In 1968 a BBC team shot a documentary about Henry Higgins. After being seriously injured in a fight in 1971, he retired from bullfighting and published an autobiography in 1972. From then on he devoted himself to gliding . In 1978 he crashed near his home Mojácar and died.

Career as a bullfighter

On March 19, 1967, Higgins had his first official fight in Santa Cruz de Tenerife . In the same season he had 17 fights, the next 19. The decisive fight ( alternativa ) for his recognition as a bullfighter ( matador ) took place in Fuengirola on September 20, 1970. In a corrida on September 21, 1971 in Benidorm , he was seriously injured by a bull.

As a foreigner he was repeatedly discriminated against in the Spanish bullfighting scene, he campaigned politically for equality. In fact, he managed to have a debate in the House of Commons in 1972 , which led to a proposal to the Spanish government.

1982 published Jeff Wayne at the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain an instrumental song named Henry Higgins . It was the B-side of the single with the theme song from the ITV station for the broadcast of these games, Matador .

Henry Higgins is considered the third English bullfighter in Spain, but the first to make it to the matador .

Filmography

  • Man Alive: Henry Higgins - Bullfighter (BBC, 1968)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ ABC Seville, August 17, 1978 edition, p. 32
  2. ^ [1] Entry by the British Film Institute

swell

  • Henry Higgins, Jim Myers: To be a matador. Foreword by Kenneth Tynan . Kimber, London, 1972.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Higgins, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cañadas, Enrique
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Colombian-English bullfighter
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Bogotá
DATE OF DEATH 15th August 1978
Place of death Mojácar