Heminway's Ronda
 

In case you don't get the Wash. Post.Great story - great pictures:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...T2009032602132

Fascinating story - fantastic pictures... Thanks for the link.

Interesting story.
Ronda was already internationally famous for Rainer Maria Rilke's stay in the 1910s (the dreamt city).
Cayetano Ordóñez, the first of the bullfighter dynasty, took the name El Niño de la Palma, being La Palma the name of a shoe shop run by his father. His late brother had used that name already, with no trascendence. He was introduced on the press with the celebrated caption "Es de Ronda, se llama Cayetano". His son Antonio Ordóñez is the one depicted in Hemingway's "Dangerous sumer", about the summer of '59 when Ordóñez and brother-in-law Dominguín competed in the rings risking to the max. My father went to one of those bullfights and recalls it to be impressive.
The Perez bullfighter the journalist mentions is Antonio Ordóñez son-in-law Francisco Rivera "Paquirri" (the misnaming is a mistake due to misunderstanding of spanish surnames, I think). He was caught by a bull, I saw it on TV, and he died of poor medical care, they were in a town with unadequate facilities, and the wounds were important.
Now we have Paquirri's sons (and grandsons of the late Antonio Ordóñez), Francisco Rivera, and Cayetano, who's become a bullfighter lately.
I know the path down the Gorge she describes, I know the house mid-way too. What I did not know is that the man was making business. The bridge has a story of its own.

Thanks Bardo!

One of my favorite Hemingway passages:

"Ronda has everything you wish for a stay of that sort, romantic scenery, you can see it if necessary without leaving the hotel, beautiful short walks, good wine, seafood, a fine hotel, practically nothing else to do, two resident painters who will sell you watercolors that will frame as attractive souvenirs of the occasion; and really, despite all this, it is a fine place."

Skewers the timeless (apparently) cliches of travel writing . . .