Manuel Díaz
El Cordobés
had to wait 54 years to hear, from his father, the word that he "longed to hear" so much: "Son, everything arrives, we are here," was the phrase with which Manuel Benítez received Díaz after of a long fight for him to recognize his paternity (six years ago) and that on February 14 culminated in the first meeting of both in the house of the 86-year-old right-hander.
This is how Díaz himself recounted it this Tuesday, who has purposely summoned the media to explain how the moment was conceived and passed.
In his press conference, the right-hander recounted how "due to fate" the opportunity arose to finally meet face to face with Benítez.
It is then that he decided to "take charge" of his life "without there being a third party" and to be the one to take the initiative.
“I have lived with 'no' all my life;
one more, one less... ”, he has opened up.
“The opportunity arises, these circumstances occur and we enter into direct and automatic contact for the first time and it becomes something so profound and so mine that I say: 'I'm not going to lose this.
I need to see him half a meter from me.
It is something vital ”, he added, indicating that the first exchange of words was “by telephone”.
“The day comes when we decide to see each other.
And they allow me a bit to be as I wanted it to be, a meeting where the people I wanted to be there were:
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Manuel Díaz and Manuel Benítez 'El Cordobés', for the first time together 54 years later
Although the bullfighter has apologized for not going into details, he did want to detail those first moments full of emotion in front of his father.
“Arriving at her farm, I stood in the ditch because I wouldn't stop shaking, luckily Virginia was with me too because if I don't think she would have fainted, I was super nervous.
Look that I have been through difficult things, but there is something that is very internal ”, he commented.
Then, as he has said, he released the steering wheel when he saw that El Cordobés Sr. was waiting for him in the middle of the road with open arms, he got out of the car — "I don't even know if I stopped it," he recalled — and that was when he heard what had been waiting my whole life.
"Son, everything arrives, we are already here."
There, at that moment, is where we were both born.
The rest no longer makes sense ”, he said.
Manuel Díaz has also recounted, overwhelmed by emotion, some detail about his new life with a father.
"I congratulated him on Father's Day last year," he said, also explaining that the grandfather knows his three grandchildren: Alba (the result of Díaz's first marriage with Vicky Martín Berrocal), Triana and Manuel (from the second, with Virginia Troconis).
The son of Cordoba does not rule out a meeting between his mother and his father, and between him and the rest of his brothers, since he only maintains a relationship with fellow bullfighter Julio Benítez.
"When I talk to him, I'm not talking about shared time, but about time gained," he assured, also acknowledging that it would be "a satisfaction" if his father went to see him fight in his year of farewell to the bullrings, as well as sharing experiences in the countryside.
“The story will continue, it is proposing an infinite number of things to me,
In their first in-person conversation, father and son asked each other for forgiveness: “I needed to tell him: 'I'm sorry if I've done something in my life that I shouldn't, but circumstances have forced me.'
He told me: 'Forgive me.'
Later, he says, words, glances and gestures of affection were exchanged "without reproach" and there was "understanding from minute zero".
Díaz asked him for permission to call him "dad": "Come on,
move on
."
He has also explained that his father "captivated" him and that he considers her "an exceptional human being."
Manuel Benítez and Manuel Díaz (both nicknamed 'El Cordobés') in their first public reunion, during the commemorative act for the twentieth anniversary of the proclamation of the former as Caliph of Bullfighting, on February 14, 2023 at the rectory of the University of Cordova.
Rafael Alcaide (EFE)
This has been the first time that Díaz has spoken in detail and at length about the reunion with his father.
Benítez, for his part, addressed the media the same day of the event, during the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of his proclamation as V Caliph of Bullfighting.
"I have no words, I am very happy with everything, everything comes in due time, thank God, we are here and we are going to sail in the same boat," said the right-handed man, who addressed his son calling him Manolo and whom he qualified as "very affectionate, quite a fighter and a caste bullfighter".
The photograph of Benítez and Días together had been suspected for years, although it always ended up not taking place.
In 2017, for example, it was about to take place when Manuel Díaz and his brother on the father's side, Julio Benítez, who had met just a few days before, announced that they were going to carry out the paseíllo together on March 11 in the square Seville from Morón de la Frontera.
An initiative that supposedly, and according to them, had the approval of the patriarch.
Finally, and contrary to expectations, Benítez did not appear at the first joint bullfight of his sons, despite the fact that days before he had pronounced himself on the act, publicly acknowledging his son Manuel.
"The two [Julio and Manuel] carry the strong blood of their father, the blood of the V Caliph," he assured.
Born in 1968 as the result of a relationship outside of courtship with what would later be his father's wife, Martina Fraysse, Manuel Díaz did not manage to be officially recognized as Benítez's son until 2016, through a judicial resolution.
In his attempt to achieve this, Díaz even spontaneously jumped into the ring in Las Ventas during a bullfight of his father in 1986, as he himself commented on the TVE program Lazos de
sangre
.
"I was just following in his footsteps."