Penelope Cruz and Adrien Brody in a scene from the Manolete. (Reuters)

Madrid, Aug. 28 (Reuters): The triumphs of the bullfighter Manolete and his tragic early death in 1947 have become legendary in Spain, but his eyebrow-raising relationship with actress Lupe Sino has been largely ignored.

A new film with Hollywood stars Adrien Brody and Penelope Cruz is about to fill this gap in Manolete’s otherwise well-documented life story.

Manolete’s death at just 30 years old stunned Spain, still reeling from a bitter civil war in the late 1930s. Historians and biographers say the matador helped meet the national need for diversion and relief in the age of fascist dictator Francisco Franco, when bullfighters were like the rock stars of today.

Manolete’s biographers wrote that Sino had a shady reputation and was said to be after his money, but underlying their words was a basic hostility to women in the bullfighting world — graphically described by Joselito, another legendary matador. “The worst enemy a bullfighter can have is a woman. Women are sweet wine which goes to your head easily and bends your legs. And to be a bullfighter you have to be strong (...) with legs of steel,” Joselito, a forerunner to Manolete, was quoted as saying in a biography by Francisco Narbona.

Bullfighting has long been considered in Spanish-speaking countries as an art rather than a sport, and an almost exclusively male preserve.

Manolete’s mother and his professional circle disliked Sino, partly because of the bullfighting lore that women and bulls do not mix.

As Manolete bled to death after his fatal goring on August 28, 1947, Sino was barred from seeing him on “doctor’s orders” in case the matador tried to marry her in his final moments.

Even then matadors earned a fortune, and a deathbed marriage would have snatched the juicy inheritance from his family. Despite efforts to blacken her character, it is widely accepted that Manolete and Sino were besotted with one another. “There was a bit of an upset when he went to Mexico with her, because they were living together and it was said she was a loose woman ... but they were very much in love,” Antonete, a 74-year-old retired bullfighter, said in an interview.

Manolete’s closest friends tried to persuade him to leave her, but photographs show them looking relaxed and happy together. Director Menno Meyjes, better known as the scriptwriter of The Color Purple and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, says the film is about a love triangle — of sorts. “She is in love with him, he is in love with her, but he is also in love with death,” he says in an interview.

“He meets this marvellous woman who tries to seduce him to separate him from the dance with death which is part of his life, his identity ... And that creates enormous tension in their relationship,” he said.