Pedro Domecq

Don Álvaro Domecq y Díez (1917–2005) was born into an aristocratic Spanish sherry family in Jerez, of Cádiz, a province of Andalucia in south western Spain.

He distinguished himself as a fighter pilot in the Spanish Civil War on Francisco Franco's rebel side, and later re-introduced bullfighting on horseback to Spain. Domecq further developed bull breeding and presided as patriarch over a bullfighting dynasty.

Álvaro Domecq y Díez was born in Jerez on July 1, 1917. His mother died in a riding accident when he was four, and Álvaro was educated by Jesuits in Madrid. After the fall of the monarchy, he travelled to Bordeaux and Estremoz in Portugal where he studied law. But any plans for a legal career were curtailed by the 1936–39 Civil War. He married María Josefa Romero in 1938.

In 1725 an Irishman, Patrick Murphy, had set up the sherry company that the Domecqs, then a minor French noble family, inherited in 1822. The London firm of Matthew Clark and Sons handled imports to Britain for many years. Pedro Domecq produced brandy and sherry until 1994, when the family was bought out and Pedro Domecq became part of the UK-based Allied Domecq.

In 1930 Álvaro's father took over a large estate that had belonged to the Duke of Veragua, marking the beginning of the family's relationship with the fiesta nacional, the bullfight.

When his father died in 1937, 20-year-old Domecq started work in the family's bodegas (cellars), becoming managing director of the company.

In 1934, before the war, he debuted at 17 as a bullfighter in Santander. He is deemed by most to have revived the then almost moribund form of bullfighting known as rejoneo, or horseback bullfighting. Rejoneador ("lancer") is the name given to a bullfighter who fights the bull on horseback. Along with the picador, a rejoneador is the second type of mounted bullfighter in Spanish bullfighting.

...
Wikipedia