British matador returns to the ring in Spain at 67A 67-year-old former butcher from Britain made his comeback as a top-flight matador matador In bullfighting, the principal performer, who works the capes and attempts to dispatch the bull with a sword thrust between the shoulder blades. Most of the techniques used by modern matadors were established in the 1910s by Juan Belmonte (b. 1894–d. in Spain Sunday, defying not only age but heart and knee problems that forced him to retire four years ago. Frank Evans Frank Edgar Evans born 19 November 1876 in Franklin, Pennsylvania, served as an infantryman in the Spanish-American War, and was commissioned in the United States Marine Corps on 15 February 1900. , known in Spain simply as 'El Ingles', successfully slayed two bulls of around 500 kilogrammes (1,100 pounds) with a final sword thrust, after assistants known as picadors, one of them on horseback on the back of a horse; mounted or riding on a horse or horses; in the saddle. See also: Horseback , had speared the animals in the shoulder to weaken them. He was cheered by the 300 or so spectators in the small bullring in Benalmadena near Malaga in southern Spain, many of them British holidaymakers, and carried out on the shoulders of his colleagues. "I'm back in the swim now, I'm back as an active matador," a beaming Evans said afterwards. But he acknowledged that he could have performed better. "We all want to be perfect and I was far from perfect today," said Evans, looking fit and relaxed and belying his age. Now a grandfather of five, he was first inspired to become a bullfighter after visiting Spain to attend the wedding of a Spanish friend, and then from reading the 1950s autobiography of Vincent Hitchcock, the first British bullfighter. Aged 22, he left his father's butcher's shop in Salford near Manchester in northwest England, to attend bullfighting bullfighting, national sport and spectacle of Spain. Called the corrida de toros in Spanish, the bullfight takes place in a large outdoor arena known as the plaza de toros. school in Valencia, Spain For the Valencia wine region, see . Valencia (Spanish: Valencia [ba'lenθja];[1] Valencian: València [va'ɫɛnsia]) is the capital of the Spanish autonomous community of Valencia and its province. . He made his debut in 1966 in Montpellier in southern France Southern France (or the South of France), colloquially known as Le Midi, is a loosely defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Gironde, Spain, the Mediterranean Sea, Italy, and Switzerland south of the -- after being mistaken for another British bullfighter in Spain, Henry Higgins. 
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