Manolo Granero

Manolo Granero is a bullfighter recalled by Pilar through the story of his final afternoon in Madrid. His death at the hands of the bull Pocapena is also the culmination of a reported warning: before the bullfight, Granero’s associate Blanquet and fellow matador Juan Luis de la Rosa sensed an odor of death that others did not. The episode sets private perception against public incomprehension, making Granero’s death both a remembered fact and the test case in Pilar’s argument that not everyone can perceive the same things.

The Reported Foreboding

Pilar recounts what Blanquet told her about the day Granero died. Before going to the ring, Granero and his companions stopped in a chapel. Blanquet said Granero seemed to carry an odor of death so powerful that it nearly made him sick, although he had been with Granero when he bathed and dressed at the hotel. The odor had not been apparent during their crowded motorcar journey to the bullring.

The account makes the foreboding selective rather than universal. Blanquet said that Juan Luis de la Rosa, too, perceived it in the chapel, while Marcial and Chicuelo did not; the other people present also failed to notice it. Juan Luis turned pale, and Blanquet asked whether he sensed it as well. Juan Luis answered that he could barely breathe and attributed the odor to his matador. Blanquet tried to leave open the possibility that they were mistaken, but told Juan Luis that Granero’s odor was worse than José’s at Talavera.

Granero’s Death in the Ring

That afternoon, the bull Pocapena, from the Veragua ranch, killed Granero against the barrier at the Plaza de Toros in Madrid. Pilar says she was there with Finito de Palencia and saw what happened. She watched from the seventh row of tendido three, at an angle from which she could see the event, though she was too far away to perceive the odor herself.

Pilar’s account distinguishes what she witnessed from what she learned afterward. That night, at Fornos, Blanquet told Finito de Palencia about the earlier warning. Finito asked Juan Luis whether it was true; Juan Luis did not speak, but nodded. Pilar says she was present for that exchange. Her story therefore rests on both her own sight of Granero’s death and the witnesses’ later confirmation of the alleged foreboding.

Pilar’s Argument About Perception

The episode arises in a disagreement between Pilar and Robert Jordan. He suggests that what she calls the smell of death may instead have been the smell of fear. Pilar answers by contrasting those who sensed Granero’s impending death with the many who did not. For her, failing to perceive a warning does not disprove it; it shows that perception has limits and differs from one person to another.

Pilar uses the story to challenge Robert Jordan’s skepticism. She tells him that he may be deaf to what others can perceive, just as Chicuelo, Marcial Lalanda, their assistants, and the people around Juan Luis and Granero had been deaf to the warning. She adds that people cannot hear everything a dog hears or smell everything a dog smells, and suggests Robert Jordan has already experienced something of what can happen to a person. Granero’s remembered death thus serves not only as a tragic episode but as evidence within Pilar’s broader claim that some experiences exceed ordinary recognition.