Santiago Robson

Santiago Wealands Tapia Robson (1896 – ?) was the first Anglo-Spanish bullfighter in history - and the first to write a book on the subject too.

In the beginning

Santiago Wealands Tapia Robson was born in Sunderland in 1896. His home town was filled with shipyards, mines and glass-making factories at the time of his birth - but his destiny lay elsewhere.

Santiago was eight when he travelled to Spain to watch his first bullfight. The pomp and ceremony immediately captured the boy's imagination and, six years later, he was trying his own hand in the ring.

"A bullfighter is born, not made," Santiago explained in later life. "Just as Caruso was born a singer, and Edison and Marconi were born inventors. The bullfighter combines his obligation as a showman with the supreme need to protect his own life in this struggle between a man and a wild beast."

Early life

Santiago, the son of an English mother and Spanish father, was born into a prominent Sunderland family - the Wealands Robsons. Although little is known of his early life, it is believed one of his close relatives was William Wealands Robson, a well known Sunderland solicitor.

The Robson family had settled at the mouth of the Wear some 250 years before, but were originally members of the Robson clan of North Tynedale. According to Douglas Smith, chairman of Sunderland Antiquarian Society: "The Robson clan were known for their moonlight raids across the border on cattle.

"It is quite ironic, really, that just a few hundred years later, someone in the family chooses to fight bulls, rather than steal them."

William Wealands Robson, an eccentric town councillor and devout Catholic, would never have known young Santiago, as he drowned in the River Wear in 1882. But the little boy who carried on his name was to make it famous throughout the bullrings of Seville, Huelva, Valencia and Madrid within just a few years.

Passion inspired by father

Santiago's father is known to have loved watching the "toros" - bullfighting - and it was a passion he passed on to his young son. The little boy's first visit to a bullring had ignited his matador ambitions, and at 14 he signed on as an apprentice with Francisco Sanchez.

"Every year about 3,000 young men seek to enter the bullfighting profession, anxious to earn both money and glory,” said Santiago in the 1950s. "But, unfortunately, even after years of serving a very dangerous apprenticeship, very few achieve their aim – perhaps only a mere half-a-dozen.

"Some get discouraged, others so badly hurt that they are physically unable to continue. The rest are either killed on the spot, or die outside the ring of wounds received there."

Sanchez, whose bullfighting deeds were documented by writer Ernest Hemingway in Death in the Afternoon, obviously provided the young Santiago with expert tuition. By 1912, he had become the world's first Anglo-Spanish bullfighter, and he pulled in the crowds at bullrings around Spain for the next two years.

"I classify the bull as the equal in character and nobility with the dog and the horse. But while the bull has the supreme quality of courage, he is also endowed with a special characteristic belonging to no other animal - for the bull is the only existing creature which kills for the pleasure of killing," he said.

"The bull is unique in that he seeks only to destroy life, attacking anything that moves, whether it is a coloured cloth, a horse, a man or even a scrap of smoking paper dropped from the walls of his pen."

Early retirement

Just as he neared the peak of his profession, Santiago suddenly retired. The reason for this was his mother, who hated her son being in constant danger. He already bore the mark of a bull's horn deep in his thigh, and she could no longer bear the thought that he might be killed.

Although he made the decision out of family loyalty, the 18-year-old was left with many regrets about quitting his career so early. Indeed, he later admitted to sneaking off occasionally to private ranches, where he would try his luck with local bulls without his mother knowing.

But despite his early retirement, Santiago never lost his love for bullfighting, spending his life involved in every aspect of the Spanish National Fiesta.

Making history - again

Santiago was to make history yet again when, in the 1950s, he became the first English matador to write a book on the subject - "The Art of Bullfighting". The book, published in Spain but written in English, proved a huge success, and was re-printed at least four times.

Santiago, who retained a trace of his North East accent throughout his life despite living in Spain, revealed in the book: "I have often read and heard the opinion that bullfighting is either a brutal game or an unpardonably cruel amusement, because it involves the killings of bulls and, occasionally, of horses.

"To this charge I reply, 'Do not huntsmen kill deer?' I will not discuss the ethics of boxing and all-in wrestling, where two human beings seek to destroy each other, and I will not deny that bullfighting involves death."

What the book fails to reveal, however, is what happened to Santiago in later life. Searches of historical documents and the internet do not shed any further light.

External links

* Details of where to buy Santiago's book, now long out of print: [http://www.antiqbook.com/boox/grende/3072.shtml]