[5] His father was José Vázquez Roldán,[1] a foreman at the city slaughterhouse and in his youth, a novillero (novice bullfighter who fights yearling bulls).

While Vázquez saw great success, his fellow bullfighter, Félix Almagro from Torrijos, suffered a neck wound from the yearling bull that he was fighting (named either Capirote or Rondeño, depending on the source), consequently dying late in the evening in the bullring's own infirmary, despite a blood transfusion to make up for the blood that he had lost from his wound, which was in the jugular vein.

[11] On 20 October that same year, his alternativa was confirmed at Las Ventas in Madrid by Marcial Lalanda (who would later become Vázquez's apoderado) and Rafael Ortega Gómez El Gallo.

He called this his famous cartucho de pescao (roughly "fishing cartridge"), although this term had actually been coined by another great bullfighter, Manuel García Cuesta (El Espartero).

Besides being popularly recognized with the sobriquet "the Socrates of San Bernardo",[17][18] in 1998, the Government of Spain awarded Vázquez the Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts.

[19] In 2001, a jury made up of bullfighting reporters and aficionados, headed by José Luis Sánchez Guanes and convened at the Lardhy restaurant in Madrid, included Vázquez in the list of the 20th century's ten most important bullfighters, together with the following matadors: José Gómez Joselito, Juan Belmonte, Domingo Ortega, Manolete, Antonio Bienvenida, Antonio Ordóñez Araujo, Paco Camino, Santiago Martín El Viti, and Curro Romero.

Antonio Bienvenida's brother Ángel Luis Bienvenida also defined Vázquez by saying: "Ha sido la esencia del toreo, lo más puro, profundo y de mayor arte y personalidad que ha existido" ("He has been bullfighting's essence, the purest, deepest and of greatest art and personality that has existed").

[23][24] Vázquez died on 19 May 2013 at the age of ninety-one at the Nisa Hospital in Castilleja de la Cuesta, near Seville, after having been admitted a week earlier after a fall at his home.

[25][26] Attending Vázquez's funeral, beyond those already mentioned, were bullfighters Curro Romero (along with his wife, Carmen Tello), Rafael de Paula, Macandro, Manolo Cortés, Pepe Luis Vargas, Martín Pareja-Obregón, Eduardo Dávila Miura, Curro Díaz, Antonio Nazaré, Rafael Peralta, Alfonso Ordóñez, Luque Gago, El Ecijano, Manolo Vázquez Gago, and Rafael Torres along with fighting bull breeders such as Eduardo Miura, Álvaro Martínez Conradi and Juan José Arenas.