HE is 13, weighs just eight stone and wears a children’s size for his matador’s traje de luz. But Jairo Miguel Sánchez Alonso recently killed his first adult toro weighing 73 stone.

The Spanish schoolboy, who sits on his mother’s knee during interviews, is being hailed as the world’s youngest bullfighter and a future star.

Jairo is too young to fight legally in Spain, but he has just signed a €190,000 (£132,500) deal for 40 fights this year with Mexico’s biggest bullfighting company, Renovación Taurina.

His matador father, Antonio Sánchez Cáceres, said that Jairo had wanted to be a bullfighter since he was 5. At 8 he started taking part in fights at his family’s farm near Cáceres, in western Spain. He also took part in a charity fight — which cost his parents a €6,000 fine: by law a matador in Spain can use the red cape only after they have passed their 16th birthday.

Critics in Spain doubt the wisdom of putting a child into the bullring at such a young age. The Spanish daily El Mundo asked: “Would you let your son do this?” But that has not stopped the teenager, who appears to show no fear.

Jairo has fought in France, Portugal and Mexico, where there is no age restriction, and after his first big triumph in Mexico he was carried from the ring, with the award of the bull’s ears and tail.

“In the ring I feel responsibility to appear good in front of a public which will judge me,” he said. “And I do it with pleasure because, if not, I would leave it.”

Between facing the bulls, Jaairo tries to live a normal teenager’s life. He has to catch up with school studies through a distance learning scheme and recently sent his first Valentine’s Day card to a girl. His mother, Celia, bought the card.

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