Retired bullfighter's paternity suit brought thanks to tissues found in a bar

María, 60, is the result of an extra-marital affair between her mother and the undisclosed bullfighter.

She said her mother, who died aged 80, and the torero were in love after they met in the late 1950s, but María's mother was forced to marry another man 'due to family pressure'.

Despite this, the bullfighter and María's mother carried on their affair in secret whilst she was married.

But after María was born, the bullfighter left her mother and had no more contact with either of them, refusing to pay anything towards the baby's upkeep.

Years later, however, the matador and María's mother rekindled their affair – something María herself knew about from the age of around nine.

Her biological father finally agreed to meet María when she turned 18, in a bar in Sevilla.

Since then, father and daughter have met up regularly and María has mixed with her father's family on numerous occasions – including the bullfighter's eventual wife and the daughter he had with her.

María has shown her lawyers a huge number of photos of both her natural parents, and her half-sister, showing the 'clear physical resemblance' between herself and her father.

Private detectives managed to seize tissues used by the ex-bullfighter, who is now elderly, from a café in Sevilla.

DNA on them was found to be a 99.999268% match – since no genetic test ever gives 100% reading – sufficient to be considered legal proof that María is the bullfighter's biological daughter.

The law firm has now applied to a court in the city for a DNA test to be carried out on the retired bullfighter and, if he refuses, on his other daughter.

Photograph: A bullfighter in the ring. The identity of María's retired matador father has not yet been revealed.