WOMEN AND BULLS
DON'T MIX
(The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup)
In the 500 dusty years of refined yet raw Spanish ritual, one young matador stands quite apart from the others
By Susan Orlean (Outside Magazine)
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I went to Spain not long ago to watch Cristina Sanchez fight bulls, but she had gotten tossed by one during a performance in the village of Ejea de los Caballeros and was convalescing when I arrived. Getting tossed sounds sort of merry, but I saw a matador tossed once, and he looked like a saggy bale of hay flung by a pitchfork, and when he landed on his back he looked busted and terrified. Cristina got tossed by accidentally hooking a horn with her elbow during a pass with the cape, and the joint was wrenched so hard that her doctor said it would need at least three or four days to heal. It probably hurt like hell, and the timing was terrible. She had fights scheduled each of the nights she was supposed to rest and every night until October--every night, with no breaks in between. It had been like this for her since May, when she was elevated from the status of a novice to a full Matador de Toros. The title is conferred in a formal ceremony called "taking the alternativa," and it implies that you are experienced and talented and that other matadors have recognized you as a top-drawer bullfighter. You will now fight the biggest, toughest bulls and will probably be hired to fight often and in the most prestigious arenas. Bullfighting becomes your whole life, your everyday life--so routine that "sometimes after you've fought and killed the bull you feel as if you hadn't done a thing all day," as Cristina once told me.
When Cristina Sanchez took her alternativa, it caused a sensation. Other women before her have fought bulls in Spain. Many have only fought little bulls, but some did advance to big animals and become accomplished and famous, and a few of the best have been declared full matadors de toros. Juanita Cruz became a matador in 1940, and Morenita del Quindio did in 1968, and Raquel Martinez and Maribel Atienzar did in the eighties, but they all took their alternativas in Mexico, where the standards are a little less exacting. Cristina is the first woman to have taken her alternativa in Europe and made her debut as a matador in Spain.
There was a fight program of three matadors--a corrida--scheduled for the Madrid bullring the day after I got to Spain, and I decided to go so I could see some other toreadors while Cristina was laid up with her bad arm. One of the three scheduled to perform was the bastard son of El Cordobes. El Cordobes had been a matador superstar in the sixties and a breeder of several illegitimate children and a prideful man who was so possessive of his nickname that he had once sued this kid--the one I was going to see--because the kid wanted to fight bulls under the name El Cordobes, too. In the end, the judge let each and every El Cordobes continue to be known professionally as El Cordobes.
The kid El Cordobes is a scrubbed, cute blonde with a crinkly smile. Outside the rings where he is fighting, vendors sell fan photos of him alongside postcards and little bags of sunflower seeds and stuffed-bull souvenirs. In the photos, El Cordobes is dressed in a plaid camp shirt and acid-washed blue jeans and is hugging a good-looking white horse. In the ring, he does some flashy moves on his knees in front of the bull, including a frog-hop that he times to make it look like he's going to get skewered. These tricks, plus the renown of his name, have gotten him a lot of attention, but El Cordobes is just one of many cute young male matadors working these days. If his knees give out, he might have nothing.
On the other hand, there is just one Cristina, and everyone in Spain knows her and is following her rise. She has gotten attention far outside of Spain and on television and in newspapers and even in fashion magazines.
IMPORTANT TELEPHONE NUMBERS RUNNING WITH THE BULLS