matador

matador, in bullfighting, the principal performer who works the capes and usually dispatches the bull with a sword thrust between the shoulder blades. Though most bullfighters have been men, women bullfighters have participated in the spectacle for centuries. (For greater detail on bullfighters, see bullfighting.)

The techniques used by modern matadors date from about 1914, when Juan Belmonte revolutionized the ancient spectacle. Formerly, the main object of the fight had been only to prepare the bull for the sword thrust. But Belmonte, a small, slight Andalusian, emphasized the danger to the matador by close and graceful capework, and the kill became secondary. He worked closer to the bull’s horns than had ever been believed possible and became an overnight sensation. Several matadors were killed trying to imitate Belmonte’s style.

The possibility of death and the matador’s disdain for and skillful avoidance of injury thrills the crowd. Audiences judge matadors according to their skill, grace, and daring. Therefore, bullfights, or corridas, are viewed by many people not so much as struggles between bullfighters and bulls but as contests between bullfighters and themselves. How close will the bullfighter let the horns come? How far will the matador go to please the crowd? As with trapeze performers in a circus, the audience does not want to see the performer injured or killed, but it is the display of courage amid the dangerous possibility of disaster that is the lure.

Joselito (José Gómez Ortega), Belmonte’s great friend and rival and one of the greatest bullfighters of all time, was killed in the ring in 1920. Almost every matador is gored at least once a season in varying degrees of severity. Belmonte was gored more than 50 times. Of the approximately 125 major matadors (since 1700), more than 40 have been killed in the ring; this total does not include the fatalities among novilleros (beginning matadors), banderilleros, or picadors.

The greatest matadors of the 20th century were the Mexicans Rodolfo Gaona, Armillita (Fermín Espinosa), and Carlos Arruza and the Spaniards Belmonte, Joselito, Domingo Ortega, Manolete (Manuel Rodríguez), and El Cordobés (Manuel Benítez Pérez). At the turn of the 21st century the favourite was El Juli (Julián López Escobar).

Over the centuries there have been attempts by women to take part in what has traditionally been a masculine art. The first mention of a specific female torera, or matadora—according to historian José María de Cossio, the bullfighters’ Boswell—is in 1654. An etching by Francisco Goya depicts the “manly courage” of La Pajuelera as she performed in the Zaragoza (Spain) arena. Even a nun, Doña María de Gaucín, supposedly left a convent to become a bullfighter. According to Havelock Ellis in The Soul of Spain (1908), this matadora

was distinguished not only for her courage, but also her beauty and virtue, and after a few years, during which she attained renown throughout Spain, she peacefully returned to the practice of religion in her convent, without, it appears, any reproaches from the sisters, who enjoyed the reflected fame of her exploits in the bull-ring.

A favourite female bullfighter was “La Reverte,” who came into prominence around the turn of the 20th century and fought with considerable success for seven years, at the end of which time the Spanish government decreed that it was illegal and immoral for women to fight bulls. La Reverte then shocked the public by taking off his wig and body padding and revealed to the world the man he really was. Though he tried to continue in the profession, his career was ruined.

In the early 1930s, Juanita de la Cruz, a young Spanish woman, made a splash as a novillera but never became a full matador. Two American women, Bette Ford and Patricia McCormick, achieved brief fame in Mexico, but the former left the ring for an acting career and the latter retired after an almost fatal goring. In the 1990s a young Spaniard, Cristina Sánchez, achieved respect and popularity and actually became a full matador in 1996. She enjoyed three fairly successful seasons before “cutting the pigtail” (quitting) in 1999, citing the hostile attitude of intolerant crowds and harassment by her male counterparts as reasons for her retirement. (Bullfighters have not worn real pigtails since Juan Belmonte arbitrarily decided to do away with his in the 1920s.)

Unquestionably the finest torera of modern times was Conchita Cintrón. The daughter of an American mother and a Puerto Rican father, she was brought up in Lima, Peru, starred in Mexico, and then took Spain by storm in 1945. Although she would start on horseback in the Portuguese style, she would dismount, cape, and kill the bull on foot, often outdoing the men with whom she performed.

There also have been several French bullfighters of note, as well as a few British, Chinese, Japanese, and African aspirants. They have had varying degrees of success. Two Americans, Sidney Franklin and John Fulton, received the alternativa (the ceremony in which a novice becomes a full matador) in Spain and became recognized as matadores de toros. Harper Lee Gillete, who performed in Mexico, is considered by many experts to have been the best American bullfighter. Although he received the alternativa in Mexico in 1910, he never fought in Spain.