Meet the matador Lea Vicens, who fights for the bullfight while the Spaniards turn their backs on him

Like a pop star or a princess, she made the covers of ¡Hola! and the French magazine Paris Match. Lea Vicens, however, lives in a very difficult world as one of the few female bullfighters in a decade-long macho reserve.

She is a Rejoneadora – the horsewoman who plays a deadly role in the fight between man – or woman – and bull. The mounted Rejoneadora stabs the bull’s back with lances to kill it, so she must be a skilled rider to dodge the beast’s horns.

Their style of bullfighting differs from the traditional matador, who dodges the animal with his cape and eventually kills it with a sword. Vicens, a bullfighter for 15 years, still spends 10 hours a day practicing for fights at her ranch near Seville in southern Spain. “I’m definitely breaking the image of the matador,” she laughs.

Vicens is the most successful female matador at a time when opinions in Spain are swaying against this centuries-old cultural tradition. Spain passed a law last year recognizing animals as sentient beings and not just objects, but the law didn’t apply to bullfighting or hunting dogs, just pets.

Vicens is the most successful female matador at a time when opinions in Spain are swaying against this centuries-old cultural tradition

Polls have shown that public opinion is increasingly sympathetic to the plight of animals as Spain’s animal rights lobby has gained strength and found political allies in the left-wing coalition government.

This week the government passed a special law to help workers in the cultural sector, which has been devastated when theatres, cinemas – and bullrings – have been shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic. It will give greater legal protection to these workers, who are often employed on fixed-term contracts. However, although the measure mentioned the arts, it did not include bullfighters who consider themselves artists.

The Spanish cabinet also approved a €190m plan that would give anyone who turns 18 this year €400 towards cultural activities – but again, bullfighting was not included. The Foundation of Fighting Bulls, which represents matadors and breeders, has appealed to the government to include bullfighting in its definition of culture.

Teenagers who collect the checks are free to spend the money on video games, according to the foundation – but bullfighting has been an integral part of Spanish culture for centuries.

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Vicens was studying biology in France when she fell in love with los toros, as bullfighting is called in Spain. “When I was 18, I was invited to a bullfight,” she tells i. “When I was young, I didn’t like cops. But growing up I saw it as cultural and historical. I loved it. I fell in love with her.”

She comes from the city of Nîmes, a stronghold of French bullfighting, and has no moral qualms about killing animals. “Fighting bulls are raised in the most natural way – in the wild. We don’t manipulate the cops into fights,” she says. “The horns are not shaved. The fighting bull is the guardian of the wilderness.”

Vicens rejects the animal rights lobby’s criticism that bullfights are an outdated anachronism. “The political debate damages the culture of the fighting bull. Bullfighting is something that comes from the people. There is something for young and old, for women and men. It’s culture, not politics. I have many fans who are on all sides of the political debate.”

A star of the bullfighting world and considered the finest matador alive, Morante de la Puebla represents the more traditional form of the Fiesta Nacional, as bullfighting is known in Spain. Even on a rainy afternoon in Valencia, his name was enough to fill the city’s bullring.

Spanish matador Morante de la Puebla performs in Valdemorillo near Madrid

José Fernández, a fan, said that De la Puebla brought back the classic art of bullfighting to revive it in the face of renewed opposition from animal rights parties. “See how the artist wears the old-fashioned montera [the black hat of the matador], which dates from the 15th century. He brought back old values,” says Fernández.

However, when the matador sent six bulls, even Carlos Ilian, bullfighting critic for Spain’s largest sports newspaper Marca, said he believed bullfighting’s days were numbered.

“I can’t believe it took so long,” he says. “Bullfighters in the 1950s were amazed it was still going when we could have breakfast in New York in the morning, then hop on a plane and have dinner in London.”

Aida Gascon of rights group AnimaNaturalis says: “We hope bullfighting dies a natural death. In Spain, there is a growing rejection of animal abuse.”

A poll of 2,000 people released in January by the BBVA Foundation found that most Spaniards oppose the use of animals in circuses and bullfights. Eight out of ten respondents said they think animals should be respected.

In 2013, the then-Conservative government declared bullfighting a national heritage to be protected across Spain, effectively blocking attempts to ban the practice.

But Gascon hopes that could be overturned if parties sympathetic to banning the practice win the next election in 2023. “If that happens, we will organize a popular petition to collect more than 500,000 signatures and we will ask MPs to repeal the Bullfighting Protection Act,” she says.