What It Takes to Be a Skilled Bullfighter

The week earlier than the most important bullfight of her profession, in Cádiz, Spain, this previous July, 24-year-old Miriam Cabas posted a fastidiously produced video on Instagram. Cabas seems not in a conventional matador costume however in a cream pantsuit, watching slightly woman—4, perhaps 5—wave a purple muleta at an imaginary bull. “Desires come true,” she wrote within the caption. “The little woman I was nonetheless guides me.”

Cabas triumphed that day, killing two bulls and receiving three of their ears as trophies. It was the primary time she had fought animals antagonized by picadors, males on horseback who stab the bulls with lances, testing their aggression and forcing them to decrease their heads on their subsequent costs on the bullfighters. For the uninitiated, this was a giant deal: Cabas had reached the ultimate stage of her coaching to turn into knowledgeable matador, one in every of vanishingly few girls to compete within the intensely conventional subject.

The British photographer Owen Harvey was there to doc her victory. Harvey has adopted Cabas’s profession for greater than a yr as a part of a collection on younger matadors. He might really feel the group rooting for her, he informed me. Cabas is an area expertise, born in Los Barrios, a small city on Spain’s southern tip the place bullfighting continues to be very a lot alive. She was launched to the exercise by her grandfather, who signed her up for after-school classes when she was simply 5. There have been different women, although not many, and solely she persevered to turn into knowledgeable.

Successfully banned in sure areas and vilified by some members of Spain’s left-wing coalition authorities, bullfighting has turn into a potent political image for the nation’s resurgent far proper. The populist Vox social gathering has made some extent of celebrating it as an important Spanish custom—and of trolling these involved about animal cruelty. Cabas, for her half, prefers to not be specific about her politics. She appreciates those that have protected bullfighting and does take into account it an necessary side of Spanish identification, however, not like a few of her friends, she doesn’t publish photographs with far-right politicians. (Although Vox helps the way in which Cabas makes a residing, its leaders are unequivocally anti-feminist.) Cabas doesn’t linger on her position as a barrier breaker, both. “You threat your life earlier than a courageous bulland that’s equally arduous for males or girls,” she informed me.

Lately, she balances an intense coaching routine together with her school programs. She’s learning to turn into a veterinarian. “No one loves bulls like us,” she stated. “We dedicate our lives to them—if that’s not love, then what’s?”

This text seems within the January 2026 print version with the headline “By the Horns.”