‘To ply this trade, you have to be solitary, crazy, and unmarried — and you have to be in love.’” Says the bullfighter’s maxim.

I don’t like to see blood, I don’t like fights and I was not raised in Spain where bullfights are a tradition.  I should have no interest in this subject yet I felt completely sucked into it within seconds of watching this excellent documentary that brought memories of seeing a bullfight as a teen in Spain and reading Hegmingway’s description of the arena’s cruel beauty in The Sun Also Rises.

Ella es el Matador (currently shown on PBS)  is about Women who have entered the ultimate men’s club: Bullfighting.  In this fascinating interview, Filmmakers Gemma Cubero and Celeste Carrasco talk about why what drives women matadors, the differences between Mari Paz and Eva and their own stances on bullfighting which definitely challenged my opinions on it.

“Bullfighting is a show. It’s a spectacle. It’s entertainment, in a certain way, like a soccer game or the opera. But it’s more complex than that, too. And what happens can be very unexpected, because there is a possibility that the bullfighter can die. It’s the only spectacle where you can see life and death right there.”

It was in 974 that~ the very young at the time~ Angela Hernandez decided that she wanted to become a matador. To satisfy her passion passion for bullfighting, she took the case to the Spanish Supreme Court in order to enter the ring and won her case.

Since then, women are allowed to fight but very few women have had the courage or madness to face death, confronting and dominating their fears in front of a fully packed arena.

The film is fascinating as it follows all these different characters and the different path they took to become a matador. Mari Paz Vega came from a working-class background. She was from a family where her father and five brothers had all tried to be matadors, but none of them made it. And they were all supportive of her, and her brothers work for her and live their dream through her. Mari Paz is the only professional female matador right now, and she’s successful in Latin America, but she’s still trying to get to a higher level as a matador in Spain.

There might today be only two women left in bullfighting but their inner strength imposes ~or rather~ forces respect, admiration in a truly inspiring way. It is nearly as if their  combat against the bull concentrated all the battles women have had to fight over the centuries.