Spanish painter Francisco Goya first depicted a female bullfighter in his etching work La Pajuelera, which featured a woman sparring with a bull on horseback in 1816.
[1] During the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, women were forced to exile in other Spanish-speaking countries and the United States in order to continue bullfighting.
[2] In Spain – along with many countries in Latin America and Asia – women were banned from the sport.
[4] Women had difficulty completing their alternativa, a ceremony where a bullfighter becomes a matador, during the 1980s due to the social pressures of the decade.
[5] Spanish bullfighter Cristina Sánchez was the first woman matador in Europe, gaining full status in 1996.