Sensational Novillera Olga Casado Follows Trailblazing Female Bullfighters like Bette Ford
Being a writer, I’ve always had a deep-rooted captivation with life and death — and also other people’s fascination with bullfighting, people like writer Ernest Hemingway, and actor and real-life “toreador” Bette Ford.
“For me, bullfighting was this very spiritual engagement with power, with power and death. You’re pitting yourself against a force that’s stronger than you and then you’re winning or losing. It’s power, a power play.” — actress and toreador Bette Ford”
Yes, the bullring is a theater of blood. However, I find watching matadors, especially graceful female toreadors like Olga Casado, dispatching bulls, paradoxically intoxicating.
It’s rumored that author and tauromaniac Papa Hemingway, saw about 1500 bulls killed on the “field of honor,” and he suggested: “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” Author Hemingway also used bullfighting as a metaphor for war and masculinity in his book, The Sun Also Rises.
Hemingway might’ve dreamed of being a toreador himself but he watched from afar. However, in the past, former Hollywood actor turned female matador, Bette Ford, and the stunningly beautiful “novillera” Casado, today, have been on the frontlines.
“You kill, it’s part of your world as a bullfighter, it’s a natural part of your world, and then you leave that world and it becomes unnatural…I’m good at killing, I’m known as a bullfighter who kills well, and that I can kill well, that I can compete technically with my male peers in my technique in killing, gives me satisfaction.” — Bette Ford
First, I had to research a bit of history, discovering that “toreo” was practiced in ancient Rome in gladiatorial contests. It later became popular in Spain as a symbol of the country’s culture and identity. Toreo is the Spanish word for bullfighting, and torero means bullfighter. Toreo, also known as tauromachia, is considered a performance art and a sport that involves a physical contest between a bullfighter and a bull. The bullfighter’s goal is to subdue, immobilize, or kill the bull.
The art of toreo is what so captivated Hemingway. In fact, he wrote: “Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor.”
Sure, Toreo is controversial because of animal welfare concerns — indeed, anti-bullfighting activists suggest the bulls suffer from a protracted death in the bullfighting arena, weakened and tormented both physically and mentally including with spiked lances, before the matador drives a sword blade between the bull’s shoulders.
It’s estimated about 250,000 bulls are killed in bullfights around the world, annually. After the bull is killed, its body is processed at a slaughterhouse. As a side note, annually, more than 300 million cattle are slaughtered in abattoirs for human food consumption — and, often slaughtered in not very humane ways, if truth be told.
In some countries, toreo is defined as an art form, and local regulations define it as a cultural event or heritage. Today, bullfighting is legal in both Spain and France, but some cities have banned it. Bullfighting is also legal in Portugal, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru. In the US, the sport is not banned outright, but only a so-called bloodless form of bullfighting is allowed — this version is most popular in Texas and California.
“A bull will try to outwit you. It will stop and hook when the last thing you expect from it is that it will stop and hook.” — Bette Ford
Last October, the DANA floods in Valencia resulted in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Spanish history. And this is where that cultural angle comes into play, as a bullfighting benefit at the Vistalegre bullring was arranged to raise funds to help the victims of the flood. On the guestlist for matadors appearing at “Madrid torea por Valencia” was famed Enrique Ponce, in his farewell campaign. And, also beautiful Olga Casado, who was trained at the Bullfighting School Yiyo de Madrid. She is known as a novillera, which is a term for a young female bullfighter.
“He [the matador] must have a spiritual enjoyment of the moment of killing. Killing cleanly and in a way which gives you esthetic pleasure and pride has always been one of the greatest enjoyments of a part of the human race.” — Ernest Hemingway
Casado performed so well, it was described as “with the cape her passes were fine and long; and with the muleta she was very firm, with torerismo and grace…” She was awarded with two ears and a tail. And, Casado, who is slim in stature with a model’s face, was carried off on her colleagues’ shoulders in triumph, saying, “I want to be the best female bullfighter that has ever existed.”
I’d describe my own fascination with Olga Casado this way: “The smoothness of her olive skin. Her hair brushed back ever so elegantly and tightly — under her stylish Andulusian hat. Her superbly fitted outfits. Her stately beautiful form. The way she stands so upright, her slim derrière slightly protruding under her fitted trousers. The sweep of her hand, guiding her muleta. The way she gracefully strides away in triumph. And, her dazzling smile. Classic.”
A forerunner to Casado was pioneering Bette Ford, whose historic debut at the Plaza México was followed by several years of fighting as a “figura,” a bullfighting celebrity, in Mexico and the Philippines. Her legacy was caught on film in Beauty and the Bull, a 1954 Warner Bros. biographical short film, portraying the bullfighting career of this actress turned toreador. The short was nominated in 1955 for an Academy Award in the Best Short Subject.
Ford also said: “Bullfighting has some of the elements of a sport or contest, and in the United States most people think of it as a sport, an unfair sport. If you’re in Spain or Mexico it’s absolutely not a sport; it’s not thought of as a sport and it’s not written about as a sport. It has elements of public spectacle, but then so does, for example, the Super Bowl. It has elements of a deeply entrenched, deeply conservative tradition, a tradition that resists change…”
Drop in on Olga Casado on her Instagram page, and check out video of her performing.
