La Nîmoise, star of bullfighting on horseback, is playing in Madrid and Nîmes this week.
In just over ten years, have you become a star of bullfighting on horseback? Do you measure the path traveled?
I left for Spain at 21, I was a biology student in Montpellier, I had nothing to do with this environment, I didn’t know anyone there. And in France, people started to take an interest in me after my first successes in Spain. I had also sworn to myself to return to Nîmes to do the paseo there as a torera. And it’s not a legend!
How did it all start for you?
I am a pure Nimese. I was horseback riding, I went to bullfights when I was little, my dad liked it a lot, but I was not passionate about it and at 14, I didn’t dream of being a bullfighter, I didn’t go to school taurine. My sports teacher in college knew that I rode a lot, and that I was an usher in the arenas, as a little job. He offered me to be an alguazil (on foot or on horseback, the alguazil ensures compliance with the rules during bullfights, editor’s note).
It all started from there, I found that all that, bullfighting, bullfights, made sense, on a cultural level, sensations, emotions, something rare, incarnate. During a bullfight, I met a member of the Peralta family (an illustrious Andalusian family of bullfighting on horseback, whose older brother, Angel is a historical figure, Editor’s note).
During vacation, I went to their finca (property, Editor’s note), they saw me riding, and Angel Peralta asked me if I would agree to work for them, as a rider. At the time, I was… in the university of biology in Montpellier! I replied that it didn’t interest me, but that if I could bullfight on horseback, I would be delighted to stay. He said to me, “Forget it. Or, either you’re crazy, and you’re going to catch wild foals in the meadows and train them, or you have a billionaire father. So I asked them for a rope and to show me which wild foals I could catch.
It started like that. And I told my parents that I was taking a sabbatical year to do my master’s by correspondence, and I got it by the way! Followed four years of intensive training. Before debuting in public eleven years ago.
2020 and 2021 have been complicated years for bullfighting too. How do you see this return to normal?
I think it’s great that people are coming back to the arenas, they are filling up again, this has been the case for the bullfights in which I have already participated. It’s a huge satisfaction, there are people, and people with me too! We can see that people want to laugh, to party, to celebrate this newfound freedom. Simply to live.
biography express
Léa Vicens, 37, is a bullfighter on horseback (in Spanish, rejoneadora).
Holder of a Master’s degree in biology at the University of Montpellier, she received the alternative (her doctorate as a bullfighter) on September 14, 2013 in the arenas of Nîmes, her hometown, from the hands of maestro Angel Peralta, in the presence of the Frenchwoman Marie Sara, and stars of the discipline (which she also became) Paco Ojeda and Diego Ventura. She lives and trains in the region of Seville, where she develops other activities.
This week she will be in Madrid (29th) and Nîmes (June 3 and 6), then will continue a 2022 season which, outside of its dates across the Pyrenees, will pass through France via Lunel (July 16 and 17), Béziers (August 12), but also Bayonne or Soustons in the Southwest.
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You lived these two extraordinary years in Spain, where you live…
I have lived in Seville for fifteen years. It was very hard, because in Spain we didn’t have any help. I’ve always done everything a bit on my own, since I was little, I manage. I like to find solutions, it comes from my education.
My parents let me make mistakes, find my way, with a benevolent eye of course. However, during the pandemic, we did not know what was going to happen… In short, I had a stable of forty horses to feed, four or five employees that we couldn’t let go, we had to maintain that.
I sold a few horses that weren’t going to be stars in my stable. And I created a brand of olive oil, I have olive trees on my property, and a tourist activity, on the finca, where I teach people how to train horses, or what is the job daily life of a bullfighter on horseback.
In Spain, you launch projects on your name, you develop a brand. Your notoriety is much greater there than in France?
Necessarily. In Spain, bullfighting is accepted throughout the territory. Also admired. From the southern tip in Tarifa, to the northern tip in Santander, bullfighting is everywhere, except in Catalonia, even in the tiniest villages.
In France, it is still limited to a specific geographical area, in the south. Here, the bullfighters remain stars, people stop in the streets to take pictures with us, there are posters and posters everywhere, personalities of all kinds go to the bullrings, show themselves there and are proud of it . Without undergoing lynching as in France.
Do you still feel the hostility towards bullfighting in France growing?
But it does not come from society as a whole. Anti-bullfighting activists in France are made up of minorities who make their voices heard even if they are very few in number, but they are very virulent, they are funded, they have time to make noise. There are people who no longer dare to go to the arenas today, in France. They are going to Spain.
However, in Spain, bullfighting does not have, or no longer, the same unanimity, a mistrust has also set in, right?
No no. There was the Podemos party which was against bullfighting, but it is in free fall, its leader resigned a few months ago… No, compared to France, there is not this cloud over bullfighting in Spain .
You have experienced triumphs but also injuries, gorings. Is it something you can overcome?
In his city, the eternal return, alongside another Nîmes
“I was four consecutive years at the top of the ranking (in the number of races tored per year, in France and in Spain, editor’s note), and the first woman in the world to emerge in triumph from the Madrid bullring during the San Isidro feria It was just before the pandemic, in 2019. And there, I tore again in Madrid this week, and then after in Nîmes, for the feria” was enthusiastic in advance, this Monday, Léa Vicens.
In Nîmes where she took the alternative in 2013 alongside emblematic figures of her discipline, including the Frenchwoman Marie Sara: “She was and remains a great figure in bullfighting on horseback, which she helped to popularize in France She’s world famous. I admire her a lot. And she’s a friend too!”
But it is a Nîmes, like her, Simon Casas, who directs her career, in addition to the arenas of Nîmes or Madrid: “He is an immense professional, very competent and respected by the whole community, who has demonstrated that he was one of the greatest arena managers in history. He managed to do incredible things from scratch.”
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Going beyond the fear, the pain, are you still struggling with that?
Absolutely. There is a huge responsibility. The fear of the toro, we have it all the time. But it is still dominated, controlled, by intensive daily training. There, we reduce the risks. And then there is another fear, that of failure. This one, we dominate it by a mental work, by concentration.
Are you already thinking about the after?
I will answer you. But I would like to ask you a question first: have you ever asked this question to another male bullfighter, on horseback or on foot?
Yes, to bullfighters who are still young but very often injured, for example. Or to bullfighters who insisted that they never won a contract. In other words: I am not asking you this because you are a woman…
(She laughs) OK, OK… But it’s true that you rarely ask a man that question. Especially since my career isn’t very long yet, and I’m still the youngest in the cartel. I’ve only been bullying for ten years in public, and I’m always with guys who are 25 or 30 years old.
But as long as people come to see me at the arenas, that I give pleasure and that I feast, everything is fine. And it is, so I continue! And then on horseback, you can’t interrupt your career, stop for a year or two and start again. We do not rebuild a stable in two years.
This job requires self-sacrifice and sacrifice. Do you have time to devote to another passion, a hobby?
In fact, sacrificing is synonymous with depriving oneself. And to deprive oneself is the register of constraint. However, my life is about everything except constraint: I enjoy getting up in the morning, to train, bullfight cows, train horses, go to breeders, train, have the pressure before the paseo, triumph.
What could be seen as sacrifices is my way of life. My philosophy of life. And my whole life is a cakewalk.
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