In the bullring, she twisted at the waist, stretched both hamstrings, and rolled her right wrist to loosen it up. She had broken her wrist almost two years earlier, and it still had not healed properly. The pain flared up every time she rolled the palillo, her wooden helper sword, or when her estoque, her steel killing sword, was deflected by a bull’s shoulder bone. She tried to kill with her left hand, but the sword was difficult to maneuver and her accuracy was terrible.
“Señoras y señores,” came the blast of the loudspeaker, though the sound systems in portable bullrings like the one that afternoon in Móstoles, a suburb on the outskirts of Madrid, were so poor that it was impossible to hear the names of the bullfighters and the ranches and the programming of the feria, the town’s annual festival.
Honey Anne Haskin, then 23, was one of the youngest novilleras—aspiring female bullfighters—on the program and set to perform last. Appearing as Ana de Los Angeles, she was said to be the first American woman to perform in a bullring on foot in Spain. She was also the participant with perhaps the most unlikely story. Haskin had grown up an artsy teenage photographer in Los Angeles. There were no ranchers or matadors in her family. No uncles from the Romani neighborhoods of Andalucía or the dusty pueblos of Colombia or Mexico. She had learned Spanish just a few years earlier. But she was a rebellious kid who had bypassed college and taught herself how to fight a bull, and she was in the running to become the first matadora de toros in modern Spanish history.
She now stood tall in her secondhand traje de luces, the ceremonial suit of lights, with its gladiator jacket and skintight pants. She looked at the crowd with a stoic gaze, no makeup and a thin set of eyebrows, thin lips, and thin hair combed tight under her montera, the black silk bullfighter’s cap. Other novilleras were warming up next to her, a blur of capes and banderillas, or barbed sticks, and swords.
Haskin had appeared with Carmela from Zaragoza and Carmen Granada and Tencha Maria before. In the late 1970s, novilleras often performed together. Maria, a native of Madrid and the hometown favorite that afternoon, had become Haskin’s rival. At a prior performance, Maria had squared off against a bull that was tricky, obscenely large, and older than advertised. She could not finish the performance and was sent to the infirmary. Haskin was obligated to step in. Maria’s bull slammed Haskin against the tablas, the wooden boards lining the ring, nearly impaling her with its rack of horns before she killed it. Haskin remained in the ring to face her own bull afterward. This one was dangerous too, older and not appropriate for an amateur.
