By the Horns

The week before the biggest bullfight of her career, in Cádiz, Spain, this past July, 24-year-old Miriam Cabas posted a carefully produced video on Instagram.

- Begoña Gómez Urzaiz

Cabas appears not in a traditional matador costume but in a cream pantsuit, watching a little girl—4, maybe 5—wave a red muleta at an imaginary bull.

Cabas triumphed that day, killing two bulls and receiving three of their ears as trophies. It was the first time she had fought animals antagonized by picadors, men on horseback who stab the bulls with lances, testing their aggression and forcing them to lower their heads on their subsequent charges at the bullfighters.