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Bullfighting, Spanish la fiesta brava (“the brave festival”) or corrida de toros (“running of bulls”), Portuguese corrida de touros, French combats de taureaux, also called tauromachy, the national spectacle of Spain and many Spanish-speaking countries, in which a bull is ceremoniously fought in a sand arena by a matador and usually killed. Bullfighting is also popular in Portugal and southern France, though in the former, where the bull is engaged by a bullfighter on horseback, and in many bullrings in the latter, it is illegal to kill the bull.
Matador, in bullfighting, the principal performer who works the capes and usually dispatches the bull with a sword thrust between the shoulder blades. Though most bullfighters have been men, women bullfighters have participated in the spectacle for centuries. (For greater detail on bullfighters, see bullfighting.)
The techniques used by modern matadors date from about 1914, when Juan Belmonte revolutionized the ancient spectacle. Formerly, the main object of the fight had been only to prepare the bull for the sword thrust. But Belmonte, a small, slight Andalusian, emphasized the danger to the matador by close and graceful capework.
