Joy, pride and relief were in Clara Sofie Kreutter’s face when she had her first appearance behind her. It was a hot August day in Mancha, Spain, and Kreutter was excited. Her first bull was called “Chirrín”, Kreutter’s final javelin thrust was not right. Bleeding, Chirrín dragged himself through the arena before collapsing. That must have been the nervousness, because she was able to kill the second bull faster. The 29-year-old beamed all the more when she ended up holding his cut-off hairy ears in her hands.
The Spanish press was merciful, despite the false start. “The first step has been taken,” said the conservative daily El Mundo, the “historic debut” was a success. After all, Clara Sofie Kreutter is the first German female bullfighter on the Iberian Peninsula. The Efe news agency raved about the “exotic touch” that Kreutter’s appearance gave toreo awarded in the Arena of Ledaña.
She is planning 40 performances this year, she wants to make a name for herself
A few months have passed since that debut, and the bullfights are on a winter break. For Clara Sofie Kreutter this means: daily training with her horse and tame cattle before the season starts again in February. She has planned around 40 performances this year and now she wants to make a name for herself. If it weren’t for the criminal complaint that the public prosecutor’s office in Siegen received against her for animal cruelty. She was reimbursed by the animal protection organization Peta, which writes about Kreutter on its website that animal cruelty can be punished under German law with up to three years in prison.
Clara Sofie Kreutter comes from the small town of Bad Berleburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. She studied horse science in Vienna and actually only wanted to do a semester abroad in Portugal. She now lives here and already stands out because of her appearance: Kreutter has long blond hair and is almost a head taller than most local toreros. For almost five years she has been learning the art of rejoneo, bullfighting on horseback, from the old master Jorge D’Almeida. “It’s an amazing experience to combine the power of two animals as beautiful as a bull and a horse to create an artistic performance,” she says.
The animals bred for fighting have a good life, she says
In Spain and Portugal, however, fewer and fewer people appreciate the artistic value of bullfighting. Portugal recently raised the age of entry to the arenas to 16 to protect children from the gruesome scenes – a law animal rights activists are hailing as a step in the road to banning it. And in Spain, only a quarter of people are interested in bullfighting, while 56 percent are in favor of banning it. This is not easily possible, because bullfighting has been a national cultural asset since 2013.
Animal welfare organizations have now found the ideal target in the young German. In the end, Kreutter says that this culture was foreign to her at first. The fact that she drives a horse towards a bleeding bull in order to keep jabbing spears in its neck brings her so much hatred on social networks that she has protected her profile there. For them it sounds like a double standard that bullfighting also brings people to the barricades who have no problem eating a steak with relish. “The bulls bred for fighting grow up semi-wild outside for four or five years,” says Kreutter. Above all, she is concerned with tradition.
Bullfighting on horseback has been celebrated on the Iberian Peninsula since the Middle Ages, and the toreros are considered stars in conservative circles. Women are still rare, but Clara Sofie Kreutter also has role models here: Probably the most famous female bullfighter was Rejoneadora Conchita Cintrón, who made her debut in 1944. She was called the “blonde goddess”.