Léa Vicens returns to Nîmes for the Pentecost feria, as a star of horseback bullfighting

Léa Vicens revient à Nîmes pour toréer le lundi de Pentecôte, en matinée. Midi Libre – ALEXIS BETHUNE

The star of horseback bullfighting will bullfight in Madrid on Saturday June 18, and in Nîmes, as part of the feria, on Pentecost Monday. Two major events which constitute the ordinary of Nîmoise. She tells her life, her career, her ambitions as a book dedicated to her appears.

On May 18 in Madrid, in the largest arenas in Spain, and on May 20 in Nîmes, the largest in France, there will probably not be a ticket left for sale for the two horse bullfights scheduled there. With Léa Vicens as headliner.
Such is the life of the Nîmoise, who has established herself as a star in her discipline, bullfighting on horseback, whose aura and notoriety now go beyond the boundaries of the sole circle of assiduous aficionados.

As long-term reports in general public magazines can attest, on both sides of the Pyrenees.

A year in his footsteps

As further shown by the publication of La vie à mort, a work signed Gaël Tchakaloff, an author who presents the particularities of not knowing bullfighting , and to admit that she supports "with difficulty the vision of a bullfight". Before, therefore, being intrigued then meeting the Gardoise, and succumbing. To the point of accompanying him for a year and dedicating this book to him.

A whole which allows this flashback on the life and career of this star now firmly installed in its firmament. She was therefore born in Nîmes 39 years ago, grew up there ("I was a student at the Tour Magne school, at the Révolution college, at the Daudet high school, before being a student at the Carmes college!"), before going to Montpellier for a master's degree in biology.

At 21, head to Andalusia

Then she gave up everything, at the age of 21, to go to Andalusia, to work on the property of an illustrious and emblematic Spanish horse bullfighting family, the Peraltas, including the older brother, Angel , was a historical figure.

What follows: she works on site as a rider and horse trainer, trains fiercely for four years, overcomes a priori and prejudices, to finally begin as a bullfighter on horseback ( "No, I don't say torera, but bullfighter, because the toro doesn't make the difference") thirteen years ago. A status to which she officially accessed in 2013 during her alternative ceremony, celebrated in Nîmes, received from the hands of her maestro Angel Peralta, in the presence of the Frenchwoman Marie Sara.

“Thanks to Caron…”

&Ironic praise from Léa Vicens to the deputyé Aymeric Caron, who, at the end of 2022, as part of a parliamentary niche, wanted to vote on a text aimed at ban bullfighting, before giving it up: "I think that thanks to this   Caron, bullfighting has taken off again. Aficionados remain so, more than ever, and many have wanted to discover bullfighting to get an idea for themselves. Ça did us a favor, since this story, we see more people at the arenas, really !"

"Completely in love with what I do"

And this moment which, for many, remains the peak of a career, will mark the beginning of his ascent. During which, as a final biographical clarification, she still took care to take her master's degree, by correspondence, and obtain it. The love of things well done, no doubt.

"I'm at the top of the escalafon (the hierarchy of bullfighters, Editor's note), I'm completely in love with what I do, and I wakes up every morning, in Andalusia, my adopted land, where I live, with the desire to go to work"  confided to us -she this May 2, from the car that was driving her, towards Cercedilla, north of Madrid, where she was touring that same afternoon (she left, a few hours later, carried on her shoulders of his fans).

Everywhere, triumphs

“I’I have triumphed in every major arena, and I’ve earned the respect of the entire profession. So, yes, it was a dream, and I more than achieved it. But in art, there is no ceiling. I want to continue to evolve."

With many good years ahead of her to achieve this. Isn't she often the youngest on the track, when she finds herself competing with the cream of the rejoneadores (bullfighters on horseback), Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza (58 years old), Andy Cartagena (43), Sergio Galan ( 43), Diego Ventura (41) ? "Léa will stop at the height of her glory. And she will be able to do anything. She is out of the norm: like out of the world, and, at the same time, with a sort of multiplication of the attention she gives to others"& ;nbsp;observes Gaël Tchakaloff.

"His intensity of living"

"She is in the absence of self, not in showoff, no more in the arenas than outside. This woman who conquers a world of men amazed me with her intensity of life. But she remains secretive, she is silent. She talks more with her horses, her donkey, her dogs! We know nothing about her, and I didn't want to clarify the mystery, even though I followed her for a year. I did not seek to enter into her private life" she confides, "returned" .

“Life to death”, the book

“An article read in the American press which was devoted to him" had interested me, I had found it interesting. an unusual power of words. I met her, I passed by her. three hours in a café &agrav; talking with her, çconvinced me".

And this is how the journalist Gaël Tchakalloff, a layman in matters of bullfighting, followed in L&eacute's footsteps ;a Vicens for a year. And describe with Life at home mort (Flammarion, 236 p., 21 €), a sensitive, touching, singular and very personal portrait.

Léa Vicens read it. She loved him.

Marie Sara, after the legendary Conchinta Cintron, and before Léa Vicens, also experienced the rare privilege of bullfighting at the highest level in this almost exclusively male universe. And we lend her an attentive ear when she says she finds her youngest "very courageous, she follows through with her choices. She is a very good rider who has had an exceptional career. And not ephemeral, it has lasted for several years" she notes.

Marie Sara : "I’admire her power as a free woman"

Before appreciating: "I love her very much, humanly, I admire her power as a free woman. If I see myself again through her? Yes, of course, but the times have changed. But I want to live this adventure, with a calm life, his horses, and the daily training in his finca, and, besides that, the exuberant life of an artist, when we takes the car to go bullfighting in festive cities and boiling arenas. These are very full, very beautiful lives…"

Simon Casas: "As if she came from another planet"

And none other than Simon Casas, from Nîmes who directs the arenas of Nîmes and Madrid, and manages the career of Léa Vicens (after presiding over the destiny of that of Marie Sara), is better placed to evoke the position she occupies, "in the top 3 of rejoneadores internationally. She has an extraordinary temperament, capable of setting the highest goals for which she sacrifices everything. Without ever bringing her back, without populism, without seeking easy applause, without speculating on the fact that she is a woman. And besides that, she reads, she cultivates her garden, literally! She is both very human and strange, she is exceptional, as if she came from another planet" he expressed, lyrically, this Tuesday, since Madrid.

Her feminism

"I will be a feminist when women go to free their sisters in Afghanistan".

On this sentence noted in Gaël Tchakaloff's book, Léa Vicens acceptedé to come back:"The struggle that certain Western pseudo-feminists are waging is not mine. It is for the women of Iran or Afghanistan that we must fight, the priority is to fight for them. is there, not on inclusive language. And destroying man to replace him with woman is an archaic vision. Equality will not be obtained by removing men, but by increasing women."< /p>

"When everything seems to stop…"

At the same time and the day after a new success in Jerez, Léa Vicens, from her property located south of Seville, where she flourished among her horses and its olive trees ("But I still love coming back to Nîmes, going to the market halls, walking around rue Fresque or the Jardins de la Fontaine"), recognized: "Triumphs, shining, it’s important. But bullfighting is also a philosophy. When I perform, I look for harmony, elegance, balance in the evaluation of distances and time, something deeper, when everything seems to stop, as if suspended. This is how I want to realize myself, as an artist."

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