A female bullfighter in 19 century ?

«But ... let's see, what is La Reverte? A man or a woman? "ABC wondered on October 15, 1911. The controversy had shaken the world of bullfighting several months earlier in that Spain presided over by José Canalejas. A mystery that was not easy to solve while this figure of bullfighting played the distraction and accumulated triumphs in some of the most important places in the country.

This is how this newspaper collected the controversy when it had already become a matter of national interest: “The governor of Bilbao has demanded the documents that justify the change of sex. The riddle is, at this hour, the headache of bullfighters. All the fans are aware of the roles of the bullfighter or bullfighter, their authenticity and the complications that they may entail. The businessman in the Plaza de Vista Alegre, in Madrid, believes that it is a woman. The businessman from the Plaza de Indautxu, in Bilbao, does not give in in his complaint that he is a male.

Chronicle of 1911 on La Reverte, published on September 4, 1911 - ABC ARCHIVE

The story of María Salomé Rodríguez Tripiana, alias ‘La Reverte’, began with her debut, in 1888, by the hand of Machaquito and Lagartijo chico. After leaving his work in the mines of La Carolina and Arquillos, in Jaén, he left with these two great figures to make a name for himself in Zaragoza, Madrid, Granada, Valencia, Murcia, Seville, Lisbon and other places in Portugal. She did it by making up for her lack of technique and style with incredible displays of courage. In the end, she made a dent in the press of the time, which followed her career with interest and the occasional prejudice.

"La Reverte was very brave, but I am not because of feminism in bullfighting," commented the bullfighting critic of ‘El Enano’ in January 1899. “She is very brave and dark. She capes, flags, kills and jumps over the barrier like a man, "added" La Correspondencia de España "in November 1900. In the bullrings she received the most generous praise and the most macho reproaches. "María Salomé has shown us that she is a woman with a full beard," noted the magazine ‘El Toreo’.

This continued until, in 1908, the Minister of the Interior, Juan de la Cierva, prohibited women from fighting. The killer began a tough fight in court in favor of her right to practice her profession. "I am as capable as anyone else," she warned on ABC. Seeing that she would not win the legal battle, she made a more surprising and unexpected decision: she confessed that she was not a woman and that she had not been baptized as Maria Salomé, but that she was a man. For the next several years, the enigma continued to fill pages in the newspapers.

He never fully clarified it and continued to fight as a man. He advertised himself on the billboards as Agustín Rodríguez. Some fans argued that it was a hoax, after the ban, to continue making a living. Later a rumor spread that she was a hermaphrodite. She retired in the mid-1930s and went to live with her savings in Navas de Tolosa. The Civil Registry of his native town, Senés (Almería), could have ended the controversy, but it burned down during the Civil War, as was the Parish Registry where he was baptized.

In 1962, when the right-hander had already died, ABC rescued "the most extraordinary and unique character who has stepped on the Spanish arena." "His life, caricatured and absurd, had a certain air of legend and has gone down in bullfighting history as something extraordinary and unheard of," wrote Francisco Rodríguez Batllori.