Las Ventas Bullring

This guide to Las Ventas Bullring in Madrid centers on the Puerta Grande, the Great Door through which a matador is carried out on the crowd's shoulders, bullfighting's highest honor, earned only by cutting at least two ears from a bull in one afternoon. It traces the ring's history since 1931, when only a handful of names, like Santiago Martín, El Viti, walked through it more than a few times, and one July evening in 1995, when a young novice named Cristina Sánchez became the first woman ever carried out that door. Listen for how the sport's biggest names responded to her afterward.