Cintrón walked calmly away from the bull and was arrested as she left the ring, for violating the law banning women from fighting on foot. With the audience on the verge of rioting in protest of her arrest, the regional governor pardoned her and she was released. It was one of the most dramatic moments in bullfighting history. As Orson Welles wrote in the introduction to her memoirs, her career "ended in a single burst of glorious criminality. You can't keep a lady waiting forever, and there came an afternoon when she decided that she'd waited long enough."