Between the provinces of Soria and Guadalajara, in northen Spain, there was a very curious transhumant movement of livestock, on a small scale, which each year moved between the villages of the Medinaceli's Duchy.
The north of the province of Guadalajara has excellent deciduous oak forests, cereal stubble fields and juniper groves that produce very good pastures for goats during the summer, but are very cold in winter. In the south of the province of Soria, coinciding with the headwaters of the Alto Jalón, the holm oak groves predominate, which are a warmer type of evergreen forest that produces pastures and acorns during the autumn and winter season.
These circumstances motivated the transhumant movements of entire families that moved with their herds of goats to some Soria wintering towns for generations. Cattle breeders from towns in the Duchy of Medinaceli such as Establés, Rata, Ciruelos, Ablanque, Anquela, Mazarete, Anguita or Luzón, moved to the southeast of the province of Soria, to warmer towns such as Judes, Chaorna, Montuenga, Sagides or Iruecha.
These cattle ranching movements are very old, probably originating in periods before Romanization. Some documents that speak of them already appear in the Middle Ages, due to the fact that they gave rise to numerous lawsuits. In 1359, Gastón de la Cerda, Duke of Medinaceli, designated his place of Montuenga as a pasture, its inhabitants having had enough of people from the region coming to its mountains during the winter from other colder areas.
It so happened that as a result of these transhumant movements, numerous mixed marriages between people from Soria and Guadalajara originated until the 20th century. With the loss of this livestock activity, not only has a very peculiar way of relating to the territory disappeared, but also numerous ethno-knowledge and some old traditional buildings such as parideras or sabineros huts.
28 сен 2024
