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E-book A Country of Shepherds : Stories of a Changing Mediterranean Landscape
Every fall, Spanish shepherds herd thousands of sheep along ancient droving rights of way that pass directly through the busy Puerta del Sol in downtown Madrid, the urban heart of the city and symbolic center of Spain (marked as kilometer “0” for national highways). First granted as a system of royal rights of way throughout the Iberian Peninsula in the thirteenth century, many of these droving routes, known as vías pecuarias, have fallen into disuse. Routes have often been paved over as urban development has spread through the country. Today in Madrid, the celebration of this ancient practice of transhumance, the seasonal migration of sheep and shepherds from summer to winter pastures and back again, occurs only on one Sunday a year. The practice dates back about 7,000 years in the Iberian Peninsula, and, in 1994, environmental activist Jesús Garzón Heydt helped bring the ancient practice of transhumance and these droving rights of way to national and international attention by establishing this one-day Festival of Transhumance in Madrid.
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