José Navarro "Trashumantes"

Every November a small group of Spanish semi-nomadic shepherds from Teruel set off on a 3-week long journey and walk a flock of 5,000 sheep across 250-miles of Spanish landscapes. They leave behind the exhausted summer pastures of their native Serrania de Albarracin and head for greener, winter hillsides in Jaen, Andalucia.

They are the ‘trashumantes’, the very last ones who still practise a 1000-year-old tradition on such a large scale.

I recently accompanied them for the whole duration of their seasonal migration. This project took three years from inception of the idea to realisation. A series of sheep epidemics and the subsequent government ban of nation-wide movements of animals almost finished off the already precarious lifestyle of the trashumantes.

During the journey I felt the pervading sense of camaraderie amongst them and witnessed how the activity completely defines who they are. They are trashumantes and could not, would not, be otherwise. Sadly, they’re often seen as an anachronism in our technology-driven society. However, for the trashumantes the journey is not an exercise in nostalgia but a cost-efficient, environmentally-friendly alternative to road transport: they save money by walking the sheep instead of taking them in lorries. So the activity is unquestionably rooted in a modern market economy.

I don’t know how long they will keep doing it, but I hope that the young shepherds who came with us eventually take over the responsibility from the core of mature trashumantes who drove the expedition. It would be a great loss if the drovers’ tracks eventually faded in the landscape because no trashumantes walk them anymore.

All images copyright © José Navarro

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El Somni (A Dream)

"El Somni" a documentary film directed by Christophe Farnarier, is produced by Lluís Miñarro for Eddie Saeta.

Synopsis:
Man has shepherded his flock since the beginning of time, so long in fact that the nomadic shepherd has become part of our collective consciousness. Joan Pipa is the last in the line of a millenarian tradition on the verge of extinction. We accompany him on his last trek through the Catalan Pyrenees and as the days go by we discover the past and present of a man who loves his way of life and exudes the pleasure of life at one with nature. In recent years however, rural depopulation, industrialization, construction on an unparalleled scale, the proliferation of new roads and infrastructure and climate change have combined to put an end to a dream. Where do we go from here? Is the disappearance of nomadic shepherds a sign of progress, or are we witnessing the death of our civilization?