Streets of Madrid Jammed With Sheep, and That’s Too Ba-a-a-ad – RedState
Here in the United States, on Saturday, the streets of many of our major cities were filled with idiots marching. We have covered these events extensively, and there is no need to repeat it here. No, we must now turn our attention to the streets of Madrid, Spain, where the streets were recently filled with sheep and goats, during an annual festival called “Transhumance.”
Watch:
The annual event has to do with the history of grazing in the city area and how animals are moved from one seasonal area to another.
The streets of Madrid were crowded Sunday, not with protesters or soccer fans, but with a herd of sheep and goats passing through the Spanish capital during an annual festival that honors the region’s rural heritage.
The sheep parade of bells, bleating, baas and horn music turned heads and attracted crowds of thousands. Each year, Transhumance Festival organizers recreate the pastoral practice of moving livestock to new pastures.
The festival also highlights the environmental benefits of traditional grazing, in which livestock are used to clear brush and other flammable undergrowth, thereby reducing the spread of wildfires.
Movement between seasonal pastures is called transhumance.
This is one woolly crowds in the streets, and sheep better believe it. But for the locals, it’s a mow pleasure.
This year, wildfires in the region have brought new attention to the annual event.
Juan García Vicente, an environmentalist who has participated in the festival for three decades, said Spain’s extreme summer wildfire season – among the most destructive in its history – has reinforced the event’s ecological message.
“We have to fight this on several fronts,” Vicente said of climate change, also warning against the “total abandonment of the rural world” in Spain.
Other participants were simply amused by their proximity to the sheep and goats trotting next to Madrid’s famous landmarks. This year, some 1,100 merino sheep and 200 goats took to the streets, organizers said.
If you ask me, it’s pasture That’s when people started paying more attention to the rural world, without which the rest of the world would quickly go hungry. But this event brings to Madrid the lesson that breeders make a ram-tastic job.
Learn more: The king confers the royal title on a breed of goat
Do you have a herd? Montana man pleads guilty to raising giant sheep
Being the proud son of a rancher, I tend to view sheep and goats with mild suspicion. There are few species of livestock as stupid as sheep, and goats present the opposite problem: they’re smart, they can climb, and if there’s anything that smells worse than an old goat, I don’t know what it could be. When I was growing up, a local family in our area raised goats. Their old guy loved to climb the large box elder tree that overhung the highway passing their property. Old Billy was known locally as “Old Stinky,” and going under that tree, even at highway speeds, required rolling up the truck’s windows and holding your breath if Old Stinky was on his perch.
That was really it ba-aad.
Now that the annual event is over, I herd that Madrilenians have a lot of cleaning to do. Maybe they could avoid it by going to the lamb.
I’ll show myself.
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