Madrid Transhumance Festival Reroutes Thousands of Sheep to Avoid Housing Protest Camp
Thousands of sheep and goats thronged the streets of Madrid on Sunday, October 25, for the annual Transhumance Festival, drawing large crowds of tourists and locals. This year the festival took a detour from its traditional route to avoid the Puerta del Sol, the central square where housing activists have set up a protest camp.
The housing protests have gathered pace since last month, fueled by outrage over the eviction of an 87-year-old woman from the downtown Madrid home where she had lived for seven decades. María del Carmen Abascal, widely known as Maricarmen, died in hospital shortly after her eviction.
The festival recreates the pastoral practice of moving livestock to new grazing grounds; Madrid sits on an ancient migration route. Traditional grazing also clears brush and other flammable undergrowth, reducing the spread of wildfires. But transhumance has been in decline since around 1950, as generations of young people left Spain's interior for work in the cities. Madrid has held the festival since 1994, and today a small group of farmers keeps the tradition alive.
Related: Follow-Up: Portuguese Police Clear Lisbon Housing Protest Camp Again, Arresting 25
Source: GSM·USA
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：迁徙节羊群行经马德里希贝莱斯广场（资料图）。图片：Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0
