Soria/Brazatortas (Ciudad Real) (EFE) Alcudía, specifically in the municipality of Brazatortas (Ciudad Real), due to mobility restrictions applied by the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha to try to control various outbreaks of sheep pox.
On the verge of a long-awaited retirement, desperate for the wait and for not being able to feed his animals with the pastures that he would now find in the Soria Highlands, Del Rincón has regretted in statements to EFE that the administrations do not give him a solution, beyond of the offer that the Ministry has made this Tuesday to pay them for the feed of their cattle, but what he wants is to leave with his cattle now.
“They won’t give us the freedom to circulate until fifteen days from now,” explained the pastor, who did not want the veterinarians to test his animals for smallpox, convinced that they were not infected, and with the only fixed idea of to let them go: “We don’t want anything else. They do not understand the problem we have nor do they want to understand it, ”he lamented.
In the Alcudia valley, as Del Rincón explained, ten farmers and 15,000 sheep are suffering from these restrictions, after a smallpox outbreak was detected in Cuenca in September, while he moved his animals there in November.
European regulations
For this farmer, the restrictions applied “do not make sense”, despite the fact that they are the ones in force at the European level and those deployed by the Ministry and the autonomous communities throughout Spain to control this type of infection and, with this, preserve the public health and also the trade itself linked to the livestock sector.
“With this disease, the animals that die die, but it is not bad for humans,” the pastor said angrily, frustrated because “at the earliest” he will be able to go to Soria in fifteen days, according to the information he has received. the Ministry, and see that they let go of other ranchers who go to Cuenca”.
Del Rincón explained that what worries him is the state of his sheep, which he finds “very bad” because there are no longer pastures, “only land”.
Transhumance in trucks
Every year, this shepherd transports his flock in trucks to the valley of La Alcudia to spend a milder summer and they return to the Soria Highlands in June, where they await them in Los Campos, in what even becomes a tourist and informative claim about the value of transhumance for centuries.
“They have closed us here. Sales have been prohibited. I think it’s rigged. We are selling the lambs 15 or 20 euros cheaper to other markets. Here is some gentleman who is benefiting at our expense; Some are going to become billionaires and others are going to go bankrupt”, he denounced.
Del Rincón, 66, has 50 years as a farmer behind him and had planned to retire this coming July and transfer the herd to his son, but now he thinks he will have to “undersell” the cattle and be “ruined on top of it.”
“The Administration, wherever they are from, does not get into the head that animals are like birds. They are used to migrating and they want to leave”, he has pointed out about the customs of his Del Rincón sheep, who feels that he has “the rope around his neck” to continue surviving in this trade.
The Junta de Castilla-La Mancha has established a series of restrictions in recent months due to the appearance of several outbreaks of sheep and goat pox, the last one in mid-March in the municipality of Alcázar de San Juan, originating from a exploitation of more than 1,000 heads.
As a consequence of this, a restriction is applied to the movement of cattle in the provinces of Albacete, Ciudad Real, Cuenta and Toledo, although the succession of outbreaks of the same disease dates back to September 2022, when outbreaks were detected in eight farms in Villaescusa. from Haro.
Subsequently, other outbreaks were detected in November 2022 and in January and February of this 2023.