Ana Martinez |
A Estrada (Pontevedra) (EFE).- The Rapa das Bestas de Sabucedo (Pontevedra) has faced another year on this first weekend of July two traditional forces of nature, because this ancestral rite, in which there is no more weapon than muscle, it measures the bravery of men and wild horses in a hand-to-hand fight that the public, as always, has cheered and applauded.
Two men grab the horse by the head and a third by the tail, a technique used since time immemorial and, once immobilized, is when they cut the mane, a set of thick and long hairs that in the past were even used to make string instruments. , make brooms and, equally, for mattress filling.
This is the description of one of the oldest festivals in Galicia, whose origin dates back to the year 1567, when the plague devastated Sabucedo, the place that maintains the unalterable custom.
Legend has it that, as a plea to San Lourenzo, patron saint of the town, two sisters offered him their own mares so that he would rid them of evil.
Fulfilled their promise and after the Church could not take care of the animals, it is said that both proceeded to release the animals in the mountains, giving rise to an appointment whose charm currently transcends the Spanish borders.
Those specimens that were released in the forest represent the beginning of the publicized cattle of Sabucedo, which currently graze freely on the mountains of A Estrada, Cerdedo and Forcarei.
This allows that in July, in each rapa, on the one hand there are the wild horses of those mountains and on the other the fighters and, as exceptional witnesses, the “thousands”, who are the visitors who come to contemplate a ceremonial wrapped in sweat, effort, dust and nervousness.
The fire of the “aloitadores”
The ‘aloitadores’ protect each other, the photojournalists who have been with this coverage for a long time already manage to get into the mess and some even dare to do field work and help in the deworming work.
“Come on Sabucedo”, “fighting an animal may seem easy but it is not”, “you have to hydrate”, were the cheers that could be heard on this sunny and pleasant Saturday.
The feat of purification, which confronts technique and verve, makes the attendees effusively encourage the “aloitadores”, at that time the wrestlers, for their indefatigable displays of ingenuity.
They have to pull off occurrences, since they have the only help of their own body and a pair of scissors. No sticks or of course ropes.
The noble battle that arouses the attention of anthropologists and scholars from all over the planet is always forged in a stone enclosure called a curro.
Young people from the area begin each year in a custom that represents a way of understanding life in communion with these notorious mammals.
The Rapa das Bestas, of international tourist interest since 2007, receives in each edition countless faithful mainly from the northwest of the Peninsula, who travel to enjoy a show of great intensity, as well as communication professionals from such disparate countries. such as Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile or Poland.
Sabucedo is a small parish of 5.9 square kilometers in extension and barely six dozen inhabitants, well known for this manifestation of identity that asserts the link of its trotters with the divine and human.
Moreover, in what is presented as a unique tourist-ethnographic experience, to say the least, the usual climb up the mountain in search of the steeds takes place until the herds are brought together, which are led to the village. With it, the ingredients are ready.