The drove road that crosses Madrid
A C2 Spanish essay on transhumance: why a flock of sheep walks through central Madrid every autumn, and why the shepherds pay the city a toll in a coin nobody has used for over a century.
La cañada que cruza Madrid
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An essay about the cañadas, the network of legally protected livestock roads that crosses Spain, and about the autumn morning when a flock walks through the middle of Madrid so that an old right of passage is not lost. It explains what transhumance is, the summer and winter pastures, the Mesta that Alfonso X brought together in the thirteenth century, the fine wool that would later sell in Italy and Flanders, the symbolic toll paid in maravedís under an agreement of the fifteenth century, and what moving flocks still do for the land they cross. Sixteen cards work on the sentence structures and the rural vocabulary, and three questions close the piece.
Conviene entender qué es una cañada. España está atravesada por una red de caminos ganaderos, las vías pecuarias, que suman más de cien mil kilómetros y que la ley protege como bienes de dominio público. Por ellas subían y bajaban los rebaños dos veces al año: al norte en verano, al sur en invierno. Ese ir y venir tiene nombre propio, trashumancia, y tuvo durante siglos una economía detrás.
La tuvo, sobre todo, en la Edad Media. Alfonso X reunió en el siglo XIII a los dueños de ganado en el Honrado Concejo de la Mesta, una corporación con privilegios, con jueces propios y con una influencia difícil de exagerar; la lana fina de aquella cabaña acabaría vendiéndose en Italia desde la década de 1390 y en Flandes desde la de 1420, y financiando bastante más que el pan de los pastores. Poder político, en forma de oveja.
Lo que hoy se conserva es más modesto. Aun así, alguien pensó que un derecho que no se ejerce acaba perdiéndose, y desde hace unas tres décadas casi todos los otoños un rebaño vuelve a cruzar la capital. La ciudad creció alrededor del camino y acabó torciéndole el trazado en algunos tramos, pero no logró cancelarlo: el derecho de paso siguió en pie. Es la ciudad, y no la cañada, la que está fuera de sitio, aunque la sensación sea la contraria.
No es solo folclore. Los rebaños en movimiento transportan semillas en la lana y en las pezuñas, abonan lo que pisan y mantienen abiertos los pastos que, abandonados, se cierran en matorral. Caminan, comen y siembran sin querer: tres cosas a la vez, y ninguna prevista en un plan.
En Madrid, antes, un oficio; hoy, casi una ceremonia. Pero la ceremonia guarda el derecho de paso, y ese derecho sigue ahí, escrito en una concordia de 1418, esperando. ¿Cuántos derechos sobreviven solo porque alguien se molesta en ejercerlos una vez al año?
¿Ha visto usted alguna vez un uso antiguo defendido de esta manera en su ciudad? ¿Qué costumbre desaparecería en su país si nadie se ocupara de repetirla? ¿Y a quién le tocaría repetirla?
About this article
What you'll learn
Native level sentence craft in Spanish: the cleft sentence with ser and el que, a fronted que clause as subject with the subjunctive, ellipsis of the verb across a semicolon, subject after verb when a place phrase opens the sentence, llevar with a stretch of time and sin, and a participle carrying a condition. Vocabulary of the Spanish countryside too: cañada, trashumancia, vías pecuarias, cencerro, pezuña, matorral.
An essay about the cañadas, the network of legally protected livestock roads that crosses Spain, and about the autumn morning when a flock walks through the middle of Madrid so that an old right of passage is not lost. It explains what transhumance is, the summer and winter pastures, the Mesta that Alfonso X brought together in the thirteenth century, the fine wool that would later sell in Italy and Flanders, the symbolic toll paid in maravedís under an agreement of the fifteenth century, and what moving flocks still do for the land they cross. Sixteen cards work on the sentence structures and the rural vocabulary, and three questions close the piece.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
allá por el siglo XV
newback around, somewhere around
A colloquial way to date something loosely, and a deliberate drop in register inside a formal sentence. It works for places too: allá por Soria.
Spanish essays often relax like this for one phrase and then tighten again.
difícil de exagerar
newhard to overstate
After an adjective the infinitive takes de and stays active in form though passive in sense: difícil de exagerar, fácil de romper, imposible de traducir.
A compact alternative to a whole relative clause.
está fuera de sitio
newto be out of place
Fixed phrase with no article. The one the Academia registers is fuera de lugar, which applied to a remark or a gesture means untimely or inappropriate; fuera de sitio, more colloquial, is said above all of something that is not in the place that belongs to it.
Turns a spatial idea into a judgement in three words.
se molesta en ejercerlos
newto bother to do something
Molestarse en plus an infinitive means to take the trouble to do something. Do not confuse it with molestarse por, to take offence at, or with molestar, to bother somebody else.
Three related verbs sit close together and mean quite different things.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
la cañada
cañada
drove road for livestock
In Spain a cañada is the widest legal class of vía pecuaria, up to seventy-five metres, ahead of the cordel and the vereda; the great trunk routes of the Mesta are called cañadas reales, though their legal width is the same. In Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and eastern Bolivia the word also names a small watercourse, while the sense of a hollow between two heights is shared by both shores, so context decides.
A clear case of a word whose hollow sense survives on both shores while a few American countries have added a second one on top.
la trashumancia
trashumancia
seasonal movement of livestock
The seasonal move of flocks between summer and winter pasture. The Diccionario panhispánico de dudas lists it among the words that admit only the tras- form, so transhumancia counts as a misspelling; the adjective is trashumante.
The single word behind a whole way of life and a whole legal system.
las vías pecuarias
vías pecuarias
livestock roads, in legal language
The administrative term for these roads. Pecuario, from Latin pecus, cattle, belongs to legal and technical Spanish; ganadero is the everyday word for the same idea.
A neat pair showing how Spanish keeps a Latin word for the law and a plain one for speech.
el cencerro
cencerros
the bell hung on an animal
The bell tied round the neck of a sheep or a cow, so that the flock can be heard rather than seen. Estar como un cencerro means to be completely mad.
The idiom is far more common in speech than the object itself.
la pezuña
pezuñas
cloven hoof
The split hoof of a sheep, a goat, a cow or a pig. A horse has a casco instead, and the distinction is not optional in Spanish.
Two words where English gets by with hoof alone.
el matorral
matorral
scrub, low dense bushes
Land taken over by low woody plants. Cerrarse en matorral describes open pasture closing up once nobody grazes or clears it.
The word every Spanish text about abandoned countryside reaches for.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
the cleft sentence
Es la ciudad, y no la cañada, la que está fuera de sitio
it is the city, not the drove road, that is out of place
Ser plus the highlighted element plus el que or la que singles out one part of the sentence and denies the alternatives. The relative agrees with what is highlighted: la ciudad, la que.
The cleanest way to correct an assumption without saying you are correcting it.
a que clause as subject, in front
Que el maravedí lleve más de cien años sin circular no invalida nada
that the coin has not circulated for a century invalidates nothing
A whole clause can be the subject of the sentence, introduced by que and placed first. In that position it normally takes the subjunctive, because the fact is presented as given rather than asserted: que lleve, not que lleva.
Fronting the clause puts the concession first and the verdict last, which is where the weight falls.
dropping the verb on both sides
En Madrid, antes, un oficio; hoy, casi una ceremonia
in Madrid, once a trade; today, almost a ceremony
Both halves lose the verb era and es, and the semicolon holds the contrast together. The reader supplies the verb, and the two nouns face each other directly.
A sentence with no verb reads faster and lands harder than the full version.
subject after the verb
Por ellas subían y bajaban los rebaños
along them the flocks moved up and down
When a phrase of place opens the sentence, Spanish normally puts the subject after the verb: por ellas subían los rebaños. Keeping the subject first would be grammatical and flat.
Word order is one of the tools a Spanish writer has for directing emphasis, alongside cleft sentences and dislocation.
llevar plus a stretch of time plus sin
lleve más de cien años sin circular
it has not circulated for over a hundred years
Llevar carries the duration and sin plus the infinitive names what has not been happening: lleva tres días sin llover. Since llevar already measures the stretch of time, the present is enough and no perfect tense is needed.
Replaces a heavy negative perfect with four light words.
a participle used as a condition
los pastos que, abandonados, se cierran en matorral
pasture that, left alone, closes up into scrub
The participle between commas condenses a whole clause: abandonados stands for si se abandonan. It agrees with the noun it describes, here masculine plural.
Two commas and one word do the work of an entire subordinate clause.
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