To paraphrase the Beatles, there’s nothing you can say that can’t be translated but some words are undeniably peculiar to a particular language. That’s what happens with trashumancia although if you look in the right kind of erudite place you will be presented with transhumance. Ever used it, though?
Migrancy is a less scholarly translation although this can mean anything from aimless drifting to upping and leaving one’s home for another country. Trashumancia refers specifically to the seasonal movement of people with their livestock over relatively short distances, typically to higher pastures in summer and lower valleys in winter.
Another definition says much the same thing while disagreeing about mileage: the movement of cattle or other grazing animals to new pastures, often quite distant, according to the change in season.
These grazing animals were usually sheep – ganado ovino, as beef cattle – ganado bovino or ganado vacuno were never particularly important to Spain, apart from fighting bulls – toros bravos or toros de lídia.
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| Via pecuaria, Altea |
Whatever the animals involved, many roads today follow ancient trails or cañadas - some prehistoric - used by trashumantes. Keep an eye open and you will often be rewarded by a sign identifying the road you are travelling as una cañada or via pecuaria, which amounts to the same thing.
Even now drovers retain the rights and free movement granted centuries ago to the Honrada Concejo de la Mesta, the powerful sheep breeding and raising association which was the only commercial activity once deemed fit for a gentleman. This was when Spain’s sheep produced the world’s finest merino wool – lana merino and the Spanish empire was so cash-rich thanks to Latin America’s riches that no-one thought twice about exporting shorn wool – lana esquilada that was later reimported at considerable expense as woven cloth.
There is still no wool-weaving industry here but periodically, principally to remind the government of their financial plight, sheep-breeders drive their drive flocks – rebaños through Madrid’s Paseo de la Castellana and Calle Recoletos. Traffic there is so dense that a few hundred sheep hardly make things worse although no-one could do anything about it, even if they wanted to.
To count sheep as an insomnia remedy remains unchanged in translation as contar ovejas but a sheep dog becomes un perro pastor, literally a shepherd dog. Like everyone else, the Spanish can have a black sheep or una oveja negra in the family, a term which, despite being feminine, applies principally to men.
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| sheep and goats ...after the sheep moved |
Cada oveja con su pareja – each sheep with its partner is the Spanish version of our birds of a feather flock together. Another saying, to separate the sheep from the goats diverges to become separar el grano de la paja – to sort the grain from the straw.
Sheepish is usually agreed by dictionaries to be avergonzado which is actually closer to shamefaced, sheepishness evidently not forming part of Spain’s repertoire of looks.
Borrego means both a sheepskin as well as a sheep or lamb and our mackerel sky is seen as un cielo aborregado, with clouds resembling a fleece instead of the pattern on a mackerel’s back.
Where there are sheep there has to be mutton – carnero but lamb or cordero is preferred by the Spanish. Lamb chops – chuletas de cordero are fried – fritas or eaten grilled – a la plancha, but the only way to eat a leg or shoulder of lamb is roasted - al horno. Until comparatively recently not every Spanish kitchen had an oven - horno and roast lamb – cordero asado was usually a treat to be eaten out.
One way of getting round this was to take the joint to the nearest local baker - panadero to roast it in his own oven once the bread was done. Unlike trendy restaurants where diners must eat their lamb pink, both baker and housewife always knew that it had to be crisp outside and falling moistly off the bone inside.
And no doubt that’s just the way that Alonso Quijano a.k.a. Don Quijote, whose La Mancha stamping ground produced most of Spain’s lamb and mutton, ate it too.
