Reportage - Rapa das Bestas Festival Sabucedo 2010 (23 images)

SPAIN, Sabucedo 04/07/2010: Every year thousands of tourists arrive to the Galician village of Sabucedo (Spain) to participate in the 400-year-old festival 'Rapa das bestas', the Shearing of the Beasts. Several hundreds of wild horses are rounded up from the nearby mountains and put into the village's pen to be marked and their mane and tails trimmed. This taming tradition unfolds throughout many villages of Galicia June onwards, till the end of summer.

The very day of the...
more »

SPAIN, Sabucedo 04/07/2010: Every year thousands of tourists arrive to the Galician village of Sabucedo (Spain) to participate in the 400-year-old festival 'Rapa das bestas', the Shearing of the Beasts. Several hundreds of wild horses are rounded up from the nearby mountains and put into the village's pen to be marked and their mane and tails trimmed. This taming tradition unfolds throughout many villages of Galicia June onwards, till the end of summer.

The very day of the Shearing, at 6:30am a religious service is offered in Sabucedo's parish church to request St. Lawrence's blessing, right before most experienced stockbreeders march on foot or on horseback into the mountains -this time covered with thick haze- to find and round up wild herds of horses.

Animals are driven down to the village pen where they are locked till the shearing begins in 'O Curro' a traditional corral, right in the middle of Sabucedo. Despite the soccer World Cup quarter finals game between Spain and Paraguay, scheduled to coincide with the ceremony, the 'aloitadores', people who grapple with the animals, keep their complete focus on the age-old tradition, to subdue the horses in order to have their mane and tails trimmed.

Before the shearing begins pregnant animals, fouls and colts are separated from the rest of the herd to avoid any risks; while those that remain do not suffer any harm and are released in wild, having been groomed and cleaned.
« less