Arriving in Santa Eulàlia de Puig-Oriol, the first thing I hear when I open the car door is the jingling of bells. As I step out, I smell the dung freshly trampled onto the road. The goats in question are corralled nearby, next to the town hall.
It is 20 September 2024, and I am here for the eighth Festival of Transhumance. Like me, the goats have come from the other side of the Pyrenees but, unlike me, they have walked. They started ten days ago from Llívia and have just arrived in this village near Vic in Catalonia. They are still a long way from home on the coast in the vine-growing district of the Penedès (near Sitges).
Busying himself around the corral is a youngish man. He must be Daniel Grialdo, the goatherd. Dani, I soon learn, is no ordinary pastoralist.
For a start, unlike his colleagues, he has not applied for the EU grants that make up over half of their income. He can’t stand the paperwork and constraints, he says.
Then again, the transhumance he has been doing these last two years doesn’t fit into the norm either. In 2023, Dani drove his one hundred and twenty goats along the Camí ramader de Marina (Mediterranean drove road) for the first time. They were only able to stay in the high pastures for a month and a half because the walk took a month each way. This year, Dani is repeating the experiment and is now on his way home to Alforja where his wife and two daughters live all year round.
In contrast, most livestock farmers now drive their animals to the mountains in a truck. This happens in late spring. Very few make the voyage on foot and hoof, and even for those eccentrics three days is considered a maximum. The livestock then spends four or more months in the high pastures where the grass is literally greener. In September or October, it will return home.
Another peculiarity is that Dani’s herd is being studied by the University of Lleida in conjunction with animal fodder businesses.
And one of the aims of his wanderings is to promote livestock breeding to youngsters. Every time he stops in a village, he needs to milk those goats that are lactating, twenty-five to thirty of them. At this time of year, they produce around thirty litres, which he uses to make cheese. The local kids are encouraged to participate in the milking and drink the results. I also try the still-warm milk for the first time. It is surprisingly sweet and creamy, not at all like the cheese.
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Dani’s involvement with goats began in 2008 when he left behind an urban life. For over a decade the nearby pastures provided most of the grass his animals needed. But the summer of 2019 was exceptionally dry, and Dani had to pay 6000€ for forage. So, in 2020 he first tried out the idea of transhumance, in the Serra de Montsant Natural Park. Unlike most people in that year of Covid, he was free to wander where he liked. The living conditions were rudimentary but that was his choice. He sometimes slept under overhanging rocks. His principal equipment was a tripod and a cauldron for making cheese, and a sleeping bag. He continued to go to Montsant for more two years.
Then, in 2023, he changed his destination to the Pyrenees. The catalyst was Joan Rovira, a historian who has spent many decades investigating the Catalan drove roads. The first written record of the Camí ramader de Marina, he says, dates to 25 August 1055. Both men would like to see the track come back to life and this weekend’s Festival is part of that effort.
Often, transhumance events are included in the tourist calendar, and why not? But here at Santa Eulàlia the festival is low-key, the details only announced a fortnight in advance. The festival focusses on transmitting knowledge to future generations, so everyone except me has a connection with livestock farming. At first, given that I am going to be talking about rewilding, I feel like a wolf in the sheep fold, but my talk is well received, and I soon relax.
At the end of the day, I even have a cordial chat with the shepherd and anti-bear activist José-Lluís Castell, known as Pubill. His father, he tells me, started with twelve sheep. Pubill now has ten thousand. His sheep still go from the farm in Areny to the mountains on foot, this year to the Vall de Boí. He has been coming to the Festival of Transhumance since the beginning. Other participants tell me that he lives for his sheep. Despite the size of the enterprise, they are not just a means of making money; he gets his hands dirty.
I also learn that the length of Dani’s transhumance means that he needs to consider nutrition carefully, much more so than if the journey only took three days. This is why he has asked the University of Lleida and two feed manufacturers, Coop Salelles and Tecnovit, for advice. The first problem is that the animals spend much of their day walking, preventing grazing. Moreover, they pass through four different ecosystems, so each week their dietary needs differ. To combat any deficit, the goats are given specially produced supplements.
The second problem is water. In the past, each village had a well or water was channelled from a river into a trough. Both wells and troughs are now dry. So, the herd must make do with tap water. But the goats do not like the smell of chlorine and refuse to drink more than a minimum. To combat this problem, the technicians add molasses from sugar beet, along with nutrients and vinegar to the water. It is a potion which is both attractive to the goats and a good supplement for the journey. It’s their Aquarius, says Dani.
There is also a presentation on treating animals with herbs rather than synthetic medicines. It is commonly recognised that sick animals will seek out specific plants. It is now possible to buy concentrates derived from those plants which will have the same effect, says Raquel Servitja.
The conference ends with a homage to Ernest Sitjes who has been a shepherd for more than half a century. Ernest’s other talent is musical, and the evening continues with dancing accompanied by him singing and playing accordion and drums. More musicians arrive and an improvised orchestra adds four accordions, a violin, and a cajón. Supper starts with a rousing chorus of ‘Quina taula tan ben parada – What a well-dressed table’. A good time is had by all.
