Migrant shepherds - Travelling with the last of the Spanish nomads

Although this story - rewritten from an assignment that I did for CNN Traveller magazine - features the province of Aragón it is fair to say that the tradition of the transhumancia (the ancient migration routes) is more emblematic of Extremadura than of any other part of the Iberian peninsula.

Ramón Noguero wrapped his hands around a tin mug of coffee-and-brandy and fixed his blue eyes once again on the snow-capped peaks that every year seem to take more energy in getting back to. It was still cold in the shadowy basin where we'd camped but, far across the valley, Monte Perdido (the Lost Mountain) was already glowing gold in the rising sun.

With a hacking cough and one of the picturesque curses that were his trademark Ramón turned his back on the view and set to the business of getting his ancient caravan on the trail for another day.

Ramón and his older brothers Aurelio and Pelayo were the last of Aragón’s long-distance migrant shepherds. All three of them were blessed with the sort of hauntingly blue eyes that are rarely seen in the mountains of northern Spain, but sixty years of sun, wind and dust had rimmed them red. Life must have seemed at times to be just a constant flight between bitter Pyrenean winters and the blistering summers that turn the Spanish plains into dustbowls. The bloodshot eyes might almost be the badge of a shepherd - along with their talent for highly picturesque religious oaths and the gammy knees that are an unavoidable result of so many nomadic years.

I met the Noguero brothers as they limped and cursed their way out of the dusty plains towards the southern edge of Zaragoza on the first day of their two-week march to summer grazing high on the slopes of the Lost Mountain.

“La rodilla está jodida!” - the knee’s f***ed! - said sixty-eight year-old Pelayo by way of introduction when I caught up with him at the head of the flock. “I’ve been doing this trek since I was fourteen but I’m old now and I’m only staying to help Aurelio get the animals through Zaragoza.” At an age when he should by rights be playing cards and smoking cigars in the local bar, Pelayo had spent much of his adult life in a cave on the slopes of the Lost Mountain, protecting the brothers' precious animals.

It was past midnight by the time that the clatter of 12,000 hooves and the clanking of the big goat-bells began to echo through the narrow alleyways of Zaragoza's old town. Three thousand head on a hillside is a lot of sheep but it's only when they are compressed into a great flowing river between houses and parked cars that it is possible to appreciate what such a mass really means.

Surprised citizens came out onto their balconies in their dressing-gowns to see what was going on. Although they'd heard stories of such treks from their grandparents many had never seen such a phenomenon. And, unfortunately, it was very likely that they'd never see such a migration again.

“We’ve been passing this way for forty years,” Pelayo told me. “If we hit the goats with a big enough stick they'd probably find the way themselves. The problem comes when we have to use a different route - to by-pass road-works for example. Then the animals complain and try to go the old way.”

In fact, the goats (whose clanging bells called the rest of the flock onward) are legally in the right. There are almost 80,000 miles of cañadas reales, royal pathways that have been preserved as migratory routes, in Spain (fifteen times more than the national railway network). Regardless of whether these routes lead across desert scrub or precious

farmland, or through the very heart of Madrid or Zaragoza, nothing is allowed to impede the passage of livestock.

The townspeople were clearly charmed to see one of the legendary migrations underway but it is less likely that we were so popular with the motorists who were soon stranded behind us for several kilometres. The shepherds had been able to call on some reliable reinforcements but a quick calculation reminded me that - nominally at least - I was now responsible for the good behaviour of over 400 sheep on the northbound lanes of a major motorway!

Ana, a well-wisher from the Forestry Service, had helped the brothers with their migration for the last four years, and Chuse for nine years. Tomas and Anchel were doing the full trek for the first time and covered the flanks. I walked behind, between the stragglers and the flashing lights of our Guardia Civil escort and Ramón’s Land Rover Defender. (As the only brother who can operate a vehicle - or a mobile phone - he was in charge of logistics and the transport of food, blankets…and ‘spare’ dogs).

Our group had been walking for a solid twenty-four hours when we finally stopped to camp. The bottle of patxaran firewater I'd brought from my home in Pamplona seemed to be quelling the throbbing in battered old knees by the time a ‘mattress’ of powerfully-scented rosemary was lulling me into a doped sleep.

Over the next few days we followed the cañada real north, in hoof-marks that were probably being trodden even before the Romans founded Zaragoza. With the flock dragging its cloud of dust across the landscape and the shouts of the shepherds all around the scene could easily have been a thousand years old. But then Ramón would drive up to hand a chilled can of San Miguel out of the window of the Land Rover, and I would give heartfelt thanks for the fact that the lives of today’s shepherds have come a long way from their traditional diet of migas (stale bread and olive oil).

All through one long afternoon we dozed - five men and two dogs under a single, lonely bush on the shimmering dustpan. Aurelio was clearly in no great frenzy to get through this first part of the journey: “Only the bad shepherd rushes,” he explained, “the good shepherd travels slowly and allows his flock to arrive in good health.”

So we lay in the shade for another hour and waited for the Noguero sisters to arrive. Angelita and María Jesús make the long drive down from the highlands with hot meals on days when the cañada is accessible by road. They take their responsibility very seriously and on the first evening had prepared a celebratory feast with lamb stew, prawns, mussels, strawberries, highly-alcoholic stewed apple and, of course, great vats of vino.

Aurelio wore sandals made of recycled car tyres - still known as ‘thousand-milers’ in Mexico but virtually extinct nowadays in Spain - and he seemed as oblivious to the thick mat of spiky seeds that covered his hand-knitted merino wool socks as he did to the rocks that we bedded down on at night, stationed across the hillside, to stop the sheep from wandering. When we passed through villages it was as a carnival: customers deserted the shops to stare; nursery schools turned out so that the kids could wave; housewives came out with their brooms to stand guard over their geraniums; lap-dogs leapt in fear into their owners’ arms - their worst nightmare come home to roost.

By the time we were halfway up the valley of the Río Gállego I was able to convince myself that a few of the sheep at least were mistaking the oaths that came from my wine-battered throat for those of a real Aragonés shepherd. But then, while we rested at the edge of one backcountry village, disaster struck and the sheep got into a field of young bean-shoots. The mayor was called and official complaints were written down - there were fears that a fine would probably follow but, as Tomas pointed out, “they were only beans. They didn’t come with either bacon or chorizo.”

There was a time when a landowner would have thought twice before involving himself legally with such well-connected people as the local shepherds. The Casa de Ganaderos livestock association (www.casaganaderos.com) was established in 1218 and was once so powerful as to be unanswerable even to the king. In the association’s Zaragoza mansion there is a parchment, signed by King Jaime I, in which the nine-year-old monarch handed over impressive rights to a group of sheep-owners who remained the only people who could help him in his struggle against the rebellious noble families of his kingdom. Preservation of the cañadas reales and dealing with court actions on behalf of shepherds remain among the activities of the association…but the owner of the bean field would have been well aware that Casa de Ganaderos's right to 'cut off ears' and to ‘hang on any day of the year’ (even the king could not do this) has long ago been removed.

Highland folksongs might be filled with tales of beautiful girls who ran away from home to travel south with tough, roving shepherds but the Noguero brothers were not unusual in that they had remained bachelors. Even if they had someone to pass the flock on to there are few among Spain’s new generation who would be happy to take on such a difficult, and frequently lonely, lifestyle.

Maps of the highland valleys are littered with names but in reality there are more villages than people in the remote corner of Aragón that the shepherds called home. At night we slept in hamlets that, before the Civil War, had populations in triple figures. Today all that stands are the bulky stone ruins of once successful farming dynasties.

The last of the Noguero dynasty were unsure if another year would see them making the arduous trek. The knees wouldn’t hold out forever after all.

So, promising my services as a shepherd should then need me in future (along with a steady supply of patxaran), I rubbed my sore, watering eyes and, with a muttered curse, limped towards home.