Candaoso. Pelea de Garañones.

Galicians were involved in taming bestas (beasts) as early as the Bronze Age. With all this history behind it, the region continues to guard jealously the secrets surrounding a tradition which unfolds all over this evocative land from June onwards.

Only seasoned travellers and stockbreeders normally have the privilege of seeing a group of wild horses galloping at full speed in the Galician sierra. For other less fortunate people there is, every weekend from June to August, a municipality holding its own rapa das bestas, an ancient rite that has now become a spectacle attracting many tourists.

The rapa takes place in the curro, a traditional corral where the owners take all the beasts that have been rounded up to divide them up into groups the day before the big event. When the action gets underway the most expert stockbreeders, known as agarradores (someone who seizes), grapple with the animal until they are able to control it enough to brand it and cut off its mane. Once the struggle is over a wild fiesta begins, celebrating the subduing of the animal.

The curros are hidden away in the mountains of the north and centre of Galicia, sprinkled among the massifs close to the coast of La Coruña and Pontevedra. The latter hosts the majority of the celebrations, unlike Ourense, where the last rapas took place years ago because, as the locals say, "ós cabalos cómenos os lobos" (‘The wolves eat our horses’).

In some places, the popularity of the celebrations has even spread beyond Galicia. Such is the case in the curro of San Lorenzo de Sabucedo, in A Estrada, which has been declared a celebration of national tourist interest. One of its most striking features is the corral, a stone enclosure which has remained intact for several centuries now. In Viveiro, hundreds of people gather at the curro of Candaoso every year, as they also do in A Capelada (Cedeira) and in the Campo do Oso (Mondoñedo), where they have also built, especially for the event, a wooden and metal corral, a slightly different construction to more traditional curros. More events take place from June to August, attracting people from the cities to witness an entertaining, unusual and uniquely Galician experience. A colourful programme of varied and lively fairs and romerías also catch the eye, including the horse fair of Santa Comba, where the horses have to be at their very best to pass the detailed examination of Galician and Portuguese stockbreeders.


Foto: Xurxo Lobato. Texto: Marta Otero. - La Voz de Galicia -