An ancient festival in Galicia Spain, the Rapa das bestas is an old practice of ‘Taming the Beasts’ and is thought to date back to the Bronze Age. Men and women alike would wrestle the untamed horses to the ground with their hands and arms to cut their manes and tails.
It’s a noble tradition where man pits his strength against a beast without ropes or weapons and only using his bare hands and courage. This Spanish fiesta goes on for three days of which after the horses are sent up to the hillside again and it does not involve cruelty and death.
Rapa Das Bestas - Spanish Horse Wrestling Festival
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1 comments:
1st This is not a fiesta, this is not a show. Even when in a few places they made an anfitheatre for tourists, this was and still is a work in the Galician countryside.
2nd The horses are not pets, they are horsestock, but in most of Galicia they run free allthe year and once a year people meet the horses to cut their hair and mark them.
3rd In the Curros (places to do the Rapa das Bestas) horses are not marked with red irons. The horse traditionaly is marked with a pierce in the ear.
4th The horsehair is cutted to clean the horse from parasites such ticks and fleas. A too long hear is not hygienic and confortable for animals.
5th If the hoof is too long, the people cut it like we do with our nails. Those horses are not using horsheshoes.
6th After the Rapa das bestas, the horse goes back to the mountain and there lives like a wild animal until next year when estays for 1/2 day or less down the mountains, in the village. The work of rapa takes normally 2 or 3 days, because there are many animals free in the mountain and they are token in groups.
7th The horses are not rided because they estay wild. Once a year all the community meets to make this work all toguether. Those horses are owned for everyone in the Galician commonwealth countryside system.
8th This is not animal wrestling or a joy of suffering. Before make an opinion think about the alternatives to keep horse lifestock in a more natural way. Things can be done better, but this is not evil. If you wash your cat or your puppy, you have enough with two hands. If you want to take a wilde horse to cut their hair you need two or more men.
9th We have all the information before talk. I think this not must be done as a show for tourists, because then we can see thinks like in the 3rd picture (u guy jumping over a group of horses). I think in America and in most of western Europe, those works where done in a simmilar way no too long ago. But a guy jumping over the horses like in the 4th picture shows what could have been the begining of the rodeos, so, a traditional work that becomes an stupid show.
10th I think those horses enjoy more their lifes as free animals in the Galician mountains taht those we see in the horse races or those ones with a saddle and a heavy rider over them many days during the year. Please be objective and make an opinion with knowledge of the context.
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