Tradition!

Spain's geology is magnificent.  Its mountains and its meadows provide a visual contrast of unbelievable beauty.  A traveller can be up in the mountains, viewing the spectacular scenery, believing himself to be alone, when suddenly he hears the strange tinny, hollow clanging of a bell.  And there, before him, is a cow, belled, unconcerned at his presence, entering his immediate space where he has erected a small tent, planning to spend the night there before travelling on in his ascents and his discoveries.  A cow.  A domesticated beast.  In the middle of what he has taken to be nowhere.

At some point during his prolonged stay in the country, the traveller decides to take a break, and visit a few small villages, picturesque and appealing.  He stays over at a pensione, a rural guest house, and from its second-floor window where his bedroom is located, he hears a strange rattle in the streets below, peers down and sees cattle being driven through the street below, a tradition that is respected as such and which is a favourite of tourists.

But Madrid?  Yes, in Madrid too, evidently.  For Spanish shepherds have led a vast flock of over two thousand sheep through central Madrid.  Taking them from one grazing site to another, in recognition of the changing seasons.  In recognition of their heritage of droving rights, despite urban sprawl.  Theirs is the legal right to make use of droving routes winding across the geography that was once open fields and woodland. 

Modern Madrid may be a great metropolis where it was once a rural hamlet, but the droving rights have existed since the 11th Century.  And every year shepherds defend their right to follow those ancient routes and the tradition that goes with it.  They paid their passage with coins that date to the 1th Century, to city hall for the use of the crossing: 25 maravedis.

And celebrated their legal right to make use of 135,000 kilometres of pathways for their seasonal livestock migration from highland pastures in the summer months to the change for winter to warmer grazing opportunities.