Las yeguas marismeñas de Doñana: naturaleza, tradición e identidades sociales en un espacio protegido

Abstract

The breeding of Andalusia's feral marsh horses stands out among other examples of Doñana National Park's extraordinary legacy of social and cultural traditions. This is so not only because of its importance as a venerable livestock management system, unique and vibrant still despite being surprisingly little known and scarecly studied, but also because it constitutes a notable example of the contributions that Andalusian culture has made to the rest of the world. Marsh animal husbandry is, without a doubt, the cultural matrix out of which developed the livestock traditions of the Americas. By situating this cultural complex within an International comparative framework, we argue that the human involvement with Doñana's feral horses may be distinguished from other similar cases in the world because their care and maintenance has been converted, to an extraordinary degree, into a central element of the local culture. Highly emotional social processes are involved in the construction and maintenance of a collective social identity that expresses itself in perennial conflicts with the authorities of the Park over its feral horses.