Transhumants of Aliste

Transhumants of Aliste “the Churreros of Aliste” This document report is physically located in the Aliste region in the province of Zamora, Spain. A rural region in “La Raya” between Spain and Portugal. Every year the shepherds of Aliste, for generations, carry out transhumance with their herds of sheep in the summer. They take their sheep from their villages where there is a lack of water and green pastures, to the Sierra Segundera where there is water and pastures to feed the livestock. They have been walking through the fields in a “cabaña” made up of five herds with 3,000 sheep, from their villages in the Aliste region to the Sierra Segundera in the Sanabria region, where they spend the summer. It is a hard task physically and mentally, both the journey on foot of more than 100 km crossing the fields of Aliste, the Sierra de la Culebra, the mountains of La Carballeda and ascent to the Sierra Segundera, and the entire summer in La Sierra exposed to loneliness and inclement weather.

The objective of this photographic project was not to focus on obtaining graphically impressive images, the objective was to obtain images that collected experiences, feelings, sensations of the shepherds. It was to faithfully collect the experience and difficulties of transhumance, the real life and experiences of the shepherds, without planned scenes, without photographic poses, without typical costumes or attire, snapshots of the day, giving priority to the content and the information collected in them.
To do this, I carried out the transhumance with them in the months of July and September 2023, I made the entire journey on foot 24 hours a day with the shepherds, I lived for two weeks with them, walking, eating, sleeping with them, even helping them with the sheep at many times.
More than a thousand images that I have reduced to these twelve photographs that I show, I have made the selection for the information they contain, for the sensations and experiences they show, more than for the graphic visual impact or the photographic rules. I hope to have managed to convey those experiences and the harshness of transhumance in this small sample of photographs.