Dani Giraldo (40 years old) does not respond to the typical image of a shepherd that we have learned in the stories. Restless, educated and educated, father of two girls, he understands herding and transhumance in a broad way, with a long gaze. As a way to vindicate the cattle trails, cultural, natural heritage and also a tourist claim to boost the economy of rural towns.
Also as a way to keep the forests cleaner and prevent large forest fires. Their dairy goats, like those of the few shepherds who resist in Catalonia, gobble up tons of vegetable mass every year. Nothing is casual on this trip.
He attends us from Llívia (Cerdanya), shortly before embarking on this pioneering route of transhumance (Camins de vida): one hundred goats, 282 kilometers, 23 days and 41 villages. It’s ten p.m. The quietest time for a shepherd traveling with his flock is the end of the day. “I’m making cheese, the shepherd’s life is like that,” he laughs. Raised in Medellín (Colombia), he has lived for more than a decade with his family and his herd next to the forest in Alforja (Baix Camp), at the foot of the Prades mountains.
They live in a house and their daughters, very restless, go to school in the neighboring town, Vilaplana. Let no one imagine a shepherd lost in the bush with his goats.
Dani hasn’t been home for a few days. The head of this pastor, full of ideas, almost always against the current, does not stop. If he became interested a few years ago in grazing, it was because he saw in the herds of goats a life project. “We claim a heritage that we have, but it is being lost, they are public roads – he explains -, which connect territories, but they are being forgotten because we want things much faster”.
Camins de vida is, in addition to many other things, a praise to slowness, to “slow tourism”, which walks and stops in towns, eats in their restaurants and stays in their hostels, hotels or inns. Connect with the mentality of this pastor, a job at risk of extinction if action is not taken quickly.
Whoever wants can follow some of the sections of this long nomadic path. “It is a road to badar (distract yourself), at a slow pace, which can be done as a family, at 2.5 kilometers per hour. The longest stage will have 21 kilometers”, details Giraldo. In addition to walking if you want with the herd?to learn about transhumance, you can participate in multiple activities that will be organized in the different towns.
It is an ambitious project, promoted by the Camí Ramader de Marina, with the support and collaboration of several public and private institutions: Ramats de Foc, University of Lleida, Fundació Pau Costa, Idapa, Generalitat, Gobierno or the town councils of the towns where Dani’s herd will pass through.
Polyhedral is the adjective that Joan Rovira, historian of transhumance and one of the souls of this almost revolutionary adventure, repeats the most times. He claims through his knowledge the protection and diffusion of the historic cattle trails; technically it is the network of cattle roads.
The work to protect livestock roads also involves disclosing environmental value. The Marina livestock path is a large biological corridor that connects fourteen natural parks between France and Catalonia. Without forgetting, their supporters insist, the role of herds in mitigating the devastating force of forest fires.
It is neither a folkloric project nor an ephemeral idea. It was born to recover a historical route, from the Cerdanya, the French and the Spanish, to the Garraf and the Penedès, in the concatenation of several cattle paths. The route will symbolically end in Santes Creus, a historic transhumance grazing area.
“Industrial activity and road mobility have unscrupulously cut off all steps. There is no better way to claim a right of way than by passing”, exemplifies Rovira. “And we want to vindicate extensive livestock farming, and energize the towns, generating economic activity,” adds the historian.
“On knowing how to explain it to society depends on whether you and I, when we are grandparents, can eat a good cheese”, Giraldo questions humorously, before saying goodbye and continuing to stir the curd.
