Pasiegos

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Pasiegos

ETHNONYMS: none

Orientation

Identification. The Montes de Pas form a high mountain enclave in the Cantabrian range of northern Spain. They straddle the provincial boundaries of Burgos and Cantabria (formerly Santander) at the divide between the Atlantic coast and the meseta (plateau). Pasiegos define themselves as those who practice transhumant herding of the Pasiego type or whose forebears did so.

Location. Most Pasiegos live on the northern, or Cantabrian, slope facing the port city of Santander in the three official Pasiego municipalities (townships) of San Pedro del Romeral, San Roque de Riomiera, and Vega de Pas. The population also extends into the montane neighborhoods of adjacent Cantabrian municipalities and, on the Burgos slope, into the montane regions of Espinosa de los Monteros. The Cantabrian side is watered by the high sources of the Rivers Pas and Miera and the Burgos side by the sources of the Trueba. The defining characteristics of areas of Pasiego residence are the pronounced altitudinal variation along the montane rivers and the transhumant herding practiced there. Rivers descend as much as 1,000 meters in a distance of 10 to 15 kilometers. The highest peak in the Montes stands at 1,724 meters and the major passes at about 950 to 1,350 meters. Zones of human use range from the lowest permanent settlements—at 250-350 meters but mostly at 400-750 meters—to the summer meadows around and above the major passes, well over 1,000 meters. The natural grass crop on which the Pasiego economy depends is nourished year-round by rains and mists, with heavy winter snow at the higher altitudes. The low areas of the valleys on the Atlantic slope enjoy temperate winters. Four grass crops are grazed or harvested annually at the bottom of the valleys and two in the high meadows, visited only between May and September. The three official municipalities of the Montes de Pas occupy about 189 square kilometers, or 3.6 percent of Cantabria. Beyond the Montes, on gentler terrain, the conditions that support the rapidly repetitive, sequential exploitation of local meadows and that define the Pasiego way of life are absent.

Demography. The number of non-Pasiegos living in the zone has always been negligible, while about 1,500 Pasiego herders lived adjacent to the official townships in 1970. There were about 4,000 inhabitants in the three municipalities in 1970 and just under 3,000 in 1980. Emigration is, in cattle herding, to towns of the Cantabrian coastal plain and, in commerce and services, to the towns and cities of northern Spain. Emigrants remain emotionally and economically tied to their home zone, especially when lack of schooling hampers their ability to move into the mainstream of Spanish society and beyond herding and the lowest levels of petty commerce. Conditions favoring mobility are improving, and emigrants are increasingly breaking ties of deep dependency on the Montes de Pas. This was not so true earlier; then the community of Pasiego emigrants figured more heavily in the social life of the home zone.

Linguistic Affiliation. The Pasiego dialect of Spanish is one of the so-called Old Leonese Group, which was spoken widely (and written) in northwestern Iberia. It is an evolved archaic Spanish with some Celtic elements of vocabulary. Its affiliations today are principally with rural dialects of Asturias, León, and the rest of Santander. It is no longer spoken throughout entire communities. In the Montes de Pas, the dialect is spoken by the oldest generation and in private life in some but not all homes; its use varies in inverse proportion to the degree of schooling in textbook Spanish. The dialect has long been the object of nostalgic revival by provincial literati and some emigrants with interest in local traditions, but this revival has not enlarged its use within the Pasiego community.

History and Cultural Relations

As far as is known, the Montes de Pas were populated about a.d. 1011 when Sancho, Count of Castile, granted the Monastery of San Salvador at Oña (Burgos) a privilege allowing herders in its extensive dominions to pasture animals there. Herders' entry into the Montes apparently was gradual; permanent settlements are known only later, and for centuries Pasiegos—as the Montes' inhabitants came to be known—depended in civil and religious matters on established centers in the territory of Espinosa de los Monteros. For example, they had to carry their dead over the mountains for burial in Espinosa's territory. Three parishes were established in the Montes in the last half of the sixteenth century, and the three centers were given independent civil and juridical status in 1689. These acts followed a long series of court actions whose records are the principal sources of early Pasiego history. Thus, while Pasiegos are culturally and historically Spanish and do not consider themselves ethnically different from other Spaniards, they have shared a history of marginal statuses and separate legal actions as well as a situation as herders in a remote enclave; these shared experiences have brought them a distinctiveness that is accentuated by the exigencies of transhumant herding. As they emerged into public notice, both as peddlers in the marketplaces of the realm and with the appointment in 1830 of one of their women as wet nurse in the royal household, Pasiegos became the object of writers' curiosity. Considered "too different to be Spanish," a few surmised that Pasiegos must be descended from Moors or Jews. This conjecture spread and Pasiegos came to be viewed, along with such other northern Spanish groups as the Maragatos (León), the Vaqueiros de Alzada (Asturias), or the Agotes (Navarra), as foreigners on Spanish soil. Of these others, the transhumant cattle-herding Vaqueiros de Alzada have the closest cultural, dialectic, and occupational affinities with the Pasiegos.

Settlements

The municipality, or township, is the largest unit of local membership. Each of the three Pasiego municipalities has its town center (villa ) and rural neighborhoods (barrios). Barrios usually correspond to mountain river valleys and thus have a vertical dimension. Within barrios, named meadow clusters are called praderas; these are interspersed at different altitudes with municipally held forests and brushlands. Each meadow within a pradera is fully enclosed, bears a housestable structure, and is visited seasonally by its owner or renter. Families move between praderas separately from their neighbors, but most transhumance occurs within single barrios. Much socializing and intermarriage reflect barrio membership or use of high meadows in boundary areas of adjacent barrios. Habitation is dispersed from meadow to meadow, but there is incipient clustering toward the valley bottoms and elsewhere where terrain permits. The town centers are focal points for trade, transport, civil and religious functions, and leisure, though they are distant from the higher meadows. Where Pasiego-type transhumance is practiced in barrios of neighbor municipalities not officially known as Pasiego towns, there is nonetheless a deep sense of community and also intermarriage. The administrative boundaries of the Montes de Pas do not, in the herders' view, separate Pasiegos from non-Pasiegos if they live within the same form of economy.

Economy

Subsistence and Commercial Activities. Cattle herding is the basis of the Pasiego economy. Trade has focused on breeding stock as much as on dairy products. Sheep and goats are less important than in the past, while the herds of Holstein-Friesian cattle have increased since their adoption (at the expense of the native "Pasiego" breed) beginning about 1870. The transhumance system revolves around the cattle meadow. Whole families move between different meadows at single altitudes and between different altitudes. A family might move as many as twenty times a year, between six or seven meadows, ascending the slopes sequentially three times in succession (and once more to harvest grass). Lambs and male calves are sold for meat. Cows are reared for breeding and dairying and sold after their third calving. The hardy, mountain-bred milk cattle are appreciated nationwide. Stock fairs were once local but now are regional. They are the chief public social events of Pasiego secular life. The traditional, labor-intensive manufacture and peddling of butter and cheese have ceded almost entirely to the direct marketing of fresh milk, made possible by improved transport and the industrialization of dairy processing in Cantabria. There is practically no cultivation in the Montes de Pas, as most land is used as meadow or pasture. Hoe culture is confined to occasional cabbage patches. Land once planted in maize (the former bread grain) and beans is now turned to meadow. Wheat bread, potatoes, beans, and other foods are purchased from local storekeepers. The Pasiego economy has had a commercial thrust for a long time. Dairy products and meat (probably lamb and goat) were long marketed in northern regional markets to supplement a subsistence economy. Especially since the adoption of Holstein cattle, Pasiego-bred cattle have supplied the dairy farms of the nation. Pasiegos are also largely responsible for the retail milk supply to the cities and towns of northern Spain. Temporary migrants established urban vaquerías (a cow or two stalled in urban neighborhoods providing milk for sale there twice daily). Male calves of urban milk cows were sold for meat and females returned to the Montes de Pas for eventual breeding and sale or service in a vaquería. Urban milk retailing thus existed in symbiotic relation with the stock-breeding economy of the home zone.

Industrial Arts. The chief industrial products of the Montes de Pas are those associated with the transhumant herding life: the combined house/stable called the cabaña, made of hewn stone and oak and roofed in slabs of mica schist, and the rudimentary furniture and implements of herding life—the scythes, sleds, pitchforks, rakes, and carrying baskets (cuévanos ). The carved wooden shoes (almadreñas ) used in stable and meadow are the principal costume element produced today; the daily and festival dress and handmade leather footgear documented in earlier centuries have long been in disuse.

Trade. Within the community of Pasiegos, trade focuses on the rental or sale of meadows and sometimes of male calves for breeding. These are cash exchanges. There is also some free lending of breeding bulls among friends. Most trade of cattle or other products is with outsiders. However, well-off landlords lend money at favorable rates to poorer members of the community. In the past, community members also entered sharecropping agreements with respect to meadows or herds.

Division of Labor. The division of labor by sex and age is weak among herders. The chief tasks are milking; grazing cattle or other animals (they are never left alone) ; taking milk to collection points; spreading manure; and cutting, drying, and storing grass at harvest time. All of these are done equally by men, women, and children. Laundering and sewing are the only exclusively female activities. Division of labor by age and sex is more marked among settled, nonherder Pasiegos, and these divisions adhere to general Spanish rural patterns.

Land Tenure. Pasiegos are independent smallholders of their meadowland. Most nonresident owners are emigrants from the zone. The remoteness of the Montes discouraged extensive entry and ownership by feudal powers or the church. Land is a freely circulating commodity; richer families acquire more and poorer ones are forced to rent. Families that are able to live from rental income usually cease active herding. Landownership is the basis of wealth in the community; poorer families measure the number of cattle they can raise against the meadow they own and the rental costs of additional meadow. The poorest herders have raised sheep and goats on common lands without access to cattle meadow.

Kinship, Marriage, and Family

Kin Groups and Descent. Pasiegos share the general Spanish mode of reckoning descent bilaterally. There are no corporate kin groups beyond the nuclear family. No bounded kindred is recognized; beyond the nuclear family, kin are joined only by a diffuse, nonbinding definition of "family" within which particular relationships may be strengthened by friendship or weakened by enmity.

Kinship Terminology. Pasiegos use the bilateral kinship terminology and naming system general to Spain and largely shared in western Europe.

Marriage. Pasiego herders generally marry early, around age 20. Nonherders tend to marry later. Courtship among herders is conducted in the cabaña kitchens; nonherders court in public places. Herder couples may begin to cohabit after posting banns and prior to the wedding ceremony; nonherders do not. Bride and groom, if herders, may live natolocally for up to a year, each doing service to his/her parents, until the first grass harvest after marriage is brought in. They have then earned the marriage portion from both sides. If personal or economic factors favor a less symmetrical arrangement, bride and groom may reside with and help one set of parents and then, probably, expect a better marriage portion from them. When newlyweds separate from senior households, through parental donation, rental, or purchase, they occupy their own cabañas and meadows and start their own herd, usually with cows from their marriage portions. Couples begin families at or even before formal marriage. Families are large and no systematic means of birth control is in use.

Domestic Unit. The nuclear family household is standard but is typically enlarged by the temporary residence of a newlywed child or couple and sometimes by a coresident single or widowed relative. Residents outside the nuclear family, including newlyweds, are lodged by carefully contracted arrangements.

Inheritance. Men and women inherit equally and both carry their property into marriage. The Castilian civil code governing inheritance corresponds with custom and admits some preferential treatment of favored heirs. Property transmission generates anxiety and often open conflict among heirs, since meadow quality varies and parents accept the latitude permitted by the code. Parents sometimes donate their major holdings to their children during their lifetime in exchange for support (these contracts vary and are formally notarized), but many leave transmission until after death. If so, each spouse's property passes separately.

Socialization. Children in the herding community are early socialized into adult roles and independence. Socialization in the nonherding community is into the more complex, role-differentiated social structure familiar in European town life. In both cases, family life is fairly informal and admits open expression of affection and disaffection.

Sociopolitical Organization

Social Organization. The Pasiegos are generally classed low in the Spanish social hierarchy. Herding, petty commerce, and itinerancy are held in lower esteem than agriculture and settled life-styles. Emigrants enter the mainstream of Spanish society as they are educated and forsake the visible trappings of the herding background. Nonherders integrate more rapidly, particularly when they have pursued schooling seriously.

Political Organization. As part of the Spanish state, the Pasiego towns are governed in the same way as other municipalities in the nation, by locally elected councils subject to national administrative and legal codes. Party politics, active since the end of the Franco regime, and formal political activity in general are most concentrated in the settled town centers, of which the barrios are administrative dependents.

Social Control and Conflict. Formal sanctions rest in the legal and policing functions of the Spanish state. Gossip and public censure function to promote conformity to expectations, especially in economic matters, but Pasiego culture tolerates a greater degree of open interpersonal conflict than is found in many Spanish towns. This is supported—perhaps even encouraged—by the dispersed settlement and the number of properties to which most families have access. An angry exchange can lead a person to depart for another cabaña, tied to the rest of the family by their common herding enterprise but not by a lack of facility for independent living. In this setting, marriage and personal relations in general are brittle. Divorce traditionally was impossible and only recently has become a legal possibility, but separation was and is common. Similarly, open conflict between other family members or neighbors is frequent and can lead to long-standing feuds between families and blocs of allies. Homicide is relatively infrequent but not unknown, and physical conflict sometimes follows angry encounters between people of all ages and either sex. Such incidents are brought to local judiciary officials when parties destre, particularly if blood is drawn or property damaged.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs and Practices . Pasiegos are baptized Roman Catholics whose communities are served by parish priests. The three villas have parish churches but there are fewer chapels in outlying sectors than in denser, more settled populations. Church attendance is highest in the villas; barrio people have less easy access to church and priestly services. Aside from weekly mass, family-observed sacraments, and life-crisis rites, formal religious life is centered on one major fiesta per year and the services of Holy Week. Personal devotions to particular saints are pursued independent of these dates and of the priests, but the occurrence of personal dedications is variable and characterizes only a small part of the community. The Virgin of Valbanuz, celebrated in Selaya on 15 August, is the object of many personal devotions and also of a large regional celebration that attracts many Cantabrians who are not specifically her devotees. Outsiders call the Virgin of Valbanuz "the Virgin of the Pasiegos," but there is no strong basis within the Pasiego community for this claim. There is argument within the community about such things as the efficacy of curses, the truth of superstitions, and the power of witchcraft. Witchcraft is associated exclusively with magical curing practices; there are some known practitioners in the region, including cities, but not in the Montes de Pas.

Arts. The difficult conditions of the herder's life have not inspired many material products beyond the industrial arts. Song or verse and dance (mainly accompanied by tambourine) are as much regional as local but are not highly developed or much performed in public in this part of Spain. Costume and architecture, except for the cabaña, are also as much regional as local in style. In Cantabria, the stone cabaña is considered uniquely Pasiego, but similar structures are in use in other herding zones—in the Pyrenees, in Asturias, and elsewhere.

Medicine. The Pasiego towns are served by resident doctors, local and regional pharmacies, and a major hospital in Santander. The nation's socialized medical system encourages people to seek professional medical care, and most do, though local women sometimes assist each other at childbirth. Veterinary services are crucial to the herding population and have long been available.

Death and Afterlife. Death is dealt with in Roman Catholic tradition. Burial follows within a day, if possible, following a funeral mass. Many emigrants who have lived as adults in the Montes de Pas, left children there, or died unmarried away from the zone are returned there for burial. The cemeteries thus give a sense of the strength of the ties that surmount distance. Funerals were once followed by banquets, one of various traditions once widespread in northern Spain, discouraged by the church, and now mostly in disuse. There are no particularly strong traditions regarding the dead or afterlife that distinguish Pasiegos from other lay Spaniards.

Bibliography

Cátedra Tomás, María (1972). "Notas sobre un pueblo marginado: Los Vaqueiros de Alzada (ecología de braña y aldea)." Revista de Estudios Sociales 6:139-164.