The persistence of a millennial system of short journey cattle seasonal megration in the Valley of Cabuérniga(Cantabria)

Abstract

Short journey seasonal migration between the low lands or the middle valleys and the high pastures, it has probably constituted the handling form and cattle exploitation of the Cantabrian Mountain from prehistoric times. These practices have contributed from a decisive way to the construction of their landscape, and the continuity of the same ones has allowed that today we can still identify good part of the elements that compose it. Evidently, not in all the places it has persisted in the same way. The changes in the orientation of cattle production, the abandonment of the activity or the reafforestation, have weakened -or even erased - their print in some areas. In other cases, however, the maintenance of migrating extensive system has aided to conserve the traditional landscape, today threatened by the abandonment of this activity. The case that here is presented it is in fact one of these last ones. The analysis in the historical ways of pastoral exploitation and of the landscape construction are first undertaken, trying then to explain the persistence of the pattern and the changes and adaptations that it has experienced.