Sparrow escape along the Calle Mayor of El Burgo de Osma (Soria, 5,200 inhabitants). Three pigs threaten to attack vermouth-drinking locals and run over foreigners kissed by the midday sun in Soria’s impending winter. It could be called San Cerdín. But this is a race of cardboard pigs, under human propulsion, to chase around 150 people gathered in the city for Matancero Pride. This festival of renewed gastronomy and tradition brings together for the second year in the ancient Celtiberian-Roman Uxama a youth raised on chorizo sandwiches coming from macro-farms and not those matured at home. Foreigners, dressed in the latest fashion trends peppered with classics like berets and wine boots, flock to the Virrey Palafox hotel’s plan to mix the conventional, which is not old, with the modern, which is not better: glory for the grandchildren of the rural exodus and for the nostalgic of the city without denying the urban freshness.
November 22nd was a day of clashes in El Burgo de Osma. The beautiful hands of Carmen Abril, 28 years old and founder of the rural cultural project La Perdiz Roja, contrasted with the calloused palms of carters Ángel Mediavilla and Antonio Martín, aged 65 and 70 respectively. They were wearing corduroys and she was wearing a skirt with pieces of her signature T-shirt, the one that says cool. Make Castile fresh againone of the dozens of protest garments among those present at the celebration. April listened and asked, the centennial corporation said. “Spain was built with these machines”, they are proud, and those Soria pine woods are fundamental to structure the cathedral of Burgos or the monastery of El Escorial. The teamsters set up a sawing shop and had people like them and their ancestors cut a log. Volunteers took part of the tree and a huge coaster for the Morningaccording to the order in which the circles are counted, a sign of the age of the pine. Not even the fingers of Lemus, a charro singer who in the afternoon mixed the splendor of trap with the lineage of Salamancan folklore, have so much sound.
At dusk the La Perdiz team got into the car, also pulled by people, together with huge speakers and a mixer to launch the city with other queens: from Bad Gyal to Raffaella Carrà. Of the ““I love soca” to the uniform cry of “I like Soria!” next to the beautiful Cathedral of the Assumption. Armando García, 49 years old and administrator of the viceroy Palafox, smiled, who wants to mix generations and customs, without watertight compartments that park the countryside or the cities, making invisible the rich culture that some petulants call “peripheral” or “provincial”. “I hope that the citizens are more involved and that the remaining young people don’t say that there is never anything here,” he dreams. This idea is the complement of the 52 years that from January to March attract around 13,000 people to the Burgo to savor the slaughter. The City Council (PP), he says, does not help in anything. His partner Beatriz Martínez, 48, sums up: “We are amazed by kilometer 0 and the massacre is the most kilometer 0, it can be more modern than anything in the city. There are people who live poor in Madrid who would be very happy here, or they don’t know it or I don’t understand it.”
Saturday began at the Pig Museum, with varied images relating to the pig: from tender stuffed animals to the very fine porcelain depicting a pig. punkarrafrom butchering tools to film posters Darling, the brave little pig. Armenian Gor Hakobyan, 28, was upset that he shared a name with the first three letters of the word gorrino. The person responsible for the Soria discovery is Emilio Negro, 26 years old, collaborator in Palencia of Hakobyan and Víctor del Campo and Encheng Zhou, 28 years old and of Chinese origin. The exotic team enjoyed a sip of wine and torreznos to the sound of the DJ set of Jugl4ria and the Cantabrians Casapalma and their electronic jotas. Negro arrived in 2024 and loved it for the music and the stomach: “We have become like pigs, never better said.” From the pig, to the gait, as the posters claim.
The involvement of those present was demonstrated when a group of 28-year-old women from Burgos distributed stickers. There were happy pigs on a flag of Castilla y León ea pig sticking out his tongue and a comb wrapped in a rainbow. “Pride of the massacre,” the drawing reads. “Since we came we had to contribute”, they justified on the stickers. The instigator was Andrea Martínez after seeing the poster on Instagram: “I sent it thinking that they would send me to hell.” Well, there they were with an apartment to spend the weekend, getting to know El Burgo and, among other things, having Martínez explain to them in the middle of the party the wonderful world of legumes and chickpeas that he is studying for his thesis. Marta Franco joked about the activity: “We have more normal, conventional urban plans, but for us it was nice.” Her twin, Begoña, defended slaughter “because it is a lifelong tradition, animals are not killed for pleasure, but to eat, it is a culture of exploitation and it is better than macro farming.”
A large group from Madrid, with representation from Barcelona, got to know the province thanks to the activism of Marcos Martínez, that is to say DJ Plastico, 21, when he played during the meal. At the very least, he brings his colleagues from the capital to the leisure and cultures of Soria. José Miguel Pérez, 23 years old, wore a leather jacket like a rock singer, earrings in his ears and a long rosary, one more in that metropolis where everyone is the same because everyone is different. “When you see the traditions of a city you say, ‘What the hell is Madrid?’” he mused, “the people are very welcoming and we feel part of Marcos’ fellow Tabbys.” The aforementioned puffs out his chest while the foreigners rotate to carry on their shoulders the giants accompanying the procession: “We Sorians advertise our land well, I wish we stayed and that there were more opportunities.” His Russian colleague Artem Pesin, 21, jokes that it is hot in Soria and assures that this is how the country really feels: “I love coming, I integrate more into the Spanish tradition than in Madrid.”
What happened at night and the methods to warm up from the cold of Soria, whatever Pesin says, remained in the night. On Sundays the bars served breakfast and the shops sold torreznos e chocorreznos, but once again the city takes on ghostly features: here the only hemorrhage is demographic and the emptied Spain is full of desire.
