Shaving the Beasts: Wild Horses and Ritual in Spain

A vivid first-person study of a notorious equine ritual—from the perspective of the wild horses who are its targets

Wild horses still roam the mountains of Galicia, Spain. But each year, in a ritual dating to the 1500s called rapa das bestas, villagers herd these “beasts” together and shave their manes and tails. Shaving the Beasts is a firsthand account of how the horses experience this traumatic rite, producing a profound revelation about the durability of sociality in the face of violent...