Andalusian horse
The Andalusian horse is a breed of horse native to Andalusia. It is an Iberian horse of the baroque type that is among the oldest equine breeds in the world. In Spain it is also commonly known as "Spanish horse" and is officially called the Pure Spanish Breed (PRE), because the Andalusian is considered to be the quintessential Spanish horse, despite the fact that there are many other Spanish equine breeds. However, in most countries it is called "Andalusian horse". The Carthusian horse is one of the most important breeding lines of this breed.
Throughout history, the Andalusian horse has played a fundamental role in the formation of European and American equine breeds, such as the Hispano-Arabian, Hispano-Breton, the Friesian, the Aztec, the Lipizzaner, the Kladruber, the Peruvian Paso, the Mustang, the Alter Real and the Lusitano.
Historical background
Since Antiquity, Baetic horses were highly appreciated in the Roman circus and have been very famous. In the Middle Ages, in present-day Andalusia, there were so many horses that Abderramán I, in the year 780, granted insurance and peace to the Mozarabs of Granada through a pact, which forced them to pay annually 10,000 ounces of gold, 10,000 pounds of silver, 10,000 heads of the best horses. During the Caliphate of Córdoba, the Umayyad court stud farm was very important, as well as the Almanzor stud farm and its Berber riders. We have news of the caliph Alhakén's stud farm thanks to the chronicle in which Ziyad Ibn Aflah, the caliph's stableman and zalmedina of Medina Azahara, extols the quality of the foals that were concentrated annually in the Amiriya almunia, coming from the weaning of the most of 3,000 mares that the caliph had in the marshes, together with 500 stallions, in a clear parallel with the subsequent Saca de las Yeguas.
Given the quality of the horses in the south of the Iberian Peninsula, from the XIII to the XIX century the kings established the prohibition of crossing mares with donkeys, in Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia, establishing a "royal line" to the south of which the miscegenation of equines was prohibited, to preserve their purity.
The Kingdom of Córdoba was especially famous for its horses. In it there were two lineages dedicated to horse breeding. The Mexías, lords and later counts of Santa Eufemia, were famous ranchers since the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, standing out in the breeding of gray horses. Don Rodrigo Mexía the Elder provided King Carlos I with horses between 1520 and 1530 and taught the governors of Castilla by royal mandate his breeding system learned from his father Don Gonzalo.
On the other hand, the horses were renamed "guzmanes" or "valenzuelas", which originated from a Berber stallion bought by Luis Manrique, from the Order of Calatrava in Córdoba, from a certain Guzmán. On Manrique's death, his horses passed into the hands of Martín Fernández de Córdoba Ponce de León, grandson of the Count of Cabra, who gave the herd to the Great Captain who, in turn, left it to Juan Valenzuela, in whose family it remained until it was acquired by Luis Gómez de Figueroa. This stud farm fell irreparably during the War of Independence. Horses from this breeding line were owned by the Duke of Osuna, the Duke of Arcos, the Count of Medellín and the Duke of Medinaceli, among other magnates.
History
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In the XVI century, Philip II commissioned Diego López de Haro y Guzmán (1531-1598) to create the Royal Stables of Córdoba, where he brought together the best stallions and mares from the lands bordering the Guadalquivir, this royal stud being the origin of the Andalusian horse breed. In the appointment of the marquis as groom in 1567 the king says:
[...] we have agreed to sustain and raise a good number of belly mares with their pots and calves in the City of Córdoba and other parts and places of Andalusia.
The stables were made dependent on the Junta de Obras, Jardines y Bosques and, among other things, economic funds from the exploitation of Andalusian salt pans were dedicated to the company. In 1576 the stables had 50 employees and 110 stallions and in the 1580s, 600 mares grazed in the pastures of Córdoba, 400 in those of Jerez and 200 in those of Jaén. In the words of the marquis:
The goodness of the horse race of Cordoba is a thing of greater grandeur that his Majesty has in his Kingdoms.
On the death of the 1st Marquis, the position of "Caballerizo Mayor de las Reales Caballerizas de Córdoba" it passed to his son, remaining as a hereditary position in the estate of the Casa del Carpio since 1625, by royal concession to his grandson. The crown also had the Yeguada Real de Aranjuez, made up of the mares of the Order of Santiago, whose patrimony had reverted to the crown, and another herd in Valladolid. However, its quality was not comparable to that of the Yeguada de Córdoba.
In fact, in 1605, Cervantes, in chapter XXIV of Don Quixote, assumed that Córdoba was the mother of the best horses in the world. Likewise, in chapter XV of said novel, he alludes to the gallantry of Cordovan mares with the following words:
Sancho had not been cured to release Rocinante, I'm sure he knew him for so smooth and so little rijoso that all the mares of the dehesa of Cordoba did not make him take sinister evil.
Throughout the Golden Age there was no doubt about the excellence of Andalusian horses. Lope de Vega in his comedy Los commendadores de Córdoba collects not only the fame of Cordovan horses but also that of their riders. In the same way, the aforementioned work by Lope from 1610 and the Fable of Polifemo and Galatea de Góngora from 1612, dedicated to the Count of Niebla, are an exceptional testimony to the historical denomination "Andalusian horse".
At this time Andalusian horses were highly prized inside and outside Spain, having owners such as Don Juan of Austria, the Kings of France, the Duke of Bavaria, Emperor Maximilian II and his brother Archduke Charles. These last two created the Lipizzaner horse from light Andalusian horses and the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, following traditional Spanish dressage.
At this time the cavalry maestranzas arose, noble corporations whose main purpose was the exercise of bridle and horse riding, which in some cases built and maintained their own bullrings. The maestranzas arose in Andalusia with the creation of Ronda in 1573, Seville in 1670, Granada in 1689, Carmona in 1728, Antequera, the same year, Jerez in 1739 and attempts were made to establish other in Jaén and Utrera, in 1731 and 1732 respectively, but they were denied by the Board of Cavalry. The maestranzas also spread outside the Andalusian territory, with the founding of the one in Valencia in 1697, the one in Palma de Mallorca in 1758 and Zaragoza in 1819. The first article of the statutes of the Maestranza de Granada, written in 1764, is another example of the historical name of this breed as "Andalusian horse":
[...] and so that the Andalusian horses that have made the Spanish militia superior to that of all nations, do not decay from the excellence in which they are constituted by the hidalgy of their races, and the cousin of their doctrine [... ]
In 1751 there was a serious fire in the stables of Córdoba, for which Fernando VI ordered them to be rebuilt, finishing the work in the time of Carlos III, who placed his weapons on the façade. That same year, José I of Portugal wanted to create a national stud farm in his kingdom, for which he acquired 33 mares and 2 Andalusian stallions. In 1753 the cabin already had 268 individuals, mainly with chestnut coats, the origin of the breed called Alter Real.
The political vicissitudes of the XIX century in Spain caused great damage to the national equine herd. Due to the French invasion, in 1808 the mares from the Córdoba Stables were transferred to the Balearic Islands to preserve them from Napoleonic looting. Cordovan stables as a stallion depot. In addition to this, Córdoba lost importance because King Ferdinand VII supported the Yeguada de las Lomas de Úbeda in 1820 and suspended the prohibition on covering mares with stallions south of the "royal line", which favored the use of the mule to hitch cars and stagecoaches, which in the south of the Iberian Peninsula was previously only used for farm work. In addition, his brother Infante Carlos, president of the Supreme Board of Cavalry and in favor of crossing Andalusian mares with other European breeds, such as the Norman horse, the Trakelner, the Holstein and the Hanoverian, created the Cazorla and Seville stud farms in 1828 and 1830 respectively, which caused serious genetic deterioration to the herd.
As a counterpart in the middle of the century, the Veterinary Schools of Zaragoza, León and Córdoba were created, the latter in 1847, dependent on the University of Seville and dedicated especially to the care and improvement of the horse. Also in 1864, at the initiative of Narváez from Loja, the Ramo de Guerra was in charge of breeding and promoting national horses. In addition, many Andalusian breeders had not practiced these crosses, so it was possible to recover the original purity of the breed, when in 1893 the Ministry of War decided to organize horse breeding in Spain, locating the national, later military, stud in the palace Moratalla, in Hornachuelos and Posadas. For the recovery of the Andalusian horse, 18 mares from Córdoba, Montilla and Jerez de la Frontera were used. In the last third of the XIX century, the stud depots of Córdoba, Úbeda, Jerez and Valladolid operated and in the first years of the XX century, others were founded in Alcalá de Henares, Hospitalet de Llobregat, Garrapinillos, Bétera, León and Santander.
In 1912, Cría Caballar, which depended on the Army, opened in Spain the first book to register Arabian, purebred English and Anglo-Arab horses, deciding to register the traditionally called Andalusian horses as Purebred Spanish, later abbreviated as PRE. In the 1920s the Moratalla national stud farm was expanded in Medina Sidonia and then in Jerez. During the Second Republic, the competence in horse breeding and development was transferred to the Ministry of Public Works and later to the Ministry of Agriculture.
During the Franco dictatorship, the national stud farm was renamed the military stud farm. In 1956 it was removed from the Moratalla Hacienda and moved to Écija, to the La Turquilla and La Isla farms; Jerez, the Cortijo de Vicos and the Garrapilos farm; to Ibio, and to Lore-Toki (in San Sebastián). In addition, new stallions were opened in Manacor and Hoya Fría (in Tenerife). In this period, when locomotion was definitively imposed in field work and vehicle traction, the Andalusian horse breed was preserved thanks to some ranchers, mainly Andalusians and Extremadurans, such as Terry, Bahones, Guerrero, Pallarés, Romero Benitez, Stairs, Miguel-Romero, Miura and Blasco Balbuena, among others. The work of the Spanish Equestrian Federation, the locomotion laboratory of the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Córdoba and Álvaro Domecq was also very important, as was the promotion of the breed by the Jerez Cattle Fair, which went on to called the Horse Fair.
From 1966 Spain prevented Portugal from registering its horses in its book, so the Portuguese country chose to give its Andalusian horses a new name: Lusitano horse, in memory of the old Lusitania. Portugal opened its own registry, which remained open until 1980 and reopened between 1996 and 1999, to refresh the blood again with Andalusian horses.
In 1972, the National Association of Spanish Horse Breeders (ANCCE) was established in Seville. the show "How Andalusian horses dance", devised by Domecq himself, with the assistance of the Prince of Spain. This show was the origin of the Fundación Real Escuela Andaluza de Arte Ecuestre.
Between 1989 and 1992 there was an outbreak of African horse sickness in Spain that affected the herd of Andalusian horses. In 1990 the Ministry of Finance moved the Bocado stud farm, from Terry, to the Fuente del Suero pasture, both assets expropriated from RUMASA, where they remain. Since 1991, ANCCE has organized the International Horse Show (SICAB) in Seville the last week of November, with an important conformational contest.
In 1995, the Córdoba stables lost their use as a stallion depot, and have remained empty ever since. In 1996 the Jerez Horse Museum was inaugurated and a little later the Seville Carriage Museum. That same year, Córdoba Ecuestre was created, which organizes the CABALCOR contest and in 2002 the World Equestrian Games were held in Jerez.
In recent times several Andalusian horses have participated in the Olympic Games in the dressage modality, obtaining an Olympic diploma, individual bronze and team silver in Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. They are also frequent in raids.
Features
Piaffé
Spanish Steps
passage
Trot
Galope
Utility
The Andalusian horse is easy to ride, which is why it is used as a ride horse. It is used in the disciplines of classical dressage, cowboy dressage and in bullfighting. In dressage he stands out for his good head, excellent trot, good collection, piaffé and almost perfect passage. On the contrary, it loses a lot in elongation and pace.
Breeding
The breeding of the Andalusian horse is centered in Spain, although there are good studs all over the world. The breeding system is based on herds of mares that live loose in a state of semi-freedom. Some foals are sold at weaning and others remain in the stud and begin to be tamed at three or four years of age, the older the adult, the more prepared they are for the preparation of dressage.
In stud farms it is common for males to bear the masculine name of the mother; for example, that the son of Vinatera is called Vinatero. However, all the females born in the stud farm in the same year are given a name that begins with the same letter and that can be used in the masculine form for the foals that are born from them.
The Andalusian horse, from its birth shows how imposing it is, its phenotypic characteristics make it a firm, reliable and safe animal.
Competition
Morphological competitions are held throughout the year in which the horses are judged by sex and age. The specimens of both sexes participate in the contests individually, although the mares can participate in cobras. In addition to morphology, importance is given to functionality. In fact, 25% of the mark of males over 4 years old depends on a dressage test. The winners of these contests are classified for the SICAB final, which is held in November at the Palace of Congresses and Exhibitions in Seville. SICAB is the most important event in the Andalusian horse world. The final of the Spanish Purebred Spanish Championship takes place there, as well as auctions, shows, conferences, etc.
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