#llessui

Winter in the High Pyrenees, Catalonia.

Summer transhumance (temporary nomadism moving the livestock to the summer pastures, on the highest parts of the mountains after the winter snows have melted).

This video shows the moment where the sheep flocks from Estac and Enviny mix with the flock from Llessui (all of them villages from the High Pyrenees, Catalonia). A shepherd gives the sheep to the shepherd who will take care of them all summer with the help of his shepherd dog. In autumn, this shepherd will bring the sheep flock down to the valley again, where the sheep will be distributed to their original farm.

A cow in Vall d’Àssua (High Pyrenees, Catalonia). The breed is called “bruna dels Pirineus”, which in Catalan means “brown [cow] from the Pyrenees”. As the name says, this is an autochthonous breed from the Pyrenee mountains of Catalonia.

Photos of shepherds with their herds in Vall d’Àssua (High Pyrenees, Catalonia). Taken by the photojournalist Jordi Borràs for La Mira.

There’s not much that can be said because what you see says it all. There are some shepherds, some sheep, a landscape, a nature, a life. There is a language, a dialogue. There is a country, a geography. There is an eternity that doesn’t stop. For centuries. The world of yesterday and that of today live here. The ancestral world of three shepherds from Pallars: Ramon, Bernat and Rispa. The ancient world of the reproductive sheep that go up (transhumance) in summer to live: to eat grass to come back down later. And the next summer, the same. To go up and down. And the next one...

These worlds pass the keys with the young, and Barcelonian, shepherd, Marc. He keeps them for summer. The sheep don’t stop their crunch-crunch, up and down the mountains. Just like life, curling. Them [the shepherds], them [the sheep], us, reproducing non-stop like these infinite mountains and skies over Llessui, in the Àssua valley. Like this white, animal river and this natural green sea. Maybe the glimmer of eternity’s sparks are found here.

More photos in the article: La Mira.