Animals in a landscape or replaced with figures: new concepts for traditional festivals

The Tres Tombs festival takes place this weekend in neighborhoods, towns, and cities up and down the land. 

As ever, horses, donkeys, and mules will be paraded on three laps of a given route, carrying vintage carriages and demonstrating past ways of life to the gathered crowds. 

The Tres Tombs festival takes place on the weekend of the feast day of Saint Anthony, January 17, and celebrates its 200th anniversary in Barcelona this year. The custom is a way of honoring animals and all they have done for society through the generations, especially in a pre-industrialized world when they were vital to the development and progress of humanity. 

In more recent years, we have become sensitized to and more aware of the potential harm or distress that could be caused to animals being used for such festivities.

As such, the festival has modernized itself, agreeing with administrations and animal rights' organizations a set of guidelines to ensure animal welfare. This includes things like having a veterinarian present for every 42 animals paraded, limiting the routes of the parades to 6km maximum, and reducing the loads carried.

Despite looking large and heavy, most of the vintage carriages used in the festival are largely empty. 

Yet, animals being present and in the center of a parade with dozens cheering on from the sidelines can still potentially be a distressing situation as it is. As such, Jordi Gispert, a representative from ADDA, the Association in Defence of Animals' Rights, suggests other concepts for the festivity to be held in a way that 100% ensures the wellbeing of the horses, donkeys, and mules. 

"We must think, as a mother society, we must start to think about those kind of celebrations that perhaps don't need animals," Gispert says. 

Instead of honoring animals by putting them in the center of a parade, Gispert suggests, "if we put figures, or some other structures, perhaps we can do also that festivity without the need to do it in some way that the animals don't like."

One idea, Gispert poses, is to have the celebration by viewing the animals in a "field or in some other landscape" where we can honor them while also giving them their space.

"As a contemporary society, we must think about if the animals want to do that or not. I think in many parts of society now we are lovers of animals and we must respect them," the representative from Spain's biggest animal rights NGO tells Catalan News.

"But while there are things that can make them suffer, if we mean that or not, then I think we must avoid those kinds of things, and that we can improve many things still on [the Tres Tombs] if we do it with animals." 

Podcast

Listen to the podcast below for more on the Tres Tombs festivities.