IT WAS ST. ANTHONY'S DAY JANUARY 17TH ROOSTER RUN IN FUENTESOTO. BLESSED BE THE BEARDS OF ST. ANTHONY THAT COVER THE LITURGICAL CALENDAR

On St. Anthony's day the hen laid eggs and the geese crowed in the pens. The days were getting longer, but the cold of the January slope was pressing and the chilblains tortured us by the ears. Aunt Ramona went up to the nesting box every night and stuck her finger in their bottoms to check if there would be eggs the next morning. The rooster protested with a cock-a-doodle-doo that translated into Christian would mean: "Don't touch them, Ramona, they're for me"

But the red rooster in our henhouse and all the ones in the village were waiting for the casserole because in honor of St. Anthony we ate chicken with rice after the savage torture of rooster running.

The roosters received the martyrdom of their virility, they were castrated. No more cock-a-doodle-doos in the village mornings.

They would stretch a rope between two posts and hang them tied upside down. The young men who were going to enter the quintas that year would ride donkeys, horses or mules, running underneath them, trying to grab the rooster by the head and tear it off and then gallop past.

There was a referee, a guard on a ladder, who recorded the operation.

The young man who most skillfully decapitated the little animal was crowned with a laurel branch and then entertained in the tavern with a wine and a jug of wine as a prize, which the quintas would drink together to his health.

Dulzaineros from Aranda or Peñafiel enlivened the party with jotas and parades.

I understand from my interest in history that this ancient custom in Fuentesoto, now disappeared because there are no servants, was a reminiscence of the Roman Lupercalia that lasted the whole month of January.

The death of the rooster was a sacrifice to Jupiter in gratitude to the gods who gave us pets, beasts of draft and burden and who ultimately served as food for mortals.

Today I remember Saint Anthony, whose image with the face of a patriarch and a fattened piglet at the foot of the abbatial staff, whose image was venerated in the church of Fuentesoto interceding for us.

On such a day as today, the sheep were taken to the church atrium to bless him, the cow from Torionda so that she would not miscarry and give us a healthy calf, the males of the yoke, the stallion donkey and my grandfather's grey mare that gave birth to a foal or a mule every year.

I used to accompany my grandfather when he went down to the Sacramenia stop to put her on the horse or donkey that would ride her.

I was a six-year-old boy and when I saw the mating scene I received a sex education class.

Biological fertilization and gestation is a sacred dogma in nature. They are the laws of the institute. There is no malice among mammals, quadrupeds without porn are a sacred act. Likewise, I learned then that children are not brought by the stork from Paris. Donkeys do not take the pill nor do they put on a condom when the bull is born in the pasture. Everything is clean and easy without any morbidity.

Blessed Saint Anthony, the hen lays and it was said when you painted a picture at random, if with a beard, Saint Anthony and if not, the Immaculate Conception. There it goes.

Good morning, dear little animals, I ask you not to castrate the rooster or cut off his chalk. Emasculating - a savage custom - is not in the biological laws. Jupiter must not have liked such inhuman sacrifices

Friday, January 17, 2025