Marina Vilalta cuddles a lamb as she watches her flock graze on the mountainside while their bells ring gently in the breeze. The image throws up a startling contrast: the lamb is only eight days old; Vilalta has lived for more than nine decades. At 96, she is believed to be Spain’s oldest shepherdess – and is almost certainly the most dedicated. She has cared for sheep on and off since she was five years old and has left her home in the mountains of
Catalonia near the French border only once in her life. Read Next I’ve been abused for being an opinionated black woman. The fear never leaves you Keen to experience air travel, she flew to Mallorca . But after rising at 5am to catch the flight, she visited the cathedral, had lunch and returned home so she could tend the sheep the next morning. As we stand together on the hillside in the village of Bruguera, where she takes her flock of sheep and goats to feed every day, she breaks into a song about a sailor courting a woman who “could be the
Queen of England”. Vilalta is one of the last guardians of dying countryside traditions like this song. The way she tends sheep, treating them almost like beloved pets, has nothing to do with modern-day industrial farming. Her life is celebrated in a new book, Life in the Mountains , by Abraham Orriols , a journalist. He also tells how oral traditions like her country songs are dying out as depopulation deprives villages of their lifeblood. He recounts how, 100 years ago, Bruguera was home to 300 people and 1,000 sheep. Today, there are only 40 residents plus Vilalta’s flock of 36 sheep and six goats. With fewer shepherds as the living becomes harder, Vilalta – who sells sheep and lambs to a local butcher – is part of a vanishing breed. The number of sheep on farms in
Spain was 13.6 million in 2023, down from 15.5 million in 2019, according to Eurostat. Failing prices for mutton and lamb have made earning a living as a shepherd harder, so many take up other jobs. Vilalta’s only child, her son Jesus, works in construction, as does her grandson. Physically agile and mentally sharp, the nonagenarian says looking after her sheep makes her happy. “It can be hard in the rain or the cold. But I am content when I am looking after them,” she reflects. Vilalta lives in a snug home with low ceilings and a warm
fire in Bruguera, which can be reached only by precarious mountain roads. She takes her sheep to graze for two hours a day – even on
Christmas Day . “When I go out, I can see the sheep, the flowers,” she says, when the prospect of retiring is gently mentioned. “I never liked staying at home.” As we head off to take the sheep to graze, she needs no helping hand to walk. But she does need a lift in a car to the hillside 10 minutes away, as her legs are not what they were. Read Next 4 months, 10,000 miles and 19 countries – how to reach Australia without flying Vilalta was born in 1927, one of 12 children to a poor family, which at times had to farm out some of their offspring to relatives when there was not enough food to go around. She recounts when Spain erupted into Civil War in 1936, and
police came looking for her brothers to fight for the
Republican army. “[One brother] hid under a false floor. A Civil Guard pointed a pistol at my mother and demanded him. Another fled to
France,” she says. “Before the war, things were very tough. We had no shoes, no clothes and none of us went to school.” After the war, she worked for a time in a factory but went back to tending the sheep when the flock numbered 1,000. “At times when I was hungry, I would drink the milk of the goats,” she remembers with a smile. In this hilly corner of Catalonia , Vilalta’s generation speaks little Spanish. Her son and daughter were forced to learn Spanish while
Catalan was banned in school during the dictatorship of General Franco between 1939 and 1975. Vilalta’s late husband Sebastià had a series of odd jobs while she tended the flock. As a woman working alone as a shepherdess, she received sexist comments, but brushed them off. “People would ask her what her husband was doing, and make crude jokes about her almost being a man,” Orriols tells i. She won the Cross of St Jordi, the highest honour in Catalonia, for her contribution to preserving countryside culture – but she refused to go to
Barcelona to pick up the award, insisting it was too hot. So, the mountain had to come to Mohammed: Pere Aragonès, the Catalan regional president, made the journey to her home, two hours’ drive north of the Catalan capital. “The story of Marina allows us to broaden our view of the rural world and the popular wisdom of our country,” says Orriols, who works for Spain’s regional television channel TV3. “We talked about the towns that have emptied, of the shepherds who are no longer with us and how life in the mountains has changed. ”