Saca, 1504
Every summer, at the edge of the Doñana marshes in southern Spain, a centuries-old ritual unfolds. Hundreds of wild mares are rounded up by horsemen known as yegüerizos, descendants of a tradition that dates back to at least 1504 — the year the Duke of Medina Sidonia formalized the practice under royal ordinance.
This series documents the Saca de las Yeguas, a ritual migration of horses that carries echoes of conquest, land, and identity. These are not images of a folkloric show, but fragments of a deeper rite: one that binds Andalusia to the Atlantic, and the yegüerizo to the cowboy, gaucho, or charro across the ocean.
Developed since 2016 through years of proximity and shared time with the yegüerizos, Saca, 1504 is part anthropological journey, part visual epic. A story of ancestry, resistance, and the pulse of a disappearing world. It also seeks to restore the figure of the yegüerizo as a founding horseman of the Atlantic world — the living root of equestrian cultures that crossed the ocean and changed history.
