This is the first study of a transhumant cattle-raising community in Spain. Transhumance is the seasonal moving of livestock to another region.

This volume, the first study of a transhumant cattle-raising community in Spain, is based on the extensive fieldwork at La Nava de San Miguel, a village in the province of Avila in central Spain. It shows the social and economic factors upon which the continued vitality of this mountain village is based: the use of communal summer pastures; the transhumant groups which walk the cattle to the winter pastures over the mountains; and the system of taking turns for many tasks within the village. The book analyses the dichotomy between the more rigid organisation of life within the village and the organisation of life outside the village, in the transhumant group which goes to the winter pastures in Extramadura.