About Cheeses
During the Moorish occupation of Spain, between the 8th and 15th centuries, the invaders did much to develop the farming and agriculture of the land. They brought many technological improvements to the Iberian peninsula, in areas such as irrigation and cultivation techniques as well as cheese making, albeit of fresh rather than cured varieties.
During the 9th century, due to fear of the Moorish conquerors, many rural folk along with their livestock took refuge in some of the numerous religious establishments throughout the land where the monks then became the principal producers of cheeses. As the size of their herds grew the monasteries came to need more pasture and so began the tradition of transhumance.
Transhumance, is an age old practice that was widespread throughout the world for many millennia. In essence it describes the movement of herds from winter grazing plains to summer pastures in the mountains. Unlike some other forms of transhumance, that in Spain involved only the shepherds or herdsmen rather than families with women and children. Regular transhumant routes became established at an early stage and their existence and rights were systematized by the rulers of the Spanish kingdoms. The widths of the roads, called cañadas, were regulated as were the tolls for use of them and the rights of the drovers. Even today these trails exist, including a number which still wind through modern Madrid and are used to this day by shepherds intent on maintaining their ancient rights.
The system of transhumance is essentially simple; while the pastures of the plains provided grass in winter the herds would feed there but as the year progressed and water became scarcer the animals would move toward the upland areas, grazing on the more abundant food. Eventually they would spend the summer in the high mountainous pastures of the Pyrenees or the Sierra Cantabrica (where they would produce the cheese to be sold in markets nearby), before returning to the lowlands as autumn came in. The herdsman and his animals might cover a thousand kilometres over the course of a year, returning to their home village perhaps once every twelve months. This practice died out very late and even into the second half of the twentieth century was still being undertaken.
The eighteenth century brought controversy over cheese and its healthiness that led to unfortunate neglect of the sector. While opinion did change in the following century, Spain did not embrace the new technology established in Europe during this time. Consequently, the dairy industry limped into the twentieth century completely unmodernised.
From the mid 1900s the dairy industry and the traditional cheeses of Spain have experienced a major resurgence. Spain is the second largest country in Europe and is characterised by huge extremes of climate, geography and culture. The Iberian Peninsula stretches from the exposed Atlantic coast of the north to the warm protected Mediterranean coastlines. The diversity of the land has not only helped form the character of Spain's cheeses but also denoted their appearance. Many of the cheeses’ shapes or patterns originate from whatever local material was available for making cheese moulds whether it was the ceramic bowls of the Levante, the sycamore leaves and carved wood of the mountains or grass belts of the south and central plateau. The variety of terroirs is enormous.