It is in the municipal territory of El Tiemblo, in the Sierra de Gredos, province of Ávila, west of Madrid, that the Bulls of Guisando line up. These four blocks of granite, oriented to the east, constitute a sample of the veracos, this great herd of about four hundred sculpted beasts, scattered in the central-western part of the Iberian Peninsula, the province of Ávila counting more than one hundred.
Guisando Bulls
A Veraco (in French “boar”) is a granite figure representing an animal, mainly a pig or a bull. Characteristic of the Vettone culture, they are found mainly in western Spain and northern Portugal.
These are zoomorphic figures 2.5 meters long, dating from the IIIe and IIe centuries BC. These are males, placed upright, face on, and endowed with exacerbated sexual signs. Some bear marks on the hindquarters (“dorsuale”, a sign that was applied to animals for the slaughterhouse) and holes on the head, probably intended for the horns. We do not know their exact meaning and function: pre-Roman deities, protectors of livestock, funerary monuments, territorial milestones or markers of transhumance...
The tradition indicates that it is on this place that was signed, in September 1468, the Treaty of the Bulls of Guisando, oath by which Isabella the Catholic was declared heiress of the kingdom of Castile by her half-brother, Henry IV of Castile. , under pressure from adults.
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