From Doñana to Yellowstone, a shared culture between Spain and America.
Antonio Moreno Ruiz 
One of the figures that has most identified the United States to the world has been the cowboy, especially through cinema and advertising. And the series “Yellowstone,” which is having such a successful impact, confirms this.
With the Rocky Mountains and the state of Montana as the backdrop, we are facing a 21st-century “western,” starring Kevin Costner, without undermining the performances of Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Wes Bentley, or Cole Hauser, among others.
“Yellowstone” depicts an entire “cowboy society” with mercenary-like manners, evoking the so-called “conquest of the West” against real estate speculation, Indian reservations, and other issues that emerge hand in hand from a culture that feels familiar to us because, as we have mentioned on other occasions, cowboy culture is of Hispanic origin.
And we can specify and trace this culture to Atlantic Andalusia, that is, the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula, more precisely in Doñana, a vast territory that unites much of southwestern Spain, where the Guadalquivir River flows into the Atlantic Ocean in front of what is Spain’s largest national park.
Moreover, Doñana houses a marshland landscape that can remind one of the Llanos of Venezuela and Colombia.
In those lands crossed by pine forests, with a climate whose seasons can combine the harshest heat and the most surprising rains, as well as the sweetest springs; the so-called mesteño horses have been located for hundreds of years—a word that in English evolved into “mustang.”
In turn, “mesteño” is related to “mesta,” whose meaning, according to the Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy of Language, is “an aggregate or meeting of the owners of large and small livestock, who took care of their breeding and pasture and sold them for common supply,” while the Council of the Mesta, a powerful institution that existed in the Crown of Castile from the 13th to the 19th century, is defined as “a meeting that shepherds and livestock owners held annually to discuss matters concerning their livestock and to separate animals without known owners that had mixed with theirs.”
It is precisely in this last meaning that the horses we refer to fit, that is, since they roamed freely over those vast lands, harboring various crossbreeds and recreating an ability to adapt and resist that was fundamental for their breeding and expansion in North America.
In addition to horses, cattle from the region also arrived in North America, namely the marismeña or mostrenca cows, whose adaptability and resistance had already been demonstrated from Andalusia to the Canary Islands and was confirmed in the New World.
Likewise, both in Atlantic Andalusia and other regions of Spain, the frontier culture against Islam that shaped the Iberian Middle Ages was forming the archetype of the horseman and the “soldier-peasant” who would be very useful for the vast North American territory.
Gaining ground inch by inch, with patience and endurance, stretching resources, working leather and saddles, and continuously adapting and recycling; this was something lived in European Spain and, throughout the New World, creolized, established life foundations.
Therefore, all this livestock and saddlery culture has given rise to harness making, which is a craft heritage from those times, something unique in the Hispanic world.
In June, the Saca de la Yeguas takes place in the town of Almonte, an event with over five centuries of history. A Texan who attends should feel identified because there they will see much of their most intimate roots before the herdsmen who hurry to gather and select the livestock across that immense and fertile plain. And everything will become much clearer than in novels or movies.
Thus, we dare to say that Doñana is to Spain what Yellowstone is to the United States, saving the distances and the extensions.
Although in the series “Yellowstone” we see violence, we also see companionship and identity; aspects that we consider fundamental, especially in current times.
And indeed, on the American continent, many struggled greatly to plant their banner in a hostile environment; something we already addressed when analyzing the life and work of the Texan writer Robert E. Howard:
All in all, and “lightly” responding to a progressive archetype character in the series (which viewers will soon identify), the truth is that in the times of the Hispanic Monarchy, those vast territories were not traversed exclusively by “Europeans,” since besides peninsular Spaniards and Canary Islanders, the Spanish population was integrated by mestizos, allied Indians, blacks, and mulattos; not to mention a considerable number of creoles.
There was no “unity” or “brotherhood” among the various Amerindian peoples who, on many occasions, had terrible practices (including cannibalism) against their supposed “race brothers”; which is why many Indians preferred to integrate into the missions and Hispanic civilization in general.
In fact, Indians were much more likely to die at the hands of other Indians than European Spaniards.
But well, aside from details to which we are more or less accustomed, the truth is that we find the series interesting and another motivation to claim the Hispanic legacy of the United States, a legacy that is in the soul and skin of North America.
From Doñana to Yellowstone, back and forth, there are many keys to study and reclaim.
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