About This Work

Andalucia, where i live, is boasting to be an origin of the famouse Dancing Andalucian Horses. Myth and legend surround the story of the origin of the Andalucian horse breed. The traditional story proceeds along the lines of: an animal native to Spain, proud and noble of course, remaining pure in breed through the centuries from the mists of time. That story really does start in the mists of time. About 400 BC. Simon of Athens, Xenophon, and later in the 1st century AD, Columella and Saint Isodore of Seville in about 610 AD, defined the perfect horse. Collectively they described the ‘classical horse’. It should have a small head, black eyes, tiny, straight ears, a flexible, thick and not too long neck, a thick mane, wide chest, round belly, elevated movements, a long, silky, wavy tail and a round coup. From then onwards this model of a horse, that did not exist in reality, was represented in drawings, paintings, engravings and sculptures. In 1567, King Phillip II (the Prudent) of Spain ruled one of the world’s largest empires. His reign began the ‘Golden Age’ in Spain, a period during which there was a great outpouring of literature, music and the visual arts. Phillip allowed this blossoming of the arts to go to his head and he decided that Spain would be the country to produce what had, until then, been a fantasy - the ‘Classical horse’. He charged the royal horse master, Diego Lopez de Haro, to purchase 1,200 mares and stallions necessary to create a new breed of horse that would match the perfect vision. Diego bought a selection of the different types of horses then in Andalucia that already had one or more of the features desired in the ideal horse. The eventual result was the Andalucian breed. Phillip decided the horse was so extraordinary that it would be for the exclusive use of the Royal household and for gifts to foreign monarchs, nobles and clergy. By the 18th century, the Andalucian was famous as a breed throughout the world.