Once a year a flock of around two thousand sheep and a few hundred goats is driven through the centre of Madrid — past the Puerta del Sol and along the Gran Vía — by shepherds who pay the city a toll in medieval maravedís. They are exercising a right of passage over the cañadas reales, the drove roads granted by Alfonso XI in 1418, which the modern city was built across.
The event was revived in 1994 precisely to keep the right alive by using it, and it is a working legal act as much as a spectacle.
No attendance figure is published.
The date is a Sunday in late October or November, set each year and announced a few weeks ahead, which makes it the hardest entry in the Spanish calendar to plan around. The route is published with it.
PlanningOne Sunday in late autumn, announced a few weeks ahead — the date is not fixed.