The Roncal Valley: Cheese, a Tenor and a Cattle Tribute

Roncal was the first cheese in Spain to be granted a denominación de origen, in 1981, and the point of it was to stop other cheeses calling themselves roncal. It is made by hand from raw Latxa sheep's milk in the Navarrese Pyrenees under the Mesa de los Tres Reyes. In 882 Sancho García granted the valley the right to bring its flocks down to winter in the Bardenas Reales, which they had earned fighting the Saracens. The valley also produced Julián Gayarre, the greatest Spanish tenor of the 19th century, whose mausoleum by Mariano Benlliure is in the village of Roncal. And every 13 July, at boundary marker 262 on the Ernaz pass — standing in for the lost Stone of San Martín — the men of the French Barétous valley hand three cows to the men of Roncal, under an arbitral sentence of 16 October 1375 that is considered the oldest treaty in Europe still in force. The ceremony itself is older than the sentence. Navarre made it intangible cultural heritage on 24 January 2011.