Transhumant Cookings: Wooden Spoon
Villanueva de la Vera, Extremadura
What is this lab like?
Some moments only happen around a table. Wooden spoon. Pastoral food and generational transmission aims to capture these moments by filming them. Six short films shot in dining rooms, kitchens, huts and porches of six Cabrera families from La Vera and the Tiétar Valley. During each session, a meal is shared with family members and guests with links linked to pastoral culture, such as musicians, artisans, cooks and architects. The script is minimal. The premise is simple: the dish and the spoon. There is no forced connection, only what happens naturally when people eat together. The films are projected in the villages of origin of each family as part of the Visiones Veratas cycle,in a film club active since 2024, El Cinorrio, with a supra-municipal status that expands the scope and territorial accessibility of the project.
Programme of meetings
Session 1 · May 22, 2026
Meeting and filming · The Retamal Family | First short film: a traditional recipe and reflections on the importance of eating goat meat.
Session 2 · June 20, 2026. Guijo de Santa Bárbara (Cáceres)
Meeting and filming · The García Family | Second short film: preparing migas and reflections on transhumance.
Session 3 · June 27, 2026 Villanueva de la Vera (Cáceres)
Public presentation ·
Goat herders’ snack at 6:30 p.m.
Screening of the first short film and presentation of the project
9:00 a.m. Jointly curated activity
7:30 p.m. Screening of the second short film
8:00 p.m. Roundtable discussion (after-dinner chat) with the featured families.
Session 4 · August 22, 2026. Villanueva de la Vera (Cáceres)
Meeting and filming · The García Jara family | Third short film: preparing tasajo and reflecting on life in the mountains and how it differs from life today
Session 5 · September 28 – October 4, 2026. Villanueva de la Vera (Cáceres)
Meeting and filming · The Tarango Riveiro family | Fourth short film: entrepreneurship and alternatives to traditional livestock farming.
Session 6 · October 14–20, 2026
Meeting and filming · Goatherd family (to be determined) | Fifth short film: clearing the woodland and wildfires.
Session 7 · November 2, 2026. Villanueva de la Vera (Cáceres)
Meeting and filming · Gathering of all the families | Sixth short film: communal meal with all the featured families, conversation about the current issues in the goat industry and its future.
Session 8 · November 20, 21, 22, and 27, 2026
Screening Series · Visiones Veratas | Screening of the six short films in the villages of the featured families, followed by a discussion with the audience.
Who’s running the lab?
Local agent: El Cinorrio
El Cinorrio is an intergenerational community of neighbours and friends from Villanueva de la Vera constituted as an association in 2020. Without physical headquarters - each house serve as headquarters and the neighbours' hammocks serves as offices -, they work with cultural, linguistic and citizen innovation to promote extensive pastoralism in the Sierra de Gredos. Their areas of work include: folklore recovery, the local product promotion, landscape regeneration, youth roots and audiovisual creation. Present in national forums such as the Meeting of Culture and Citizenship and in the EPA! Rural Youth Network, with European connections. Their goal is to give a voice and knowledge of the the bastards and cabreras and to raise awareness of their reality in places that are unaware of it.
Cuchara de Palo (Wooden Spoon) is part of Cocinas Transhumantes, a project curated by hablarenarte · 2026, with support from the Ministry of Culture (Grants for Cultural Projects with Significant Social Impact).
