Pyrenaica is a race entirely linked to the extensive model. “You can’t stick inside, you always live outside and most go to the mountain in groups,” Parot explains. Other breeds will require less management effort as they allow to grow for a while in the barn, and perhaps this is why the race begins to gradually lose: “Fortunately, some breeders started fighting to make Pirenaica known and reinsert, and now they have reworked with this breed in more and more installation projects.”

Pirenic goats are cultivated by farmers with a dual purpose: on the one hand, those that use to make gas and, on the other, those that grow for meat. “It’s also about making lobster or boqueron meat known, for what we work with cooks. So far everyone thought it was a bad meat, with a lot of weight… and it’s not,” says Parot. For a few years, they have been working with restaurant cooks to try to turn this false belief around.

Feast of the Pyrenean Goat

Last year, for the first time, the association organized a special festival of the Pyreneka race in San Juan de Luz. In it, twelve cooks cooked a little, each of them a little, proposing different recipes. “We wanted to make people understand that not only are they eating noble parts, but that everything can be used, using different forms of cooking.”

The work carried out by the association during these years is bearing fruit, although it is still clear that the road will be long, “because there is still not so much interest in the goat. For Gasnara, yes, but where he comes from, what race and all that… it’s hard,” he adds. The main objective of the partnership is to deepen the field of communication. They are also working on this with the help of the Basque Country Chamber of Agriculture.