GOAT TOSSING

When I arrived in the home of Goat Tossing, the mayor's warning was as strange as it was serious. 'You'd better put that notebook away,' he muttered. 'Otherwise, people will think you're un ecologista.'

Being mistaken for un ecologista-an animal rights activist-can get you run out of town by pitchfork-toting pig farmers and assorted rustics.

For it was the 'ecologists', particularly a long-haired animal lover from Liverpool, who cost this town its tradition.

And poor Manganeses de la Polvorosa has yet to bounce back from the loss of its beloved Goat Toss. For years its sons and daughters would celebrate their coming of age with a surreal ritual: throwing a live goat from the church belfry onto a canvas sheet below.

The locals swear the bleating projectile always survived the sixty-foot drop, but that didn't stop the hate mail and protests by fauna defenders from around the world, agitators who spread rumours that the barbaric Spaniards would dance in the blood of the dead beast and copulate themselves silly at witches' sabbaths.