Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art

Besides being famous for Sherry and Flamenco, Jerez is also the center for horsemanship. Next to our hotel was the famed Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art. The Austrian Lipizzan horses that Patton rescued in WWII came from here and most of the better horses of the world have Andalusian roots after the Arabs crossed their fiery steeds with Iberian stock during their 8th century invasion. In the 16th century, Hapsburgs ran both Spain and Austria and decided to breed horses like they did their own children. They got better results with the horses.

The arena

The school trains riders and horses in Dressage, an art form where the rider with minimum movement gets the horse to perform elaborate movements such as walking sideways while listening to classical music. Performances are held several times per week in this large arena whose pseudo columns and rounded windows salute the Spanish Renaissance architectural style which ended long before this structure was built.

The mission of the Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Equestre is to preserve the proud traditions of riding. Spain has long been an interesting place to be a horse. Much of the Arab success when they quickly took most of Iberia after 711 was because of the light cavalry – fast horses minimally burdened by the heavy armor that slowed down the Christian Knights who fought them.

Jerez became the focal point for the Andalusian horses because of a nearby Carthusian monastery where the monks bred horses into ideal specimens called Carthusian or Carujanos. This started when the King wanted to merge the quick Arab horses with the plodding bloodlines from the North to produce a one-size-fits-all steed. Some breeders resisted and gave their stock to the monks who went on to develop this graceful horse with a bony protrusion on its muzzle suggesting unicorns as ancestors. (Maybe they just have a few Hapsburgs on their family tree, proof of unintelligent design.) While foals are dark coated, mature horses are typically grey. 

These highly trained horses are pretty much the end of the evolutionary path for Andalusian horses that were around in Paleolithic times, as seen in the art on the walls of nearby caves.

Headquarters Garnier

Who needs the Spanish Renaissance? Those of you who know France may detect some similarity between this building that serves as the riding school’s headquarters and Paris’s Opera Garnier.  They share the same architect, Charles Garnier, who termed his style Neo-Baroque.

Unlike Garnier's Opera, which wraps around an elegant block in Paris and must present a somewhat homogeneous (and flamboyant) facade on all sides, the Palacio Duque de Abrantes provides a rectangular and almost restrained backside to contrast with the twin octagonal towers of its front. Many would die for a rear that looks this good! Below is a detail of the clock pediment seen in the photo above. The neo baroque meets the classical caryatid.

 

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Jerez de la Frontera, Spain

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