User:Manfred bodner/Sandbox

The most influential event when it comes to explain today´s apparent differences between the modern Portuguese and Spanish versions of the ancient Iberian warhorses was the prohibition of mounted bullfighting or Rejoneo in 1723 under Philip V of Spain the first bourbon king that followed 200 years of Hapsburg rule. For hundreds if not thousands of years mounted bullfighting on the peninsula was considered the perfect war preparation for horses and riders - "the Centaur - man and horse joined in a way that no other equestrian sport can adequately demonstrate". The Spanish prohibition led already in 1726 to the first recorded bullfight on foot using the red cape attributed to Francisco Romero (bullfighter) also referred to as the "plebejan version of bullfighting". As a consequence spanish breeding was deprived of its most essential functional selection criteria. Since the Iberian horses were hardly used on the battlefields anymore (largely due to changes in military strategy related to the advent of long range firearms which in turn gave rise to new horse types like the English Thoroughbred) the mounted bullfighting became the last resort of the ancient war-riding techniques that made the horses famous in first place. In Portugal the Rejoneo tradition continued uninterruptedly and was until recently at the core of the functional selection process (nowadays gradually replaced by FEI sport dressage as a functional objective). Spanish breeding of Andalusian horses entered into a long period of lacking orientation and the pursuit of fashions like flatter croups (to provide comfortable seating for flamenco dancers in the ferias), flat profiles, paddling (considered to imitate the hand movements of flamenco dancers with their castanets, etc.)) Lamenting this situation and the consequential degradation of quality in spanish breeding Álvaro Domecq y Díez convinced General Francisco Franco in 1941 to lift the ban which revived a culture of Rejoneo in Spanish bullfighting arenas alongside the still more popular Corrida (bullfight on foot). Nevertheless no Spanish (or Portuguese) Rejoneador has so far been able to select a PRE ("Pura Raza Espanola" as the Spanish bred horses have been labelled since the formal split of the stud books in 1966) suitable for mounted bullfighting. As of today only PSL´s (Puro Sangue Lusitano) or Luso crossbreds with Arabs or English horses can be seen in this sport. Taking into account that the Lusitano stud book currently contains only 11.000 heads versus the 170.000 heads registered in the Spanish stud book further exemplifies the concentrated functional standard of modern Lusitanos and explains why many experts see in them the nost authentic embodiment of the fabled ancient Iberian warhorse type.