The Lusitano breed was born two centuries later by means of crossings of common Portuguese horses with PREs, and thereafter, the crossing of the products of these, with horses that were principally Arabs and Thoroughbreds
Joao V, King of Portugal, acquiring the Spanish Horses that he crossed with the common Portuguese horses, giving rise to the Lusitano breed
out, a nation is condemned to repeat its history when it forgets it, and this was what happened with the PRE. The steps taken in the second decade of the last century to define it and even to open a Stud Book had already been taken four hundred years before. The error or desire of some people to unite the PRE and the Lusitano, hid the ignorance that the PRE had been born in the City of Cordoba by the middle of the 16th century and that the Lusitano, such and as we know it today, did not exist at that time. The Lusitano breed was born two centuries later by means of crossings of common Portuguese horses with PREs, and thereafter, the crossing of the products of these, with horses that were principally Arabs and Thoroughbreds8. The project began between 1748 and 1749 under the order of King Joâo V, in the city of Alter do Châo (Portugal), following the acquisition in Andalusia and Extremadura of Spanish mares and stallions. In the first load, 124 mares and several stallions were selected and driven to Portugal by a Colonel from Jerez, Bartolomé Manuel Silvestre Aranda Briton who, during the transfer of the livestock, was helped by Gaspar López Monteiro, the son of Gaspar López de Guzmán, the First Superintendent of the Alter do Châo Stud Farm. Currently, in one of the books on which I am working, The PRE: the Living Myth, and which will be the third part of the History and Origin of the Spanish Horse, I quote, literally, the statements made at the end of the 19th century by Silvestre Bernardo Lima, Superintendent of Yeguada Alter do Châo. In his article published in the Bulletin of the General Agriculture Office of Portugal, you can extract, amongst other conclusions that the Lusitano horse did not exist at that time: “The greatness of the court of King Joào V did not belong alongside the quality of its horses. The quality of the horses from the royal stud farms was hardly better 8
Altamirano Macarrón, JC. El Pura Raza Español: el mito viviente. (The PRE: The Living Myth). Under production
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than that the of the common horses of the country, which were much less well cared-for. The best horses, the Alta Escuela (High School) horses, came from abroad: they were almost all the fine horses of Spain, Andalusians. This situation did not please the king and years later, even less did it please his son, Prince José, who was very keen on good horses. He suffered, seeing that the Courts of Spain, France and England were very determined to continually increase and improve their equine production. To get away from such a situation (…) the king ordered the creation of a special stud farm to produce the best horses in the Kingdom, and to extract selected sires from there, which would be capable of improving the production of the stud farms of the Kingdom”9. It was, in fact, this author who was the first to use the term Lusitano horse to define a certain type, which was in fact to distinguish the PRE Horses born in Spain from those born in Portugal10. The name of this breed became official, starting from 1942, when the veterinarians of the National Portuguese Stud Farm decided to use that name for the horse that had been produced. The ignorance of that narration meant that, in Portugal, in the Plaza del Comercio (Market Square), erroneous information continued to be given out to tourists and to the Portuguese themselves. In fact the horse which King José I rode, represented by the equestrian statue in the center of the aforementioned Square and which is said to be a Lusitano, is in fact a PRE Horse. The horse that acted as a model was “Genil”, a PRE, who was selected from the royal stables by Joaquín Machado de Castro, the sculptor of the work, advised by the Marquis de Marialva himself, because, according to his words, he was “the most beautiful to copy”. It is logical that Joaquín Machado would choose a PRE, since at that time in Portugal those characteristics were only displayed by the imported PRE Horses or their descendants. The Superintendent of Yeguada de Alter himself confirmed this years later, when he said that up to 1801 there were no “horses that were not descendants from the mares acquired in Spain” at that stud farm. The rest of the horses in existence were common horses which, like those of other countries, were those that were wanted to improve by means of crossings with the PRE. 9
Boletín de la Dirección General de Agricultura de Portugal nº 10. (Bulletin of the General Agricultural Office of Portugal)
10 Bernardo Lima, S. (1890). Classificação Geral das Raças Cavallares Portuguezas. A Agricultura Portugueza, Vol. II (General Classification of the Horse Breeds of Portugal. Portuguese Agriculture)
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