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The pine tree lottery

Quintanar de la Sierra, Sierra de la Demanda, Burgos

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The pine tree lottery

Historical milestone · Quintanar de la Sierra, Sierra de la Demanda, Burgos

Image of Quintanar de la Sierra, not of the place itself.

Documented since 1288, the suerte de pinos distributes a lot of trees from the communal woodland among the residents of Quintanar de la Sierra every year, on condition that they live in the village; seven centuries later the distribution still takes place. It is a privilege of communal possession of the forest that goes back to the medieval charters of settlement granted to encourage people to settle in the Pinares area, where the altitude and rugged terrain prevent cereal farming and the inhabitants have lived almost entirely off the income from the woodland. The area, split between the provinces of Burgos and Soria, covers close to 100,000 hectares of Scots pine and black pine, with pockets of beech, oak, juniper and Portuguese oak, and its fair distribution has helped preserve the forest.

1288

Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Amokenzo assumed (based on copyright claims). (Public domain)

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