Spanish Greyhounds and ‘Greying’ Men: Animal Advocacy and the Representation of Aging Galgueros in Spanish Documentary Film

Abstract

In recent years, the image of the Spanish male hunter has drawn increasing suspicion from more progressive generations eager to question the meaning of such predatorial activity within the context of a more globalized Spain, one that is opening itself to animal welfare legislation and animal ethics discourses. Hare coursing with galgos (Spanish greyhounds) has become one of the country’s trademark forms of interspecies encounter where machoism and a deeply rooted sense of dominant masculinity shape a culture of objectification of nonhuman animals. The aim of this article is to examine the representation of galgueros (the breeders, owners and sportsmen behind the controversy) in two documentaries that are part of a wider animal advocacy media: Irene Blánquez’s Febrero, el miedo de los galgos (2013) and Yeray López Portillo’s Yo Galgo (2018). I argue that within the context of animal ethics discourses, galgueros are effectively embodied by aging, rural men whose ‘traditions’ and communal forms of dog-disposing are represented as outdated, anachronistic practices that are symptomatic of a type of male population affectively attached to an understanding of the cynegetic encounter that is in decline. Using mechanisms of (dis)identification to articulate the representation of the conflict and the stakeholders, the films implicate identity markers of gender and age that intersect with the wider question of interspecies relations and the significance that this bears in the construction of a new Spanish identity that is more sensitized to nonhuman animal otherness.

Keywords:

• Spain
• documentary film
• animal advocacy
• aging
• masculinity

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Conselleria d’Educació, Universitats i Ocupació (Generalitat Valenciana) under the research project “Representations of Masculinities in Animal Advocacy Documentaries in English (2000-2013)” (CIGE/2021/100); and by the Spanish Research Agency (2019-2023) under the research project “Género y Edad” (PCI2019-103512).