A closer look
Long before modern highways, the most powerful travel lobby in Spain was a cartel of sheep owners called the Mesta. Every year, millions of merino sheep migrated from the northern mountains to the southern plains, traversing a massive, 75,000-mile network of protected livestock highways. These woolly travelers had absolute legal supremacy; if a farmer planted crops on a sheep route or a town tried to block them, the Mesta would ruin them in court. Spain was essentially ruled by commuting livestock.
