A tapestry is a textile product made by the patterned weaving of yarns on a loom. Tapestries have long been used for practical purposes as large, thick wall hangings to keep rooms warm and also for decoration and communication. They are the ideal medium for conveying a message: their flat surfaces, the ease with which they can be transported and the fact that they are hung vertically are conducive to their use for propaganda.

In the work of Patricia Esquivias everything has a meaning. The tapestry Transhumance Day 2020 (2020) is a single panel of fabric produced as a commemorative piece that contains several stories. The centre field shows a shepherd driving sheep along Calle Alcalá in Madrid, which follows the ancient Galiana livestock droving trail. The flock is also shown entering the trading floor of the Banco de España building, a classic example of bank architecture. Above are depictions of the great Art Deco stained glass panels by Casa Maumejean, laden with symbolism extolling the virtues of labour in factories and fields as the basis of the economy and progress in the modern age. The motifs on the tapestry present a dialogue with allusions to Transhumance Day, to agricultural and livestock traditions and to the still-current social, cultural, environmental, ecological and economic value of sheep herding.

The multiples layers of Esquivias' works build up traces of explorations of the past. Here, again, she explores how ideology is transmitted through cultural forms, looking at the recovery of folk knowledge and at how stories are put together from an amalgam of historical facts, anecdotes and inventions. Using the same process as in previous works, she creates with what she is given. She tends to feature existing characters and objects, which she tracks in an almost detective-like fashion, and between which connections emerge. The work of stonemasons, anthropologists, architects, weavers, shepherds and all those who went before them serves as the basis for new stories, which she constructs through emotion by stringing together threads of reality with legends and rites from oral tradition.

Here, she takes as her basis the allegory of sheep herding, as shown in one of the four corners of the panel. The idea is simple: a three-quarter length figure of a shepherd with his sheep, his leather bag and his crook, depicted in a style reminiscent of social art and posters extolling the virtue of labour in the 1930s. At that time Spain was lagging behind in industrial development and much of its working-age population was engaged in agriculture. Conversely, this meant that the country was less hard-hit by the global economic crisis that followed the Great Depression. On the border of the tapestry, Patricia Esquivias includes some words commemorating the centenary of the publication of Julius Klein's book The Mesta: A Study in Spanish Economic History 1273-1836 (Harvard University Press, 1920), a seminal work on the Honourable Council of Shepherds of the Mesta, the association that ran sheep droving in Castile from the 13th century to the start of industrialisation in Spain in the 19th. One hundred years on, Klein's book is still the go-to study on the subject, evidence of the accuracy of his analysis of the impact of livestock farming on economic development in the Iberian Peninsula from the Middle Ages to modern times. No one had ever organised a tribute to him, so why not do it now?

Sheep droving and rural life, the book on the Mesta and the iconic art deco stained-glass panels by Maumejean are brought together with all the meanings that can be gleaned from the tapestry as a cultural object, to show that history is not a single, objective thread passed down from institutions. This tapestry by Esquivias is part of a critique of the notion that progress is linear. In it, she weaves an exercise in narrative invention in which different eras coexist. She uses the past as a basis for speculating on other possible worlds.

Along with the main field and the border, the third characteristic element of Transhumance Day is the selvage, i.e. the strip around the outside edge of the piece. This area is traditionally reserved for brand names, but here the logo worn by workers at the Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara (the old royal mill where this tapestry was woven) appears on the jacket of the shepherd depicted in the centre. Esquivias continues to open up new forks in the road. Her choice of this mill is also meaningful: it has royal patronage and is where the sheep in the Cartoons by Goya (whose work was foundational for the Banco de España Collection) were woven.

Patricia Esquivias chooses tapestry as the medium for her narrative in formalising the tribute to sheep droving that began with the details shown in the stained glass panels above the trading floor. To understand the complexity of her work, one must first learn about the various layers of which it is comprised and the performative, cumulative, processual nature of the investigations in which she engaged. This was not the first time that Esquivias had worked with tapestries, so she was familiar with the preliminary stages of their manufacture: the preparation of an initial sketch and a full-scale cartoon to serve as a guideline for weaving. She made a sketch to scale in ballpoint pen on a paper serviette, placing us firmly in 2020 and setting her narrative in the here and now. 2020 was the year of lockdown, and Transhumance Day was cancelled. But work in the fields cannot stop if food is to be supplied and the cycles of nature are to be fulfilled.

A short story by Robert Walser (1878-1956), a great writer who dealt with humble themes, describes a stroll in the countryside and recounts the very different ways in which urban and rural children see animals: 'The country boys had only pitiless sheep-driving on their minds, while the city kids saw only the touching beauty and charm of the poor animals. The scene moved me deeply and as I walked home I resolved not to lose this memory'. Patricia Esquivias is also an artist of simple things. She does not need an elaborate sketch to set out her depiction of sheep herding in the commemorative tapestry. Her ballpoint sketch is both a rough and final draft, transferred to the cartoon copied by the weavers at the Real Fábrica mill to show the fleece of the driven sheep, spun with gold thread so as to link the tradition of wool production with the economy of Castile and of Spain as a whole. The sheep (white gold) cross the trading floor in answer to the call of the Shepherd in the stained glass panel, whose voice is raised over that of industrialisation and the progress that it promised, in the context of a current partial return to the countryside. Thirty-five metres below this scene, the gold reserves of the Banco de España are safeguarded in an armoured vault.

Agar Ledo