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The aim of the present work is to explore the world of cockfighting in the Canary Islands, where over three consecutive years (2016-2018) a wide range of issues were researched. Given its legal status, the cockfight in the Canary Islands is not a prohibited event held in secret locations, where those who attend may be prosecuted, as is the case in the UK and most European countries. Therefore, the study was not restricted to the fights themselves, but it was also an exploration of the encompassing world of cockfighting, including breeding, training, and socialising, that brought about those public fights and performances. To achieve that, I adopted an ethnographic perspective in which participant observation and interviewing were essential methodological tools. By presenting detailed ethnographic accounts of this world, this thesis shows the importance of understanding the rearing of gamecocks to fully grasp the meaning given to the fights by Canarian breeders and aficionados. With the help of narrative fragments and quotations from my interviews, I also offer an ethnographic description of cockfights according to eight different aspects of the event. Essentially, aficionados go to watch and admire the drama of the contest, the fighting birds’ performance. In the Spanish archipelago, breeders can compete both in single-date championships (campeonatos) and weekly leagues (contratas). These two methods of organisation represent one of the singularities of the cockfights in the Canary Islands where also the relatively low importance of betting, in comparison with other regions, represents another peculiarity of the event. Lastly, by introducing several quotations from the fieldwork in which breeders and aficionados give their views on roosters, this thesis demonstrates how breeders perceive fighting birds as animals of a unique nature.

The Sierra Madre Oriental between Saltillo, Monterrey, and Linares shows a bend in structures that strike from approximately N 35° E to about N 35° W. Most of the rocks involved in the Curvature of Monterrey are Mesozoic in age and range from Late Triassic to Late Cretaceous. Large amplitude folds and thrust faults contribute to the structural complexity of this region. The structural trends present in northeast Mexico are the result of the Late Paleocene-Early Eocene Laramide Orogeny, and their different styles of folding are intimately related to the fundamental landforms of Early Mesozoic paleogeography. Relatively mild deformation is shown in the Mesozoic sedimentary cover that overlies the stable paleocontinental basement highs of the Coahuila, La Mula and Monclova Islands, Tamaulipas Archipelago, and El Burro-Peyotes Peninsula. The tight folding observed in the Sierra Madre Oriental is the result of regional northeastward décollement blocked by the basement highs. Two prominent west-northwest-trending lineaments transect the region: herein named the "Boquillas-Sabinas" and "Sierra Mojada-China" Lineaments. Prominent paleogeographic highs lie on the outside of the area bounded by these lineaments, with the area between occupied by major basins and small "islands". Recurrent motion along these lineaments seems likely and movement along them in Early Mesozoic time blocked out the paleogeographic elements discussed in this dissertation. It is proposed in this study that the structural features of northeast Mexico are the result of a sinistral relative movement of southern United States (westward) with respect to northern Mexico (eastward) during the Laramide Orogeny, contemporaneously with a regional décollement event produced by the tilting toward the northeast of the so-called "Unnamed Occidental Continent" . Thus from the detailed study of the mapped structures and stratigraphic sequences at the Curvature of Monterrey, and from detailed interpretations of satellite photographs, the model presented here for the mechanism of deformation of northeast Mexico explains not only the bend in structures at the Curvature of Monterrey, but also most of the structural trends in northeast Mexico, including the en e[]chelon folds in the Sabinas Gulf