Spanish village purifies horses with fire in age-old ritual The Spanish village of San Bartolome de Pinares holds its Luminarias festival, in which riders and horses burst through flames in an annual celebration thought to protect the animals from diseases and give their riders fertility. However, there are no written records of the origins of the festival and villagers have simply faithfully replicated the same annual routine for centuries. IMAGES of the Luminarias festival and SOUNDBITES from its participants