Toro-verraco ibérico

The verraco at Salamanca's Roman bridge is a granite bull statue carved around 400 BCE by the Vettones, a pre-Roman Celtic-Iberian people who inhabited the western Iberian Peninsula. The term verraco — literally 'breeding pig' in Spanish — loosely describes a broader tradition of Vettones animal sculptures that also included bulls and bears, likely serving a ritual function as protective figures for livestock or as funerary markers. This particular piece stands at the entrance to the Roman bridge over the Tormes river, repurposed by later Roman builders as a guardian figure at the bridge approach. It is one of the best-preserved and most accessible examples of Vettones stone sculpture, offering a rare glimpse of pre-Roman Iberian religious and artistic practice in an otherwise heavily Roman and medieval cityscape.