With his pioneering vision, in 1970, Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente was already talking, as was the magnate Luc Hoffmann, from Switzerland, about recovering the wild horse in Spain and Europe.
Both started actions to achieve it, Felix in Asturias and Luc at La Camarge and Le Villaret in France and also Doñana in Spain.
The wild horses of the Tito Bustillo cave:
In 1968 it was discovered painted Iberian tarpans in the Tito Bustillo cave in Ribadesella, Asturias. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, excited by the discovery, went to see them a few months later, with a TVE crew to film the discovery, having to climb down in a group with climbers at the mouth of the Ramu pit as the entrance tunnel was yet not opened and today´s visitors access was yet not built.
Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, upon seeing the asturcones, concluded that they were heirs to Tito Bustillo’s tarpan and, in 1970, he bought a dozen from the shepherds before being sent to slaughterhouse. He marked them with the “A” of Adena, the Spanish section of WWF he founded with King Juan Carlos I in 1968, at the request of the Duke of Edinburgh, who presided over the British section, and Prince Bernard of Holland, founder of the Bilderberg Club and former president of WWF International. Today that breed survives thanks to that pioneering “Operation Asturcón” by Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente and ADENA/WWF-Spain.
Few weeks after asturian horses purchase, with EEF funds, his vicepresident Luc Hoffmann, wrote to Félix asking about the asturcones and told him Mrs Betina Goldsmith was interested to come to Spain to research their behavior.
