Catalan Producers Emphasize History and Sustainability in Tourism Initiative

As the num­ber of new Covid-19 cases and deaths con­tin­ues to climb in Spain, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing nation remains under a strict state of emer­gency.

The slow roll­out of the vac­cine across the coun­try likely means there will be no respite for the restau­rant and hos­pi­tal­ity sec­tor any­time soon.

For the many small pro­duc­ers scat­tered through­out Spain, the Horeca sec­tor is one of the largest des­ti­na­tions for their prod­uct. Local mar­kets and fairs – another pri­mary income source for small pro­duc­ers – have also been resched­uled and halted.

“It was very hard to try to sell the olive oil this year as a result,” Marc Morella Cabanes of Mil & Un Verd told Olive Oil Times. ​“We had to impro­vise, adapt and over­come. We had to change our busi­ness objec­tives.”

In the shadow of the Muntanyes de Benifassà, at the south­ern tip of the autonomous com­mu­nity of Catalunya, the pro­duc­ers of the award-win­ning Arbor Sacris brand only started mak­ing olive oil two years ago.

“It is a dif­fer­ent con­cept of olive oil com­ing only from mil­len­nial trees, with a focus on qual­ity and pre­sen­ta­tion,” Morella said.

Arbor Sacris is a mono­va­ri­etal com­posed of the endemic Farga cul­ti­var and is char­ac­ter­ized by its sweet­ness and tex­ture. Along with their coupage, Arbor Senium, the com­pany pro­duced 600 liters of olive oil in the 2020/21 crop year.

“This year was very dif­fi­cult because many of the trees entered an off-year,” Morella said. ​“We had very good pro­duc­tion [of about 1,600 liters] in 2019, but this year, it has been much lower.”

However, qual­ity and envi­ron­men­tal stew­ard­ship are more impor­tant to Morella and the fam­ily than quan­tity.

“For Arbol Sacris, we have 19 olive trees, but also we have this project of tak­ing mil­len­nial olive trees that are com­pletely aban­doned and recov­er­ing them,” Morella said.

“We talk to the own­ers who are unable [due to age] to take care of the trees and leave them there to grow wild,” he added. ​“We make a deal with them to take care of the trees for free, but we get to use the olives for our pro­duc­tion. There are a lot of mil­len­nial trees in the area that have been recov­ered thanks to this project.”

Taking care of the trees helps all of the pro­duc­ers in the area. Abandoned olive trees are a sig­nif­i­cant reser­voir for dis­eases and were iden­ti­fied as one of the causes for the dev­as­tat­ing spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa in Puglia.

While the pan­demic did not severely impact their abil­ity to pro­duce olive oils this year, it made sell­ing their arti­sanal prod­uct much more dif­fi­cult.

Morella said the clo­sure of restau­rants and the can­ce­la­tion of fairs caused the com­pany to focus on sell­ing olive oil online and devel­op­ing an oleo­tur­ismo – olive oil tourism – project.

“We changed our objec­tives to sell less olive oil and more so pro­mote tourism,” he said. ​“Our olive trees are cat­e­go­rized as mil­len­nial olive trees and are pro­tected by UNESCO.”

During last year’s brief sum­mer tourism sea­son, Morella said that the fam­ily-run oper­a­tion focussed on attract­ing local tourists to come and see the mas­sive trees, learn about the area’s rich his­tory and taste some of their award-win­ning olive oils.

“We bring the peo­ple to come and see the mil­len­nial olive trees so they can see part of the area’s his­tory,” he said. ​“We also explain about the ter­races and his­tory of the groves as well as their archae­o­log­i­cal and nat­ural her­itage. We also offer the pos­si­bil­ity to have a tast­ing under the trees.”

Highlighting the dry-stone ter­races is one of the main high­lights of the tour. Morella esti­mates that they were built between 500 and 600 years ago to pro­tect the trees from ero­sion, flood­ing and wild­fires.

Despite their age and state of dilap­i­da­tion, they still do so effec­tively. Along with high­light­ing their con­tin­ued impor­tance to the land­scape, Morella and the fam­ily hope to pre­serve and restore them.

Also located within the estate are mon­u­ments to Spain’s bloody civil war. While the fight­ing ended more than 80 years ago, the con­flict remains rel­e­vant to cul­ture and pol­i­tics, espe­cially in Catalunya.

“We have dif­fer­ent con­struc­tions inside the estate that are mostly hunt­ing con­struc­tions and have a lot of his­tory,” Morella said. ​“Some of the maquis – Republican guerilla sol­diers – dur­ing the Spanish Civil War used to hide there from the Nationalist sol­diers.”

“They also used those con­struc­tions for hunt­ing in the after­math of the war, which brought famine,” Morella added.

Along with these struc­tures, Morella said that sol­diers also hid among the olive trees.

“The olive trees that are more than 500 or 600 years old tend to grow into strange forms,” he said. ​“At some point, they form nat­ural caves with their roots, so peo­ple could stay there and hide. [Fortunately], they were not dam­aged dur­ing the war. ”

The fam­ily has enjoyed mod­est suc­cess while cater­ing to mostly domes­tic tourists who visit from the sur­round­ing provinces.

Once the pan­demic ends and inter­na­tional tourism begins to open up, Morella believes the oper­a­tion can broaden its appeal while main­tain­ing its com­mit­ments to cul­tural preser­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­ity.

“We would like to focus on sus­tain­able and eco­log­i­cal tourism,” he said. ​“We want to attract the kind of peo­ple that visit a place to expe­ri­ence its bio­di­ver­sity and its nat­ural value; not only for tapas and paella.”