Our Andalucian paradise

If you ask what Andalusians know about northern Spain, they might say the Camino de Santiago or Costa Brava, but almost certainly nobody will mention Lérida. So, when a ‘native’ friend invited my husband and I to explore her home province, we immediately signed up to find out more about this lesser known part of Spain.

Lérida, or Lleida in Catalonian, is one of four provinces in the disputed autonomous community of Catalonia. The interior province spreads from Tarragona in the south to the French border in the north, and though less than half a million people live there, Lérida has three official languages: Catalan, Spanish and Aranese.

A city with a crown

Most leridanos live in the city of Lérida, one of the oldest towns in Catalonia. A mere hour train-ride from Barcelona, the provincial capital is much lesser known than its coastal rival. But that is the best part  - you can still explore without being overrun by other tourists.

Its name is derived from the llergetes, an Iberian tribe that lived there in the Bronze Age. The Romans finally annihilated the tribe, though many upheavals followed, such as the famous ‘Battle of Llerda’ in 49 BC, when Julius Caesar came to the city with 50.000 soldiers. Lérida was a Roman municipium of considerable importance, even minting its own coin. In the cellar of the city hall, a dock where prisoners were brought from the River into the town jail can still be seen.

Later, Lérida was under Visigoth and Moorish rule until a Catholic army re-conquered the city in 1149. Next followed a period of flourishing art and culture, when the University of Lérida, the third oldest in Spain, was founded in 1297. The city’s affluence was partly due to wealthy Jewish and Muslim communities, though the Inquisition brought this to an abrupt end.

Lérida today

Unless one hits their famous fog, the first thing visible when entering Lérida is the old cathedral towering over a city, with the town spreading beneath on either side of the River Segre. The pedestrian street crossing the old town must have Spain’s highest concentration of chocolate, marzipan and cake shops. The most famous is Pastelería Tugues, which is member of the exclusive Relais Dessert and produce such exquisite pastries that they occasionally supply the royal family.

A must for every visitor is the Seu Vella, Lérida’s most emblematic building. Constructed in the 13^th Century, the Byzantine-Gothic cathedral was turned into a military citadel in 1714. With the adjoining Moorish fort, this republican army stronghold was bombed extensively during the Spanish Civil War. Today a museum, the lofty interior is lit up by arched windows with alabaster panes instead of glass.

Even if you do not enjoy a trip back in history, you will be overwhelmed by the majestic views that on clear days include the Pyrenees.

Needing a break from the sightseeing, we join the leridenos in their favourite afternoon activity – the vermouth hour - on the sunny outdoor terrace at Bodega Blasi. We order a glass of the local Vermú, served on ice with a lemon slice and filled up with a vintage style soda spritzer bottle. Add some local finger seafood and it doesn’t get much better.

A Gastronomic Eden

Lérida’s plains are the Catalan food basket, with fruit orchards, olive groves and undulating meadows. The province’s agricultural based economy includes food-processing, farm equipment, feed factories and breweries.

The mild climate in the south favours cultivation of peaches, apricots and cherries. The north offers rich grazing land, while the higher Pyrenees is the stomping ground of wild boars. In Lérida, you can follow your taste buds from one unique village to the next. And the leridenos do not easily push away from the table, as we discovered when we were invited to a village feast.

Mafet in the municipality of Agramunt has only 67 inhabitants. This count might include the vagrant dog ‘Negreta’ which everyone cares for. A hamlet of merely two streets, most supplies have to be brought in from outside, certainly when hosting a BBQ for fifty Catalans, a dozen children, a handful rescue dogs and 4 adopted Andalusians. So while the locals lit a BBQ large enough for three whole pigs, we went to hunt for dessert.

The Communal Catalan Sweet Tooth

The people of Lérida have an undeniably sweet tooth and Agramunt is their Mecca. The nougat, called turrón, is even copyrighted. The biggest producer is Turrón Vicens, which exports throughout Spain and receives daily tourist buses full of sugar-fanatics. Traditional turrón contains honey, sugar, egg whites and nuts, but Vicens’ repertory also includes mojito or raspberry-vinegar flavour.

Yet the real connoisseurs know that the best turrón is found at Torrons Fèlix, a small family business a few streets away where Fèlix and his daughter make everything by hand in the back room.

Our friends insist on another quick stop – in chocolate heaven. The Jolonch chocolate factory, anno 1770, displays old chocolate making equipment and their historical wrapper designs.

It is said that in 1940, when Franco’s forces were about to shoot President Lluís Companys, his last wish was a piece of Agramunt chocolate.
 

Following his advice, we order a cup of hot chocolate, so thick that a spoon will stand up straight in it, before return with more deserts to the party.  

Village feast a la Mafet

In Mafet’s community hall a 25-meter table is filled with local specialties, including heaping trays of Catalan pizza coca de recapte. As we sit down, I take the opportunity to ask my fellow diners about local cuisine.

The first staple of any Iberian table is of course wine. Most bottles produced in Lérida have a Denominación de Origen seal. Local whites are light and fruity, while reds have more body and zest. There are also fortified sweet varieties, one whose name certainly caught my attention - Vino Rancio (Rancid wine).

One cannot speak about Lérida without mentioning cava. If you think Freixenet when you hear the word, you obviously haven’t travelled around Lérida. Like the rest of the territory, the province has more cava producers than Rioja has wine makers. And while most of us think of sparkling wine for festive occasions, leridanos will drink it morning, noon or night, even accompanied by chocolate and churros!

Next on the menu is carne, and lots of it. Leridanos are big meat eaters for a reason, their lamb being the best we have eaten in Spain. In addition are their tasty sausages, especially the Longaniza and Butifarra varieties.

Talking of meaty bits, although snails weren’t on today’s menu, they shouldn’t be ignored. Lérida is considered Europe’s snail cooking capital, with a dedicated festival. Every May, twelve tons of snails are cooked and consumed, using only toothpicks.

Lérida cheeses are also second to none. Buttery and slightly pungent, they bring the green pastures of the Pyrenees straight to our table. Our party managed to polish off two wheels without sweating, and still there should be space for deserts…

Seven hours after arriving, our group is among the first to bid farewell, while the rest of the party continue into the night. Clearly, the slow food movement is not a new invention in Lérida.

From monks to labour unions

The Catholic re-conquest initiated the construction of many monasteries. One of these is the impressive Cistercian Monasterio de Poblet, founded in 1150.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it contains a royal pantheon and a priceless scriptorium (library) with works from the 13^th Century.

Once housing nearly 1000 religious brothers, today the enormous complex is home to a mere 25 monks. Yet the monastery is not stuck in the past.

The monastery offers tours and sells in-house fabricated ceramics, wine, honey and jam. The cloistered monks also offer spiritual guidance and organize concerts. In addition, the abbey has a retreat centre and a restaurant, where you have the option of eating the monks' daily meal. 

Lérida and the separatists

The organisational skills of the Cistercian monks were transmitted to local agriculture workers, to help them through difficult economic times. This idea promoted agrarian cooperatives, which later became the region’s agricultural unions.

Since Lérida with its strong labour movement is sometimes said to be more separatist than Barcelona, travellers might be concerned about speaking to the locals. Many people from other parts of Spain believe that Catalonia is teeming with radical independistas who hate anyone from ‘the other side’, so how do leridanos treat visitors, especially if you don’t speak Catalan?

Though the Catalan flag hangs from almost every public building, in our experience, the people are courteous and friendly. Nobody looked at us twice, let alone mistreated us for not understanding their language.

Most leridenos are bilingual and many speak English. We generally spoke Spanish to people, who automatically would answer us back in Castellano instead of their native Catalan. Even local children seem to juggle the two languages with ease, flipping from one idioma to the other.

Lower and Higher Pyrenees

Northern Léria is one of the most mountainous regions in Spain, offering adrenaline junkies an action-filled holiday. The particularly vertically inclined might enjoy the vía ferrata, a trek by steel cables discovering troglodyte dwellings while crossing Tibetan bridges and zip-lines. If this is not your thing, the Pyrenees also offers nature walks, paddling and skiing in one of many local ski-centres.

For those seeking more leisurely pursuits, there is the scenic Tren dels Lacs (Lake Trains), a pleasant vintage train-ride from the capital to the Pre-Pyrenees.

Vall de Boi – Patrimony for Humanity

The quaint villages in the Vall de Boi are dappled with hobbit-like stone houses and surrounded by snowy mountain peaks. However, the valley’s real attraction is nine Early Romanesque churches built between the 11^th and 12^th Centuries.

Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000, the ensemble is unique in the world and holds Europe’s largest concentration of Romanesque art.

Perhaps the most astonishing of the lot is Sant Climent in the village of Taüll.

nside, ancient religious frescos are still detectable and get completely revealed in a mind-blowing light and sound show, literally transporting one back to the 12^th Century.

Do not forget to climb up in the bell tower, an elegant 800-year-old construction of six floors with a to-die-for vista, as Taüll perfectly demonstrates harmony between cultural heritage and natural environment.

The Aran Valley – a tribe of its own

Feeling travel weary, we turn off the main road, cross a creek, make a few sharp bends and enter one of the last villages before the French border, the Aranese town of Es Bòrdes.

Lérida’s northernmost valley, Val d’Aran has unique autonomy and its own language - Aranese. Variations of this language are still spoken in an area known as Occitania, also including Southern France, Italy’s Occitan valleys and Monaco. Though nearly all locals understand Aranese, only 65% speak it.  For this reason, the language is protected and considered one of Catalonia’s official languages. 

In such an isolated spot, we are lucky to find a place to eat at all, though to our surprise the local restaurant serves excellent Aranese dishes, including wild boar stew. Our friend recommends Olla Aranesa, a root vegetable soup with white and red butifarra sausage, bones, chicken feet and anything else the cooks can lay their hands on - in other words, a perfect high-energy meal after a day in the mountains.

At the next table sits a French couple that has come across for lunch on the Spanish side of the border. They are the first foreigners we meet in a week of travelling around the province. To be sure, the province of Lérida is not the tourist hotspot it perhaps ought to be, but you better hurry as it won’t remain a secret for much longer.

Heading home to Andalucía, we load the car with our communal purchases: half a lamb, several lengths of butifarra, cheeses, farm-fresh butter and three cases of sparkling wine.

It is time we introduce the lerideno tradition of ‘cava around the clock’ to the Spanish south!

For most people nuts come shelled, bleached, salted, and packaged until they are but a pale relation of the original fruit. Here in the Spanish south though, nuts still grow on trees. Frutos Secos (dried fruits) as they are called are named after their low water content and include all nuts and some seeds.

In Ronda and surrounding mountain regions locals have been growing nuts since time immemorial. The traditional family farms included citrus and nut trees and what couldn’t be produced would be bartered for. Unfortunately, this type of small-scale bio-diverse farming is no longer profitable and therefore quite uncommon, but times are changing…

Health nuts

People recognized the nutritional value of nuts long before we began eating ‘health food’. During periods of famine they were a source of much-needed calories, but since almost 80% of a nut is fat, a little goes a long way.

Like natural energy bars, nuts are rich in proteins, polyunsaturated fats, vitamins and minerals. Their health constituents are said to balance cholesterol levels, improve heart function and prevent diabetes and cancer. Nuts also keep well, and are an economical and convenient snack.

Almonds – a sensitive beauty

Originating from the Far East, el almendro has been growing in the Mediterranean region since it was introduced by the Phoenicians 3000 years ago. People here say that the tree improves the rock, because they will grow on the most inaccessible crags.

Almond trees are some of la Sierra’s earliest bloomers and the first nuts to be harvested. Due to climate change, blossoms can now be seen in January. Maite Teresa Martos, who has a small organic almond orchard in Ronda’s gorge, explains that early sprouting risks later frost potentially ruining the crop. “Everybody around here used to grow almonds”, she tells me, “but people stopped picking them”. Producers like her cultivate almonds for private consumption or sell to wholesalers who supply the Spanish Turrón industry in the North.

Almonds contain Omega 6, magnesium, potassium, calcium, Vitamin E, thiamine and niacin. In addition to the fruit’s many food uses, almond oil is used in the cosmetics industry for creams, massage oils and other skin products, while the oil from bitter almonds is used as natural flavouring.

Almonds account for most of global nut production of 2.4 million tonnes in 2018. 67% were grown in the USA, making the Spanish 5% share negligible by comparison. Ironic since Spanish missionaries is said to have brought the fruit to America in the 18^th century. With increasing global demand and the popularity of new almond products, Spain’s production is once again increasing.

Chestnuts – a spiky lot

Spanish chestnuts (castañas) were thought to originate in the Middle East, but recent prehistoric excavations have re-classified chestnut as native to Mediterranean countries. “Chestnuts were popular with the Romans because they could be dried,” says archaeologist Pilar Delgado explaining that the Romans also spread the species throughout the Iberian Peninsula.

Chestnuts and acorns were a vital part of people’s diet until the Spanish began to import potatoes from the Americas around 1570. The wood was used in carpentry and furniture making. Castanets used by Flamenco dancers were also made from chestnut wood - hence the name castañuelas. The trees can become ancient and giant, as one can see when visiting Andalucía’s majestic Castaño Santo, said to be almost 1000 years old.

The highly valued Spanish chestnuts (annual production of 18.000 tonnes) are exported to Europe, America and even Japan. With its ideal mountain climate, the Genal Valley produces 4 million kilos. Chestnuts are an important side-income for the white villages of Pujerra, Jubrique and Parauta with crops being sold to local cooperatives. The trees are picked in October, when the leaves turn golden and the valley becomes a Bosque del Cobre (a copper forest). 

The chestnut harvest is celebrated with traditional village fiestas, often dedicated to the towns’ patron saints. The menu offers roasted chestnuts and artisanal products made from the nuts, accompanied by a fortified sweet wine called Mistela.

Walnuts – cerebral and sundried

The walnut tree is full of history. Originally from the East where it grew along the Silk Route, the tree is also the protagonist of one of Aesop’s fables, written by a Greek slave around 600 BC. The Romans introduced nogales or walnut trees to Spain. Today, China and USA are the biggest producers of walnuts, which are said to prevent cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases, while having antiarrhythmic and anti-inflammatory properties.

Archaeologist Pilar Delgado confirms that our region had enormous walnut trees. As late as the 1970’s, pickers would climb into the tree crowns, some 50 meters tall, to harvest walnuts. Never touching the ground, they used an elongated hook, grabbing onto the next tree and flinging themselves like Andalusian Tarzans from tree to tree. What I would give to travel back in time…

Nueces de Ronda – a seal of quality

When nobody in Ronda wanted to pick walnuts anymore, the trees were cut down and sold as wood. Their cultivation was forgotten until the 1980’s, when José Luis Fernández Cantos decided to convert his olive farm La Molinilla to a walnut orchard. “It was a total experiment, starting out with 100 trees of 15 varieties”, smiles his son and current owner Álvaro Fernández Nebreda. Since nobody knew about modern walnut cultivation, they had to study American and Chilean farming techniques.

More than three decades later, Spain’s oldest walnut orchard Nueces the Ronda has over 10.000 trees, yielding 40 tonnes in a good year. This could double within a decade with recent additions. “Our trees are like our children,” says Álvaro. Once picked and rinsed “with water and nothing else” the nuts are dried in the sun for about 3 days. Only with rain are drying machines utilized.

The quality of Nuceses de Ronda is renown throughout Spain, though the company is yet to enter international markets. Like any crop walnuts have their challenges. The trees need huge amounts of water, yet a big rainstorm can be fatal. However, Andalucía nut industry’s biggest contenders are the enormous nut factories abroad, which bleach the walnut shells with chemicals. Consumers believe that is how nuts are supposed to look and taste, but that is only because they have not tried the walnuts from La Molinilla yet...

Pistachios – the Middle Eastern cousin

In recent years, growers on the coast have experimented with Macadamia and Brazil nuts, but the latest trend in nuts in Andalucía is pistachio. Originating in the Middle East, where Iran used to be the biggest global producer, archaeological digs have found that Turks ate pistachios 7000 years ago. Though most Andalusian farmers are unfamiliar with pistachios, the nuts were common here in the Andalusi era. They disappeared completely right after the Catholic re-conquest. For centuries, nobody knew why…

“Christian farmers noticed that some of these foreign trees bore no fruit, so they cut them down” explains pistachio farmer José Manuel Dorado. What the farmers didn’t realize was that these male trees were needed to pollinate female ones. With no pollination there were no nuts, so shortly after the rest of the pistachio trees were also cut down. It took almost 500 years to bring the pistachios back to Spain. 

Apparently, eating pistachios makes you happy, since zinc and iron helps with brain function. Pistachios are also high in thiamine, magnesium, Vitamin B6, phosphor and copper, which aid metabolism and reduce fatigue.

Spain imports 95% of its pistachios, so the nuts are in high demand. While walnuts might cost 3-5 euros per kilo, this will only get you 100 grams of high quality pistachios. No surprise they are the new nut-farming fad! The fruits are harvested between September and October and the nuts have to be shelled and dried within 24 hours, or they may become toxic. Other farmers in La Serranía have pistachio orchards, but José Manuel is the only organic grower. “ I am a book publisher and knew nothing about farming,” so he spent a year learning everything he could about pistachios.

After 5 years, his first harvest was given to friends and family who had supported him through the process. In a few years, he expects his farm in Alcalá del Valle to yield 1000 kg per hectare. “I could get double if I watered the trees, but I am not doing this to maximize production” he says. While others plant their trees 4-5 meters apart, his trees are 7 meters apart, having 49 square meters to spread their roots. After the first couple of years, pistachios can grow without watering, producing fruit for 150 years, contributing to their environmental suitability.

What is the future of nuts in la Serranía? Our mountain region can never compete with the vast mechanical nut farms in California and China, but if Andalucian growers continue to cultivate nuts in smaller orchards with natural farming methods, their product will always be superior.