The landscape has inspired some of Spain’s greatest poets (Miguel Hernández, Antonio Machado), singers (Juanito Valderrama) and painters (Rafael Zabaleta). Now the groves are turning up on social media. One Jaén farmer who has 1.7 million followers on TikTok makes gargantuan sandwiches, all generously slathered with olive oil.
With a nudge from the local government, a nascent olive oil tourism industry, dubbed oleoturismo, is starting to grow. There are spas with olive oil treatments and specialty shops, like Panaderia Paniaceite, that sell dozens of varieties of olive oil. One almazara, as traditional mills are known, offers olive oil tastings like wine tastings at a vineyard. Visitors can also spend a day working and living as an olive farmer, meals included, for 27 euros.
“It was a surprise to us, the amount of interest there is in seeing how we produce olive oil,” said José Jiménez, co-owner of the mill, Oleícola San Francisco, in a village called Baeza. “We’ve already had 50,000 visitors from 78 countries.”
Tourism will never offset losses in the fields nor thwart a variety of tectonic shifts that go far beyond the weather. A harvest that once took tens of thousands of people, including a massive influx of seasonal migrant workers, now requires a fraction of manpower because so much of the work is now done by machines. Most notably, there is the vibradora, a hand-held, gasoline-powered device — it looks like a chain saw with a very long, thin snout — that shakes olives out of trees by clamping on to branches and rattling them.
A person armed with a vibradora can shake 1500 kilograms (about 3,300 pounds) of olives to the ground in a day. Using the traditional slap-it-with-a-stick technique, the number is closer to 200 kilograms a day.
That is one reason El Molar has been shedding population; far fewer people are needed for the harvest. And those still toiling in the groves face higher costs, especially now that inflation is over 9 percent in the eurozone, raising the price of electricity, fuel, fertilizer and labor.
