We settled our bill and made an early start to the day. A few jobs on the list for today include filling up with fuel, emptying the greywater out of the van and hopefully getting a load of washing around! We filled up just outside Jaén, stopped for churros and chocolate en route in Mengíbar (an excellent churrería ‘Churrería Cristobal’, very popular with the locals, we got told to sit at a particular table!! with parking nearby and near the main road) and then headed to Bailén for our olive tour.
We’d booked in to Picualia for the English tour at 10.30 and were the only ones there. Picualia is a very modern, cutting-edge processing plant which processes the olives from 1,000 farming cooperative members. Pilar, our guide, was really enthusiastic and gave us a wealth of information. Here are a few of the things she taught us:
The olive oil harvest normally starts in October when the green olives are harvested, these are the best and are used for extra-virgin olive oil, then in the November harvest the more mature purple olives are collected and finally in around January the black olives are collected – these are fully mature. You need 12 kg of the green olives to make a litre of oil and 5 kg of the black olives.This explains the price differential between extra-virgin olive oil and other olive oils.
Jaén is responsible for 20% of world production of olive oil. She explained that for the main harvest in October there was a constant stream of tractors arriving at the factory from 1000 members of the cooperative. They aim to process the olives within 24 hours of them being picked and that means that in the harvesting season the factory opens 24/7. As each tractor arrives, the farmer has to type into a machine at one of the eight drop off terminals. They need the name of the farm, variety of olive, whether or not it is organic and whether it has been picked from the tree or picked off the ground. Once this information has been collected,a gate opens underneath the tractor for them to tip in the harvest and get it weighed and sent in the right direction for processing. She said that it is an impressive spectacle to see all the tractors lining up with the harvest. We were almost wishing that we were here in October. 😃
In recent years the harvest has been adversely impacted by unusually dry weather. So on May 1st 2023, they had a big procession in Jaén and prayed for rain. Apparently their prayers were answered as the recent couple of seasons have been a bit better and as a result the price of olive oil has come back down again.
Rather like Ben and his mushrooms, they have to get certified by an outside lab. They also do everything they can to be environmentally friendly. This basically means reusing everything from every stage of the process. The leaves that are sorted out from the olives are used as animal feed, after being run through the centrifuge, the olive flesh and skin is sold on to be heated and extracted for cheaper oils, the pips are burnt to generate energy and the waste products after the final oil is extracted is used as organic fertiliser. They even clean and recycle the water that is used to wash the olives.
All the facilities were really impressive. The storage facility was called the ‘Oil Cathedral’ and they leave the oil in there to protect it until t hey are ready to sell it. Then it goes through to be bottled and boxed up. There are a whole range of labels– some for the English market and others according to which shop the package is destined for within Spain. 40% of the oil they produce is sold under their own label and the rest is sold onto other producers who then process it as they see fit. Eventually they would like their whole production to be under the Picualia name. They have enhanced the business further over the years by doing these tours, having a restaurant at the facility and running olive oil tastings. We did a short tasting at the end of the tour and it was really interesting and quite fun.
After the tour we bought a couple of bottles of oil and hit the road again! The situation was urgent as we’d run out of clean underwear. 🤣We’d found a launderette in nearby Bailén (Lavandería Autoservicio Bailén) and it was ideal because there was very easy parking nearby. It wasn’t far off the main route and there was a decent tapas bar along from it where we sat and had lunch while we waited for our washing and drying to go around. We met some nice Spanish people in the launderette, although one of them jokingly hurled abuse at Dave when he discovered that Dave did not speak Spanish. Ironically, that was the point at which Dave started to understand him. 🤣
With then made our way to our accommodation in Granada and were amazed to see how much snow was still on the top of the Sierra Nevada as we approached – even though it’s now really hot and we are in May! I was very excited to see just how close to the Alhambra our hotel was as when Dave booked it I hadn’t realised just how convenient it was. We dropped our luggage and then Dave parked in the main Alhambra car park as the hotel parking was full. It was 22,90 euros a night and vans and caravans could stay overnight there. I walked up to the viewing point near the hotel through an olive grove.
Finally we had sunshine and so went for a balmy evening walk. We walked down past the Alhambra to the to the Plaza Nueva and then wound our way up through the cobbled streets of the Albaicín area to the Mirador San Nicolás viewing point. There was of course some great guitar music as our walk progressed! The evening light was gorgeous and the Alhambra looked amazing against the snow-topped mountains. We managed to get a few nice photos despite the obstacle of hundreds of tourists. We photographed the tourists as well for context!! I managed to get my best photo by standing in the middle of the steps up to the viewing point and getting an uninterrupted view of the Alhambra with no tourists in sight. Unsurprisingly, there were various banners against mass tourism placed there by the residents of the Albaicín area. Albazínhabitable is the resident’s Association which campaigns to limit the number of tourist lets in the area amongst other measures.
We finally got to the square next to the Casa Gabriel restaurant where we were meeting Caroline and Chris’s son Jack and Luciana for dinner at 9. I had a very generously sized gin and tonic in the square followed by a chat to the guitarist who was busking nearby. Ben recognised him from his trip earlier this year with Emma.
Jack and Luciana appeared very punctually at the appointed hour – clearly operating on English not Spanish time. 🤣 I duly followed instructions and delivered a Mum style hug from Caroline. We had not seen Jack for some time and had never met Luciana, so there was plenty to talk about. Luciana is a web designer so Dave was delighted to talk shop with her and to find out that she uses the same software as he does. He may well be using her for technical support in future. 🤣 It was great listening to Jack’s tales of how he came to be in Granada and how he had met Luciana. We were impressed with his Spanish and enjoyed the Verdejo white wine that he and Luciana recommended to us.
Casa Gabriel was a typical restaurant in terms of the lovely friendly staff. They have a reputation for their ‘Brasas’ (barbecued meats) and we decided to opt for the recommended special of the day – a sharing platter of chuletón. Dave, Luciana and I all like our steak rare (poco hecho) but Jack prefers his medium rare, so they provided him with his own hot plate so that he could cook it some more after it arrived at the table.
We decided to walk back home as we had missed the last bus at 11 o’clock and were keen to work off some of our massive dinner – we walked some of the way with Jack and Luciana until they got to their turning. It was a very enjoyable evening, lovely to be out at proper Spanish dinner time and great to be with people half our age! We’d managed to pick their brains about some of the best areas to explore in Granada, so have plenty of ideas for the next couple of days.
