Assignment: Spain - ‘liquid gold’ under pressure

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 4 February 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Spain is the world’s largest producer of olive oil. But successive, brutal droughts have led to plummeting production, whilst prices have reached record highs. For 2024 / 2025, the weather’s been better - Spain’s predicted to increase the quantity of olives harvested. Even so, this remains a stressed industry. Climate change hasn’t gone away - as we saw so devastatingly last year in Valencia. And in some areas of Spain, the scarcity of water has persisted, with predictions of a near 90% drop in olive production. Critics say super-intensive farming - the rise of the olive ‘mega-farm’ – may also further threaten depleted water resources. Meanwhile, the soaring price of the olives that produce ‘liquid gold’ means rural law enforcement is taken up with cases of theft by criminal gangs targeting this precious commodity.

For Assignment, Linda Pressly and Esperanza Escribano report from the olive groves of Spain at harvest time.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the documentary from the BBC World Service. You're listening to Assignment from Spain. I'm Linda Presley.
0:10.5	And I'm Esperanza Scribano, the BBC's producer here. It's harvest time.
0:19.6	And that's the sound of the mill belonging to the La Villanera Cooperative,
0:24.3	processing thousands of kilos of olives into high-quality, extra-viggin olive oil.
0:30.4	But these are challenging times for olive farmers.
0:33.8	In 2021, Spain began experiencing a punishing drought.
0:38.1	Production plummeted and the price of a litre of olive oil
0:41.5	soared by a staggering 150% in some places.
0:46.1	It's one reason why this precious commodity is known as liquid gold.
0:51.0	In Spanish, ore liquido.
0:54.1	The farmers bring the olives here every day, freshly collected.
0:58.9	It needs to be processed as soon as it's collected.
1:01.7	The sooner you process it, the better.
1:04.8	The quality is going to turn much, much better than if it sits in the track or in sacks for long.
1:12.3	Luis Martinez, the cooperatives production manager,
1:15.5	knows that to produce the very best oil, timing is everything.
1:19.8	And although the olive collections in full swing,
1:22.6	this is an industry that's troubled,
1:24.8	especially but not only by climate change.
1:28.2	In this week's assignment, liquid gold under pressure.
1:34.1	Our journey begins in the northeast,
1:37.0	in one of the traditional olive-growing areas of Catalonia
	...

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