Manuel Pascual, laborer who works for Antonio Porras, carries a basket full of olives to the trailer in a field close to Periana, Spain. Date: 25/02/2016. Photographer: Xabier Mikel Laburu. Manuel has been working in the civil infrastructure construction sector for ACS and other big companies until the crisis hit the Spanish market. Since then he works as a laborer in his home town.
The cold western wind swirls through the narrow streets of the white tinted villages while a lazy sun fights its way over the mountain tops. As the light starts to remove the stars from the night, speckles of white houses become visible between a sea of olive trees disposed as dots that fill the fields and mountain sides up to the cliff lines in the Axarquia valley. Little by little the small villages come back to life, it is the olive harvest season. As soon as the sun is about to shine over the Maroma mountain, the streets start to fill with tractors and other vehicle noises, people dressed generally in shabby clothings, ready for the tough work in the fields, walk on the streets greeting one an other, or have a coffee, or perhaps something stronger to scare the morning chill away in the local bar. Little by little the working groups are formed and vanish in different all wheel drive cars to their working places. Places where the olives will be picked to be pressed the next day in the local mill to extract a precious liquid that has a greasy texture and a peculiar mixture of fruity, bitter but sweet as well as spicy tastes, and which is commonly known as olive oil. Little would be the same in southern Spain without the olives and the trees that produce them and flood most of the southern landscape. Spain is home to thirty seven kinds of olive trees, making it the country with most varieties in the world and also the major producer with about 54% (FAO 2014) of worlds production, far away from its nearest competitor, Italy, with a bit more than the 14% (FAO 2014).
Size: 4896px × 3264px
Location: Periana
Photo credit: © Xabier Mikel Laburu / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: aceite, aceituna, agricultura, agriculture, ancient, andalucí, andalusia, arbol, branches, calidad, campo, cosecha, españ, europea, extra, farm, field, granel, hand, harvest, hojas, laburu, land, leaves, malaga, mikel, mountains, oil, olea, oliva, olive, periana, prensa, press, produccion, product, production, producto, quality, ramas, riogordo, spain, tierra, trabajador, tradicional, traditional, tree, varear, verdial, virgen, virgin, worker, xabier
