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WINE

Uphill battle: Spain’s wine growers forced to adapt to climate change

For over a century, Joaquin Gay de Montella Estany's family produced wine in Spain's Mediterranean region of Catalonia, but the effects of climate change have pushed them to seek higher ground.

Published: 3 September 2021 09:39 CEST
Uphill battle: Spain's wine growers forced to adapt to climate change
Over the past 60 years, average temperatures in Spain have risen by 1.3 degrees Celsius, forcing Spanish wine producers to adapt. Photo: Josep Lago/AFP

Now their Torre del Veguer winery also has vineyards at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains — at an altitude of nearly 1,200 metres (3,900 feet) — where temperatures are cooler.

It’s one of the ways in which Spain’s wine producers are trying to adapt, as a warmer climate advances the harvest season and makes the need for more heat-tolerant grape varieties greater.

In searing August heat, farm workers pick the white grapes by hand at a vineyard with sea views in Penedes, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of the city of Barcelona.

Higher temperatures have brought the grape harvest forward by 10 to 15 days over the past decade, said Gay de Montella Estany, who owns the ecological winery.

“We have to harvest at the start of August when the heat is the most intense,” he told AFP.

So in 2008, the company moved part of its production to Bolvir, a village in the Pyrenees near the French border.

Speedy ripening

With a total of 961,000 hectares (2.4 million acres) of vines, Spain has the largest area of vineyards in the world, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine says.

It is the third biggest wine producer behind Italy and France.

Over the past 60 years, average temperatures in Spain have risen by 1.3 degrees Celsius, according to the national weather office, Aemet.

And wine producers have seen an impact, as the timing of the harvest is crucial.

An employee tends to the grapevines at the Torres vineyard at a 950-metre altitude in Tremp near Lleida in the Catalan Pyrenees. 

Higher average temperatures speed up the ripening of the grapes, which leads to lower acidity and increased sugars in the fruit.

This yields higher alcohol levels in the wine and also alters other compounds in grapes that affect aroma and flavour.

Grapes must be picked quickly to avoid an excessive alcohol content.

“Essentially these grapes have not fully ripened in the right way,” said Fernando Zamora, a professor in the oenology department at Rovira I Virgili University in Tarragona.

‘Absurd’

The Familia Torres winery, one of Spain’s largest producers, embraced higher elevation more than 20 years ago, despite facing scepticism at the time.

The company, which has grown from a small family business in the late 19th century, began planting grapes in Tremp, 160 kilometres northeast of its Vilafranca de Penedes base, in 1998.

Grapes for making wine had never been grown before at higher altitudes in this region in the foothills of the Pyrenees.

“Farmers in the area thought it was absurd. They thought grapes would not mature,” said Xavier Admella, who is in charge of the farm located at an altitude of 950 metres.

“Climate change has proven us right,” he added, as workers set up nets to protect the vines from hail which is much more common along mountain ranges.

Ancient grape varieties are treated in vitro at the Torres vineyard lab in Vilafranca del Penedes near Barcelona.

New techniques

In Tremp, temperatures are almost 10 degrees Celsius cooler than at sea level, Miguel A. Torres, president of the Familia Torres winery, said.

That makes it possible to grow grape varieties to produce white wines “that still have very good acidity levels”, he added.

The company, which exports to 150 countries, also has a laboratory where it revives grape strains that have almost disappeared.

One of them which performs well at high altitudes has already been planted in Tremp.

But the fight to adapt has a stiff price tag.

“The future is complicated,” Torres said, adding the wine sector had asked for aid from both the Spanish government and European Union.

Gay de Montella Estany agrees.

He predicts that Spain’s wine sector will have to go on planting at higher altitudes and “look for grape varieties that ripen later” to survive.

He does not rule out that some parts of the country, especially in the south, will one day no longer be suitable for wine production.

Not everyone is as pessimistic, though.

“Climate change is leading many wineries to get their act together and learn how to make wine, not like our grandparents did, but by looking for new techniques,” university professor Zamora said.

“And wines are now much better than they were a few years ago.”

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SPANISH HISTORY

Who are the historical figures that dominate Spanish street names?

Once you get to know your town or city in Spain better, you may start to wonder who the people that feature so often in street signs actually were. It's a window into Spanish society and history, and the historical figures that Spaniards value.

Published: 5 March 2024 12:09 CET
Who are the historical figures that dominate Spanish street names?

Whenever you take a stroll through a new place, whether in Spain or abroad, whether on holiday or in a new city you’re making home, noticing (and learning) some of the street names is one of the first things you do.

And though they can be very useful in terms of directions and getting a feel for a place, street names can also tell us quite a bit about a place — the history, the society and culture, its key historical figures.

This is true in most countries, of course. If you were to take a stroll through any town or city in the UK, you’d likely come across a London Rd., High St., or Market St. before long. If you’re looking out for historical figures, it’d be King. St or Charles St. or even something a little more obscure like Bob Marley Way.

In France, you’d no doubt see many a Rue de Charles de Gaulle, or Victor Hugo, two of the three most common historically inspired street names found in France.

READ ALSO: Which French figure has the most streets named after them?

But what about Spain? What are the most common street names in Spain, and which historical figures are most often used?

A research project at Pablo de Olavide University has revealed the most common street names in Spain, and they tell us quite a lot about Spanish history, society and culture. “Street names are not random, but reflect the social, cultural and historical values of a population,” says Daniel Oto-Peralías, Professor at Pablo de Olavide, who led the project. 

The project studied the street names in 8,131 municipalities across Spain through textual analysis techniques. It also has a great search engine tool, which you can find here, so you can search for different street names across Spain.

Mercado (Market) is a common name for streets and squares in Spain, but not as common as ‘iglesia’ (church). Photo: Zeynep Sümer/Unsplash
 

Of course, not all streets are named after great historical figures. Often they are fairly generic and geographically derived — think Church St. or Mill Lane in English.

According to the analysis done by Pablo de Olavide, in Spain the most common name in street names overall was iglesia (church) with 4,767 across the country, though this isn’t particularly surprising in a Catholic country.

Next was mayor (main) with 3,762; followed by fuente (fountain) with 2,544; constitución (constitution) with 2,439; real (royal) with 2,208; and finally eras with 2,063 streets around Spain.

READ ALSO: Why does Madrid have a plaza named after Margaret Thatcher?

Historical figures

The presence of historical figures is also significant in Spanish street names. The most renowned is the writer Miguel de Cervantes, the author of arguably the most famous novel of all time, Don Quixote, who appears in 1,940 streets across the country.

He is followed by Nobel Prize winning scientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the man dubbed the father of modern neuroscience, with 1,383 streets, and Granada poet Federico García Lorca (shot by Franco’s fascists for being a homosexual), who has more than a thousand.

Alexander Fleming, the Scottish scientist who discovered penicillin, is in fact the seventh most common Spanish street moniker named after a male historical figure.

Pope John XXIII and El Greco, the Greek painter and sculptor who played a significant role in the Spanish Renaissance and died in Toledo, are also very popular street names all over the country.

There are hundreds of streets named after Spanish conquistadors Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro and of course Cristobal Colón (Christopher Columbus), as well Spanish painters Velázquez (who painted ‘Las Meninas’) and Francisco de Goya (‘La Maja Desnuda’) and as could be expected plenty of Picasso Streets. The lesser-known 17th century Spanish artist Murillo also gives his name to many streets.

Additionally, poets Antonio Machado, Juan Ramón Jiménez and Miguel Hernández feature in lots of calles across Spain, as does the scandal-hit emeritus king Juan Carlos I.

Gender gap

However, the study also revealed that just 12.7 percent of the streets named after people in Spain are named after women.

Republican lawyer and politician Clara Campoamor, widely considered the mother of Spain’s feminist movement, is the woman most commemorated. She spearheaded the push for universal suffrage and achieved Spanish women’s right to vote in 1931.

Campoamor is followed by 19th century Galician poet and novelist Rosalía de Castro and 20th century philosopher and essayist María Zambrano.

Catholic Queen Isabel I, who together with King Ferdinand led the Reconquista against the Moors and united ‘modern Spain’, is also widely featured, as is the mother of current King Felipe VI, Reina Sofía.

Other Spanish women whose names are emblazoned across Spanish street plaques were usually ahead of their time in patriarchal Spain, including Concepción Arenal (considered the precursor of social work in Spain) and 19th century María Pineda (a liberal who faced the guillotine for defying the absolute monarchy of Fernando VII). 

Religious streets

Of course, historical figures aside, Spain unsurprisingly has a huge number of streets with religious names. Research from Pablo de Olavide also revealed just how many streets in Spain have religious names — 12 percent overall.

In provinces such as Burgos, Navarra and Cuenca there are religious references in more than 15 percent of the streets, but perhaps the most striking example is the case of the Triana-Los Remedios neighbourhood in Seville, one of the traditional hotbeds of Semana Santa activity, which has 41 streets dedicated to ‘virgins’ alone.

READ HISTORY: Why are there so many Irish street names in Spain’s Canary Islands?

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