Les Garrigues: oil, honey and wine

With 19,090 in­hab­i­tants (2016) and an area of 800 km², Les Gar­rigues has bor­ders with El Segrià, El Pla d’Urgell and L’Urgell to the north, El Pri­o­rat to the south and La Conca de Bar­berà to the east, while the Tar­rag­ona re­gion of the Rib­era d’Ebre bor­ders the lands to the west. The land­scape is filled with olive and al­mond trees on both sides of the re­gion, char­ac­terised by a dry ter­rain, ex­cept in very spe­cific areas. The olive tree is the most wide­spread crop in the re­gion, the typ­i­cal olive va­ri­ety being the ar­be­quina. Its small, round and taut fruit pro­duces an oil with­out great acid­ity, con­sid­ered the best by con­nois­seurs. Ar­beca, Les Borges Blan­ques, Juneda, Puiggròs and part of Castell­dans com­prise a space that, thanks to the wa­ters of the Urgell canal, also makes it pos­si­ble to cul­ti­vate al­falfa, corn and, above all, fruit trees.

But the ex­ten­sive cul­ti­va­tion of olive trees has made the re­gion ex­tremely at­trac­tive for a type of tourism ded­i­cated to oil pro­duc­tion and the local land­scape. Vis­i­tors will dis­cover the unique prod­uct of extra vir­gin olive oil, which is recog­nised world­wide, from a com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, through vis­its to mills and work­shops, guided tast­ings, in­clud­ing among the olive groves them­selves, pair­ings with other local prod­ucts, prac­ti­cal work­shops, train­ing and tours of the best oil land­scapes in the re­gion, as well as some of the best craft prod­ucts when it comes to wine and honey.

Les Gar­rigues and El Segrià Sec boast a unique land­scape, where plains, moun­tains and forests pre­dom­i­nate, to­gether with fields of olive trees, al­mond trees and vine­yards in­ter­twined with mag­nif­i­cent dry stone con­struc­tions.

In order to make the most of this local wealth, Les Gar­rigues tourism of­fice has re­cently launched a pack­age of 24 oil tourism ex­pe­ri­ences for fam­i­lies or groups. From tast­ing oils on the es­tate – an ex­pe­ri­ence that plays with the senses – and en­joy­ing a pair­ing of oils with dif­fer­ent local prod­ucts from the land in the vil­lage of Albagés in the mid­dle of the Co­macauva val­ley, to a guided tour of the Roca dels Moros del Cogul rock site, de­clared a UN­ESCO World Her­itage Site, fol­lowed by an oil cook­ing work­shop held in Eng­lish in La Granadella aimed at the younger mem­bers of the fam­ily, the pack­age of­fers the most out­stand­ing ideas for all tast­eds.

There is also a guided tour of the Borges Blan­ques oil mill, the ex­pe­ri­ence of har­vest­ing olives in the mu­nic­i­pal­ity of Bovera and La Granadella, moun­tain bik­ing routes among the olive groves or an orig­i­nal guided tour and honey and in­fu­sion of olive leaves tast­ing in Jun­cosa. The de­tails of all of these ex­pe­ri­ences and the con­tact tele­phone num­bers to book vis­its can be found at www.​tur​isme​garr​igue​s.​com.