With five hundred years of history behind it, the patio of the Oranges has undergone several changes in its appearance, but the orange trees that give it its name remain unchanged there. The fountain with the sculpture of Sant Jordi and these trees are the emblem of the courtyard, the central space of the Palau de la Generalitat. But this week even the orange trees have changed, following their natural cycle. And it has been prodigious. The bitter fruits, not suitable for consumption, that hung from the branches are now sweet jam. And not only that. Its transformation, from waste to edible product, will also be wages for vulnerable people.
The Espigoladors Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to food recovery since 2014, is in charge of this entire process. It is the third year – after 2020 and 2022 – that the Generalitat has hired them to harvest and deliver it transformed into bitter orange jam, in small 40 gram jars that are given as institutional gifts, both on visits that the president receives in Palau as in trips.
Oranges are harvested between January and February, and at the beginning of this week a team from the foundation went to the Palau de la Generalitat to harvest the fruit of the 24 orange trees in the yard. The group, equipped with the foundation’s green vest and aided by sticks with a small metal basket at the end to catch the oranges, began to pluck the trees as the twelve chimes of noon struck the neighbor cathedral “We’re coming to snoop”, they told President Pere Aragonès, who was working in his office – in the Gothic gallery, adjacent to the courtyard -, and he came out to greet them and chat for a while.
In three quarters of an hour, they already had the fruit harvested and distributed in boxes. They took between 150 and 200 kilos of oranges, estimated Mireia Barba, president and co-founder of the entity.
The following days, the harvest was processed in the foundation’s workshop, a premises in the Sant Cosme del Prat de Llobregat neighborhood, where about twenty people work; the average profile is women of immigrant origin, aged between 25 and 40, although there are some older women.
In addition to the oranges from the Palau de la Generalitat, the Espigoladors Foundation also harvests those from urban trees in six districts of Barcelona. They started a few years ago in Sant Andreu, the neighborhood with the most orange trees in the city, and others were added.
Transforming ornamental oranges into delicious jam is only part of the work they do. In addition, the foundation is responsible for recovering fruit and vegetables that are discarded from the commercial circuit, that is to say, that no longer reach the shops for various reasons, whether due to a reduction in prices, an excess of supply or purely aesthetic issues, and gives them a second life.
Through agreements with producers, they travel to their fields with teams of ten to twenty volunteers, depending on the cultivated area, to harvest discarded fruit and vegetables. With these products, they make vegetable preserves that they channel through social organizations and free food distribution services. They also glean olive trees from the roundabouts to produce oil.
And they don’t neglect pedagogy. “We hold workshops in schools – explains Mireia Barba -. Using a bitter orange and a jar of jam, we expose the problem of food loss and waste, and the young people suggest which organizations they want to donate it to”.
