Sara Jové Blanch is the manager of the Mas Blanch i Jové winery in La Pobla de Cérvoles (D.O. Costers del Segre) which hosts La Vinya dels Artistes, an art gallery, with installations by renowned artists among olive groves and vineyards. She is also the secretary of the Association of forest owners of La Pobla de Cérvoles and El Vilosell and one of the twelve women of the core group Lleida tierra de mujeres transformadoras, a project with which the Government Delegation in Lleida aims to make visible the feminist transformation in the Ponent counties.
“I had a bit of imposter syndrome when they saw me as a transformative woman,” when the Government Delegation told me that they thought of me as one of the twelve women in the initial group,” she admits.
La Vinya dels Artistes makes reality an idea of ??the cartoonist and engraver Josep Guinovart (1927-2007) linked to Agramunt and friend of his parents, Joan Jové Solé and Sara Balasch. The installation in 2010 of one of the works, ‘Orgue de camp’, was the embryo of an open-air museum in which pieces by Carles Santos, Joan Brossa, Susana Solano, Evru (Zush), Frederic Amat dialogue with the earth or Antoni Llena. The iron reproduction by Joan Jové of the drawing of the Llanga lizard by the writer Joserp Vallverdú is the latest addition.
“We united art and land by being very honest with the legacy of my grandparents, who were convinced that the land did not belong to them, but that they belonged to the land. As they said, we must love the earth, our luck is linked to the fate of the planet,” he states. And he says that what the family business seeks is to “empower the territory through art” and “put the town on the map by seeing the possibility for different artists to “make their own tribute to the land.”
Cleaning the forest that surrounds the vineyards to prevent fires is one of their concerns: The forest, in Les Garrigues, in a complicated orography like ours only brings expenses to the winery, the owners have to unite, they are very small plots, the “wood is not profitable”
“If instead of clearing a two-hectare forest we make a management plan that covers a much larger territory, it is worth it. “You can clear the forest in a way that doesn’t cost the owners money.” And she is there as secretary of the Association of forest owners of La Pobla de Cérvoles and El Vilosell, a young association that has already obtained the first aid to prevent fires.
He dedicates part of his time to convincing landowners and landowners to join the association. “It is important to do something, the forests are becoming drier, there is more accumulation of forest mass, Les Garrigues can be a tinderbox,” she says.
The fragmentation of the land is a drawback. “It is a wood that does not make money, there are many forest owners who hardly even know that they are owners, some are very old people and others are children of farmers who are dedicated to other activities, I understand the reluctance.”
Firebreaks, forest cleaning and art on the land is part of the transformation of the territory that Sara Jovè is committed to while she makes her Saó wines at 800 meters of altitude and watches her Garnacha Blanca, Garnacha Negra and Garnacha peluda, Macabeo vines grow. . Ull de Llebre, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Viognier, Riesling and Trobat, a variety from the territory.
