FIRST PART 



ORIGINAL ARTICLES 



Olive-Growing and Production in Spain 



by 



JUUAN MANUEI, PrIEGO 

 Professor of Forestry and Horticulture at the Agricultural Colle,ge, Madrid. 



Antiquity and distribution of olive-growing. 



The cultivation of the olive in Spain is contemporaneous with the ear- 

 liest development of the arts of civilisation. The oil obtained in the dis- 

 tricts near the coast appears to have been one of the first articles of com- 

 merce dealt with by the Phoenician and Carthaginian colonists. As the 

 use of olive oil by the native population became general, the cultivation of 

 the tree increased in all districts which offered favourable conditions and 

 especially in Andalusia where olive-growing was first started and where it 

 has since preserved its greatest importance. The high prices of the oil, 

 due to the difficulties of transport, encouraged the planting of the tree in 

 the interior of the country where it is now established as far as the southern 

 slopes of the mountain ranges (Sierra de Gredos and Sierra de Guaderama) 

 which cross the central plateau and form for this plant an impassable 

 barrier. 



The olive-growing districts in Spain do not form a continuous region 

 limited by lines of latitude or by definite isotherms. As the result of the 

 mountainous nature of the country the limits of the district are variable in 

 these respects, and localities, which are specially well-wooded naturally, 

 may be included even if situated at altitudes higher than the tree will 

 usually tolerate. 



Olives are grown in thirty-six of the forty-nine Spanish provinces ; 

 they are not grown in the following provinces : — Pontevedra, Leon, Zamora, 

 Valladolid, Segovia, Soria, Palencia, Oviedo, Burgos, vSantander, Biscay, 

 Guipuzcoa and the Canary Islands. As the area devoted to olive-growing 

 in the provinces of Lugo and Orense is only 407 acres it is evident that the 



