Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice – and the fiddliest. Production is totally manual: it’s a labour of love.
We were in the saffron museum in Madridejos, 30 minutes from Toledo, central Spain. A former nunnery, it houses saffron-farming utensils (wicker baskets and hoes) that haven’t changed for centuries.
The ladies plucked in the courtyard, sitting around a table piled high with crocuses.
Dead and dying autumn blossoms surrounded them.
“I can remember as a little girl sitting with my mother and grandmother picking saffron,” remembered Maria Avila.
“Our mother hid sweets inside the crocus mountain,” added Jeronima.
Once Spain exported more saffron threads than oranges. It was first cultivated in the 14th century, having been introduced by the Moors. Now the country produces 60 per cent of the world’s saffron and most comes from the Castile-La Mancha region.
Several firms offer harvest tours, taking in restaurants such as Las Rejas in Belmonte and the Parador de Albacete, where the chefs hold saffron-cooking masterclasses.
La Mancha saffron is considered the best as it is more potent in flavouring and aromatic oils.
At the end of October, for two weeks the fields on the wide Meseta plains – an hour south of Madrid – turn violet and, at daybreak, are filled with families engaged in the back-breaking work of upholding an ancient tradition.
It’s a race against time, the sun and the bees. And lumbago.
“Saffron must be picked at sunrise,” said my plucking teacher Gregoria Carrasco, “then peeled and roasted before they wilt and lose their flavour.”
The guide at the small museum told me saffron is not just used in paella but many other Spanish dishes. It is also used as a dye and a medicine.
Five pounds of crocus (12,000 flowers) produce five ounces of raw saffron, which produce one of commercial saffron. It’s a very hands-on process, which is why saffron costs €3,000 per kilogram.
At harvest time, Consuegra, some five miles from Madridejos, holds a saffron festival featuring very rowdy and highly competitive stigma speed-plucking contests in its in its Plaza de Espana.
In a nail-biting final that went to a recount, I watched student Marta Moreno win the title, nimbly shredding one hundred crocuses in a minute and 54 seconds.
In D.Jose Ortega y Munilla Street there is a food fair selling a lot of cheese and rice, but the highlight of the fiesta is the coronation of the Dulcinea: the saffron rose beauty queen.
Consuegra is famous for Los Molinos – 11 windmills on top of Calderico Hill. They all have names – Bolero (after the dance), Rucio (after Sancho Pancha’s donkey) and Sancho, after Don Quixote’s companion. Sancho still produces flour.
La Mancha, beginning south of Madrid and stretching to Murcia in the southeast, Cordoba in the southwest and the paprika fields of Extremurada to the east, owes its name to the Arabic word al-mansha or ‘dry land’.
It was put on the map by Cervantes’s masterpiece The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, published in 1605 about an eccentric hidalgo who took up a false title name and a lance to right the wrongs of the world.
Saffron must be picked at sunrise then peeled and roasted before they wilt and lose flavour
You don’t have to copy the gaunt knight errant and travel around the emptiness on an old horse with a plump sidekick on an ass. You can explore the Campo de Montiel county by hire car or take a guided tour of the 600-kilometre La Ruta de Don Quixote.
The hillside village of Campo de Criptana, 45 clicks from Consuegra, is where he fought the windmills, although the region naturally engages in a fair amount of windmill-upmanship.
The author’s birthplace, Alcala de Henares, has a museum featuring some old editions. El Toboso was the home of his fantasy figure Dulcinea, and Argamasilla de Alba claims to be Don Quixote’s hometown.
Most are more touristic than authentic. But in La Mancha the landscape is the thing – and the intense silences. It is real Spain in the sense that it’s sandwiched between the industrialised north and the tourist-driven south.
There are no royal courts to admire. Only a desolate landscape relieved by the occasional pueblo (village), venta (inn) and stubby olive tree.
The most picturesque thing you’ll see will probably be a mirage. It’s a landscape that can only be romanticised by a humorist like Cervantes.
Toledo is the region’s capital and at its Parador hotel you have the best view of Spain’s capital in the Middle Ages.
You can walk by the River Tayo and enter the historic Unesco heritage site through mudehar and caliphal gates, see El Greco’s The Burial of the Lord of Orgaz in Santo Tome church.
Up your blood sugar with a marzipan eel at the Junguera family’s El Foro cafe at Plaza de Zocodover before watching a demonstration of the arte de espadre (sword-making).
The old Roman palace, the Alcazar, is a symbol of Spanish nationalism. Colonel Moscardo resisted the Republicans for 68 days during the Spanish Civil War.
In his bullet-ridden office I pressed the ‘English’ button to hear two actors re-enacting the phone conversation between the colonel and his son, who was captured by the Republicans in July 1936.
“They’re going to shoot me if you don’t surrender,” says Luis. “Then turn your thoughts to God,” his father replies, “and cry out ‘long live Spain’ and die a patriot.”
La Mancha has produced its heroes but I’m not one of them... De-flowering things is not in my nature. I came back with a very red face – and rather orange fingers.