In one of the latest editions of the Mostra de Turisme that is held at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències every year, Elena Bover participated with her Huerto Ribera agrotourism project when she greeted President Ximo Puig, on an institutional visit. And she, openly holding back, snapped at the Honorable Molt: "President, how is it possible that we have the Grail Route, the Modernist Route and we don't have the Orange Route?"
He tells between laughs that the President agreed with him, and adds that he does not understand how Valencia does not boast more of its most international product. But when he sees every day how visits to his house, an orange temple in Carcaixent, have tripled compared to the pandemic. From October 2022 to June 2023, some 6,000 people have visited it.
His proposal draws on other ideas already developed in agrotourism, such as visits to wineries, cooperatives or cheese factories. It was after visiting one of them, in Menorca, where Elena Bover, a biologist by training, wondered if "just as I was going there to see that, there would be no one who would come here, paying, to see our house". And so it began.
The orchard has belonged to the Ribera family since 1870 and its splendid garden had always attracted onlookers and fans of the Valencian landscapes who wanted to be photographed amid the aroma of orange blossom. The family even invited customers who buy their oranges online at the e-commerce that his sister created a few years ago, the parallel business of this proposal, to visit him. "You don't earn money with oranges, and we thought we had to make a profit out of that business," Elena Bover confesses.
"In the orange purchase e-mails we invited customers to see the orchard and people used to come to take photos of the house, a stately palace from the 19th century. So we thought of setting up a website and we began to make small groups visiting", recalls this entrepreneur. This past winter between three and four buses a day have arrived, with tourists from cruise ships, school travelers or from Imserso, which has allowed them to seasonally adjust the tourist business and enter now, almost almost, in low season, the time to see and prepare the the next year.
On the orange route that they offer their visitors, they tell the story of the family, that of Carcaixent with the orange and even how it is planted, how many types of citrus there are and also the methods of irrigation. Details of the Valencian citrus culture that international tourists are passionate about, mainly. They are 80% of your customers.
During the visit, the Bover sisters try to value the work of their ancestors. Her great-great-grandfather, a local carpenter, dared to produce wooden boxes of oranges for export. Then, chance made him marry a young woman from Carcaixent whose family had orange orchards.
Bover tells the entrepreneurial story of this couple who opted for exports to France, and who ended up building an orange warehouse in 1903, the José Ribera warehouse, which today is municipal heritage and is located next to the railway station. for the export orientation of this visionary trader. With the large profits they built the house... and until today.
"We want people to know where we come from and make our history, that of the orange, known," explains Bover, who has specialized in experiential tourism and also offers ad hoc proposals in addition to preparing a vermouth workshop with visitors or including tastings of jams, orange liqueurs, gin with orange or Agua de Valencia. With such a range, it is normal to be surprised that there is no route that covers the history of the Valencian fruit par excellence.
