The Gátova oven, closed since July, will reopen its doors in the coming days. The efforts of its mayor and social networks have allowed this small municipality in the Camp de Túria region of barely 500 inhabitants to reopen a key business to maintain life in the town. Almost a hundred people were interested in the call for help that the first mayor, Jesús Salmerón, made online to find people willing to take on a historic and not a little sacrificed business. After a casting, the workshop now has new owners.
Last July, the Las Delicias de Gátova oven closed its doors after almost 300 years of history and four generations. With tears in her eyes, Amparo, great-granddaughter, granddaughter and daughter of bakers, saw how the business could not resist her retirement, after the boys who kept it closed a few months later, explains Mayor Salmerón to La Vanguardia.
In a Valencian television program, in the midst of a campaign to try to find a buyer, Amparo explained that “the oven was her life” and recalled how, from a very young age, her father had asked her to lend a hand in the family business. "When I was 14, every night my grandmother, my father and I worked at night to prepare breads and cakes. Back then there was no machinery and everything was done by hand."
But the oven did not survive his retirement. It was then when the young mayor (a former Ciudadanos deputy who joined the ranks of the PP) began a campaign to find new owners. “Without an oven, the problem of depopulation would increase even more,” comments the first mayor.
Salmerón explains that he reached an agreement with a baker from Manises so that three days a week he would bring bread and also sweets to the town. Amparo, selflessly, has not posed any problems so that it could be shipped from the closed workshop. “The baker brings a lot of product and so people can freeze it,” says the mayor.
However, it is a timely solution to prevent the population – many of them without a license or of advanced age – from having to travel to the nearby towns of Altura and Olocau along a road that is not free of curves.
Hence the insistence on finding new owners. The response exceeded expectations. Salmerón says that last week a couple came from Tarragona and even received a call from Asturias. “Every time I entered the bar they told me that someone had appeared asking about the oven,” he says.
Such a small town hall could not offer housing as a claim, but the mayor offered to help with the whole issue of licenses, bureaucracy and finding affordable and cheap housing. “The only condition is that the main characteristic of the historic oven be maintained, that it worked on wood,” he comments.
In exchange, the council has offered to provide facilities so that when the municipal plots are cleaned, the firewood that is collected can be kept by the oven. More complicated was finding a home with an attractive price.
The first mayor comments that the offer of these towns, despite the phenomenon of depopulation, has many shortcomings. “Many houses are closed, there are few for sale, others are not ready to move into and there are some that are so big that you have to spend your salary on heating to get through the winter,” says Salmerón.
After weeks of searching, a suitable house was found for Iván and Enriqueta (he from Valencia and she from Sueca), the couple who will finally keep the oven.
Overwhelmed by the media coverage of the case, Iván – the new baker – limits himself to pointing out that he is “very excited” about this new adventure. “I found out about the announcement through the campaign that the mayor did on social networks, I came to Gátova the next day, I really liked the town and I knew that I wanted to be the new baker of Gátova.”
After thanking the mayor for the mediation and the facilities of the former owner, Iván is convinced that he will be able to keep the oven open for a few more decades: "In addition, Amparo's help and her recipes are going to make everything easier."
The story of Amparo, Enrique and Jesús ends with a happy ending, precisely the week in which the same sector said goodbye to the oldest oven in Valencia, the Horno de San Nicolás. This Tuesday, its owner Ramón lowered the blinds due to the impossibility of undertaking the reforms required by the regulations.
A situation that, like the case of Gátova, has generated a neighborhood reaction. Thus, Rafa Pomares, a publicist who has worked on campaigns to promote local and historic commerce in the city, has started a collection of signatures on Change.org to urge the Valencia City Council “to protect our historic businesses and to work the miracle that is now "The San Nicolás oven needs to reopen the doors that it had to close on October 24."
The petition demands that the council chaired by María José Catalá “protect businesses with more than 100 years of history by preventing closures such as that of the San Nicolás oven.” He notes that “policies are needed that recognize the invaluable value these facilities add to our community and provide adequate support for their survival.” Pomares explains to this newspaper that these types of initiatives "many times do not achieve their objective, but sometimes they fall into the hands of those who should fall and they are given a solution."
It remains to be seen if this campaign to recover the San Nicolás Oven suffers the same fate as the one that has allowed the historic Gátova wood-burning workshop to be kept open.
