With five hundred years of history behind it, the Pati dels Tarongers has undergone various changes in its appearance, but the orange trees that give it its name remain unchanged. The fountain with the sculpture of Sant Jordi and these trees are the emblem of the patio, the central space of the Palau de la Generalitat. But this week even the orange trees have changed, following their natural cycle. And it has been prodigious. The bitter fruits, not suitable for consumption, hanging from the branches are already sweet jam. And not only that. Its transformation, from waste to edible product, will also be wages for vulnerable people.
The Fundació Espigoladors is in charge of this entire process, a non-profit entity that since 2014 has been dedicated to food exploitation. It is the third year – after 2020 and 2022 – that the Generalitat hires them to collect the harvest and deliver it transformed into bitter orange jam, in small 40-gram jars that are given as institutional gifts, both to visitors that the president receives in Palau as on trips.
The orange harvest takes place between January and February, and earlier this week a team from the foundation went to the Palau de la Generalitat to collect the 24 orange trees in the yard. The group, equipped with the foundation's green vest and helped by some poles with a small metal basket at the end to collect the fruits, began to glean the trees when the twelve bells struck noon in the neighboring cathedral. “We have come to glean,” they told President Pere Aragonès, who was working in his office – in the Gothic gallery, adjacent to the patio – and he came out to greet them and talk for a while.
In three quarters of an hour, they had the fruit collected and distributed in boxes. They took between 150 and 200 kilos of oranges, estimated Mireia Barba, president and co-founder of the entity.
In the following days, the harvest was processed in the foundation's workshop, a location in the Sant Cosme neighborhood of El Prat de Llobregat, where around twenty people work; The average profile is women of immigrant origin, between 25 and 40 years old, although there are some older.
In addition to the oranges from Palau, the Fundació Espigoladors also collects those from the urban trees of six districts of Barcelona. They started a few years ago in Sant Andreu, the neighborhood with the most orange trees in the city, and others were added.
Transforming those ornamental oranges into a delicious jam is only part of the work they do. In addition, the foundation is responsible for recovering fruits and vegetables that are discarded from the commercial circuit, that is, that no longer reach the stores, for various reasons, whether due to a reduction in prices, an excess of supply or simply for reasons aesthetics, and gives them a second life.
Through agreements with producers, they organize gleanings in the fields, with teams of ten to twenty volunteers depending on the crop area, to collect fruits and vegetables. With these products they make preserved vegetables that they channel through social entities and free food distribution services. They also glean olive trees from the roundabouts to produce oil.
And they do not neglect pedagogy. “We do workshops in schools,” explains Mireia Barba. Using a bitter orange and a jar of jam we expose the problem of food losses and waste, and the young people suggest to us which entities they want to donate it to.”
