How Olive Oil Tourism Supports Spain’s Legacy
Why olive oil tourism in Spain is a good idea
Olive tree sponsors in Oliete, photo courtesy of Apadrina un Olivo
In the rugged interior of Aragón, Spain—an area so sparsely populated it’s sometimes referred to as the Spanish Lapland—over 26,000 once-abandoned olive trees are now thriving thanks to Apadrina un Olivo. Launched in 2014, this adopt-an-olive-tree initiative has also created jobs, produced award-winning oils, and brought tourist dollars to the rural community of Oliete, where sponsors from around the globe come to meet the team and hug their adopted olive trees.
As anti-tourism protests intensify in heavily visited Spanish cities, rural areas consider how they can benefit from tourism sustainably. In places with olive-growing traditions, like Oliete, olive oil tourism, or oleotourism, offers a promising solution. Apadrina un Olivo and other veteran projects around Spain are proving that oleotourism can give rural communities a future rooted in the past.
Spain: a leader in olive oil tourism
Francisca García González, photo courtesy of DOP Priego de Córdoba
Spain, the world’s top olive oil producer, is also a leader in oleotourism. Professionals in both the olive oil and tourism sectors offer a growing range of oleo-experiences across the country, from mill visits and tastings to hands-on activities like harvesting and pressing olives. You can sit down to a Michelin-starred pairing menu, tour a new Philippe Starck-designed mill, or hike through centenarian olive groves. You can make olive oil soap or partake in olivaterapia—spa treatments using olive oil.
With so many choices, where to begin? The brand-new Oleoturismo España website from the Spanish association of olive-producing municipalities is a good place to start. The platform gathers together over 100 of the top olive oil experiences across 9 Spanish provinces. But with olive groves in nearly every region, there are oleo-adventures to be had throughout the country, each offering its own stories and flavors.
Apadrina un Olivo: Reviving a rural community
Olive grove in Oliete, photo courtesy of Apadrina un Olivo
In Oliete—whose name derives from olivetu, Latin for “olive grove”—the olive oil tradition dates back to at least Roman times. “And that already tells a story,” says Erika Casaña, head of communications at Apadrina un Olivo. Olive oil once played a fundamental role in the area, but rural flight in the 1960s left few to tend to the olive trees. The village was gradually dying until young Oliete natives founded Apadrina un Olivo 11 years ago.
Olive oil tasting workshop in Oliete, photo courtesy of Apadrina un Olivo
“When we started, the idea of sponsoring might have sounded crazy,” Casaña says. “But it’s been very positive and has helped to reverse some of the problems we have in rural areas.” Basic services have increased, and the elementary school now has enough children to remain open. Young professionals like Casaña have a reason to stay.
Oliete welcomes around 2,000 visitors annually, sponsors and non-sponsors alike. After touring the groves and mill, guests taste the project’s award-winning extra virgin olive oils made with Empeltre, Arbequina, and indigenous Manzanota olives. Themed visits include an olive harvest weekend in November.
The project has had a sustainable mission from the start. “It’s not just about generating tourism,” says Teresa Sancho, Head of Visits. “It’s also about raising awareness of unpopulated areas, promoting the region, encouraging people to stay in rural lodgings, eat in local restaurants, and visit local museums […]. We’re looking to build community not just in the village, but on a larger scale.”
DOP Priego de Córdoba: Preserving a nature reserve
DOP Priego de Córdoba olive groves, photo courtesy of DOP Priego de Córdoba
The team behind the Priego de Córdoba Protected Designation of Origin (PDO, or DOP in Spanish) has a similar philosophy. “We don’t want mass tourism,” says Francisca García González, the DOP’s Secretary General and Head of Tasting. Tour buses, she says—the rural equivalent of cruise ships—come for a few hours and leave, flooding the streets and spending little money locally. “In the long run, that doesn’t work,” she says. “We want to attract visitors who stay a few days […] and support the community.”
The DOP was established in 1995 to preserve a centuries-old olive oil tradition in the Sierras Subbéticas—a Spanish parque natural and UNESCO Geopark—in the Córdoba province of Andalusia. It encompasses approximately 30,000 hectares of groves of Hojiblanca, Picual, and the native Picudo olives, tended by around 6,500 farmers.
“These are not easy-to-harvest groves,” García says. “They contain large trees, many of them centuries old, with steep slopes at altitudes of between 850 and 1,200 meters.”
Farming here costs far more than on intensive, largely mechanized olive groves. “We had to find a way to differentiate ourselves,” García says, “so consumers would be willing to pay more for our oils.”
This begins with quality. Collectively, the 23 brands within the DOP have won some 3,500 awards, including Double Gold, Gold, and Silver at the 2024 USI Olive Oil Competition.
Oleotourism is also part of the solution. Nearly 25 years ago, the DOP partnered with the growing local tourism industry to create the Ruta Turismo y Aceite—the Tourism and Oil Route. They wanted to ensure that visitors to the DOP area, with charming villages nestled within the natural park, also supported its agricultural heritage.
Visitors at a DOP Priego de Córdoba mill, photo courtesy of DOP Priego de Córdoba
Several companies within the DOP have specialized in oleotourism, such as Aceites Vizcántar, a project veteran. Beyond producing their own oils, they offer guided walks through ancestral olive groves, as well as tastings, mill visits, and meriendas molineras—miller-style snacks.
“What are we doing?” García asks. “We’re maintaining a natural park that is mostly olive groves. If farmers eventually leave because it’s not profitable, what will happen to the park? Who will take care of it?”
Jaén: Steeped in olive oil
Oleotourism is arguably the best way to get to know the Andalusian province of Jaén, the global epicenter of olive oil production. The province is said to have around 67 million olive trees, compared to 600,000 inhabitants. Everyone’s connected to the industry in one way or another, says Sebastián Moreno, co-founder of Pópulo Servicios Turísticos, among Spain’s first oleotourism businesses.
“Olive oil culture is part of everyday life [in Jaén],” Moreno says, “from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, from the moment you’re born until the moment you die.”
Based in the towns of Úbeda and Baeza—famed for their Renaissance architecture and together a UNESCO World Heritage Site—Pópulo offers historical tours, but they want visitors to experience more than a bygone era in Jaén.
They do this through olive oil tastings, tours, and customized oleo-experiences, such as mill visits, countryside picnics, and opportunities to meet olive farmers. They run Spain’s first olive oil museum, Museo de la Cultura del Olivo, a temple to Jaén’s liquid gold located on a historic olive-producing estate.
People love hearing about Jaen’s traditions, Moreno says, and all the olive oil-related jokes, sayings, and curiosities still prevalent today—things he learned from his parents and grandparents.
“We want to show that Jaén is a treasure environmentally, monumentally, culturally, and gastronomically, because we have this raw material, olive oil, that is unique in the world.”
Infinite flavors
Johnny Madge leading a tasting workshop, photo courtesy of Johnny Madge
Each oleo-destination attests to the remarkable diversity of Spanish olive oils. The range of flavors often surprises visitors, says international olive oil taster and judge Johnny Madge, who leads oleo-tours in the Valencia region. “People are staggered when I give them an olive oil which tastes of raw peas or another one of tomato, bananas, or even strawberries, and some of the riper oils. They don’t expect that complexity.”
Modern mill technology has expanded the possibilities, revealing greater nuances. Madge takes guests to a museum with a 17th-century mill to demonstrate the difference. “The olive oil in the old days was no good,” he says. “The mills were filthy, and the mats they used in the presses were also filthy and impossible to clean.” At the next stop, a modern mill, they can see, smell, and taste the contrast.
“The modern way of making olive oil is the best way,” he says, “and it's getting better and better every day, because it’s getting cleaner and more efficient. The technology is just making oils spectacular.”
Madge has observed a growing interest in oleotourism in Spain and Italy and predicts that olive oil will become the next coffee or chocolate, with aficionados increasingly seeking out unique, small-batch oils. “[People] are beginning to see that different varieties can be used in different ways on different kinds of food,” he says. “In the old days, people just thought [olive oil] was what you put on bread or in a salad. But they’re beginning to understand that they can use it on their food in a way that transforms it.”
A boon for biodiversity
That’s encouraging news for the over 400 olive varieties in Spain, where large-scale operations are increasingly dominated by the few varieties best suited to high-density farming.
“Olive groves that are 500, 600, or 1,000 years old are part of our monumental heritage, but they’re being uprooted,” Garcia says. “It’s very sad, but it’s happening all over Spain […] because it’s not profitable for farmers.”
“One wayto ensure that minority varieties are not lost,” she says, “is to promote them through oleotourism.”
Supporting small producers
The Olive Oil Workshop founder Alexis Kerner
Expert olive oil taster Alexis Kerner launched her Seville-based company, The Olive Oil Workshop, because producers kept telling her the same thing: consumers didn’t know what they were buying and weren’t willing to pay the price for quality olive oil.
Kerner offers tasting workshops, pairings, and market tours that highlight small and medium producers who use traditional methods. There’s no way for them to stay afloat, she says, without a subsidy or side gig. “Oleotourism is important just for producers to stay in business, and for people to get to know brands that they may not have access to in their day-to-day.”
Beyond teaching guests how to taste olive oil and how to buy and use it back home, she hopes they feel connected to something bigger. “It’s not just about food,” she says. “It’s also about biodiversity, the environment, health, and Mediterranean cuisine. It’s helping small family producers trying to make ends meet.”
Maintaining a way of life
A desire to share the culture of olive oil is often the primary reason Spanish businesses participate in oleotourism, according to a 2023 study by the University of Jaén. “Olive oil is more than a mere product to the peoples of the Mediterranean, it is a true culture,” note the authors of another oleotourism study.
Olive oil is both a product and a catalyst of IRL human-to-human contact. “We’re at a point in our existence with social media where we can text people and don’t have to talk to anyone. It’s dangerous,” Kerner says. “Extra virgin olive oil, the Mediterranean diet […], brings people together—it brings people together at the dinner table to discuss, brings people together to collect olives.”
Olive oil tourists can strengthen this network, no matter which experience they choose.
In Oliete, the Apadrina un Olivo team feels this bond. Sponsors have named adopted trees after lost loved ones and wed beneath their tree’s branches. “The roots hold all these stories,” Sancho says. “We want people to come, enjoy themselves, learn about olive oil, and feel like they’re at home,” she says. “We end up becoming one big family.”
“When you go to a place,” Kerner says, “you need to support the fabric of their existence, and olive oil is a very integral part of Spanish culture. So you’re helping to make sure it survives, whether you visit a mill, come to me, or start purchasing extra virgin olive oil from small and medium producers. You’re giving these smaller communities a future.”
At the DOP Priego de Córdoba, García also sees her work as part of a much greater whole. “Above all, we’re defending olive oil culture in general, regardless of whether it carries our seal or not.”
“Olive oil tourism is essential for olive oil culture.”