The first news about the cultivation of peppers in the province of Cáceres dates from the end of the 15th century, when the Jerónimos friars of the Guadalupe Monastery spread it. Thus he arrived at the Monastery of Yuste and from there he moved to Murcia, through the convent of that religious order in La Ñora. At present, the cultivation of peppers to make the Paprika de la Vera enjoys great recognition throughout the national territory and is backed by numerous distinctions and awards. The Regulatory Council is in charge of ensuring that the Paprika from La Vera is a genuinely handmade product , unique in concept and elaboration, which has reached the category of Denomination of Origin. In La Vera, the pepper for paprika enjoys a privileged microclimate. Most of the producers prepare their own seedbeds that provide the plants necessary for their exploitation. Under normal conditions, during the month of March and the beginning of April, a space of land is prepared to carry out the sowing of the seeds controlled by the Regulatory Council. So that it is well loose, so that when we put the seed, it sprouts well. It makes a mess over there, on that side, then, when you pour the water over there, it jumps into the water and all the water remains swamped. Well, we are going to put the seed, of Jaranda, of paprika, very good quality of the paprika. And now we are going to start it off. Paprika type, Jaranda, bittersweet, to have good quality, it has good quality and is long. On a well aerated and loose soil, the verato farmer sows broadcast, calculating by the eye of experience the quantity of seeds and their concentration in the seedbed. You have to put a kilo of seed at the rate of hectare that is put. Once the seed is spread, it must be wrapped with a thin layer of soil. You have to put a little dirt on it and it covers it all the same, so that whenever it is, it will be born well. The land has to be very loose for them to grow well. To protect the seeds from the wind, cold, and any phenomenon that could alter the proper development at the beginning of germination, the seedbed is covered with gauze. Covering it with a gauze, to protect it from the cold, for within fifteen days that they are born, and then in May to put the plantation. Each farmer prepares the seedlings that he calculates that he will need to transplant them into the land that he has destined for this crop.Two months after sowing, the plants have already reached sufficient development to be able to plant them in the field, selecting them previously, one by one. a. The land destined to the cultivation of peppers has to be well tilled and fertilized before planting, and correctly leveled to avoid flooding that would drown some plants while others would dry up. The most suitable dates for transplanting peppers are between the beginning of May and June 10. At present, this task is carried out with automatic machines, which facilitate the operation saving time and effort. While two operators place the plants in the clamps so that, automatically, they are held in the hole that the same machine drills in the ground, another is checking that they grip well and that no space in the frame has been left unplanted. The most widely used planting frame is 20 centimeters between the plants and 90 centimeters between the lines, which is equivalent to about 40,000 plants per hectare. Before it was counted by hand, of course, there were no machines. It was done on a stretcher and watered by hoe. Now with the sprinkling, well, it is watered with the sprinkling, as is logical, and it is put with a machine. Automatically, the plants are attached to the ground, in the planting frame, keeping the same distance from each other. The planting technique is the same for the three varieties of pepper grown in La Vera: sweet, spicy and bittersweet. Once the peppers have been planted in the field, they must be given a first watering so that the roots grip well in the earth and the plant remains fixed. Its development will depend on the state of the land and on a uniform and controlled watering in the days following planting. If the weather is appropriate, and the fertilizers and irrigation that the plant requires are added, the growth of the peppers occurs normally. In mid-June, the pepper fields of La Vera are in full swing. Generally, each week you have to water the peppers so that the plant absorbs the organic matter in the soil. The water of La Vera is abundant, good and without salinity problems, which allows a good development of the peppers. In good conditions the pepper grows and matures slowly. Both the excess of waterings and the force of the sun are detrimental for a good development of the bushes. But with the passage of time and thanks to the successive cares, the flowers are bearing fruit. Little by little, the already formed peppers ripen and take on their characteristic reddish color. In 1973 the Jaraíz town hall, with the idea of promoting carnivals, organized the paprika festival, awarding prizes to farmers. In 1976 the festivities were passed to the month of August, thus initiating the tobacco and pepper contest that we know today, the two most widespread crops in the region. Each participant submits to the competition those bushes that he considers most representative of the quality of his production, meeting all the requirements required by the Denomination of Origin of Paprika de la Vera. A jury evaluates the individualized plants and awards the prize to the one whose fruits are of greater weight in total. In order to motivate this traditional crop, the basis of La Vera's economy, the contest also takes into account crop farms, awarding prizes to those that obtain the best valuation. If the weather has been favorable, the pepper harvest begins in mid -September and usually lasts until the end of October. This task is still carried out manually, as there are no harvesting machines that provide satisfactory results. Well, the way of picking the pepper has always been done as we are doing it here now, by hand. It is a harvest that requires a lot of labor, because it is very laborious, you have to look for a pepper shaker, as you can see here, there is the pepper that has a lot of leaves. The moment of harvesting is very important since the degree of maturity of the fruits must be taken into account , so that it is the most appropriate to achieve a perfect drying with the best possible coloring. Well, the best time is now to start at the beginning of September, which is when you start to pick pepper, but the pepper must be picked when it is rather good, that it does not make those heats, because this is here to withstand heat in the month of August, here bending down all day, because one has a lot of calories that ... Then you have to start when things are a little fresh so that the staff who are here picking peppers are fresher, with more spirit, than do not come here to stoop, and stay with the sun overwhelmed, the sun overwhelms a lot. The peppers are placed in bags and transported directly to the farm's dryers. There they will be subjected to the traditional dehydration process typical of these lands. The first phase of the production of Paprika de La Vera consists of drying the fruits "in smoke", and is carried out in vertical current dryers with a lower hearth. The dryers or dryers are rectangular constructions of variable dimensions that are located in the same farms where the cultivation takes place. They are divided into two floors by a plank floor. On the ground floor is the combustion chamber, where one or two fireplaces are lit , on a bed of earth so that the cement does not break. The upper floor is the place where the collected fruits are deposited to be dried. The roof is usually gabled and is built with logs and boards covered by tiles, in such a way that they allow the smoke to escape. The drying method consists of the gases from the slow combustion of the firewood. Having good firewood is the most important thing. The oak firewood, a firewood that gives very little flame and a lot of embers, that herds very well and dries very well. As its combustion is very slow, every so often you have to stoke the embers so that the fire does not go out. About three and a half hours, four hours, more or less it gets stoked. At night too. You stoke it at 12 when you go to bed and then at three or so and then at six in the morning when you get up. Twelve days. Between twelve, thirteen, depending on the time. More or less, the same temperature always. We are on top of the drying room. This is the wooden curb. It is about eight feet from the ground. Then, the separation of the tapes is more or less than a centimeter and it is usually pine wood , poplar and things like that and that is where the pepper dries. Well, here, in normal and current time about 12 days, 13. And if the temperatures are higher, then maybe one day less depending on the temperature. If it's cold one more day. Depending on the weather. This, for example, which we are, has been drying between 600 and 640 kilos, dry. Every twelve days, how long it takes to dry. In La Vera, this is an alternative process to drying in the sun that is carried out in the Murcia area , since in the autumn months the rains are frequent. For this reason, the smoke drying gives the Paprika de la Vera a great stability of color and smoked flavor and aroma, which make it different from other paprika. The whole pepper is loaded onto the wooden grating, maintaining a thickness that varies between 70 and 80 cm. As veratos farmers say, the pepper must be picked well rendered, that is, ripened, because not so much firewood is consumed and it takes fewer days to dry it. For example, any green and whole pepper, since it weighs seven kilos in green, stays in one dry. But a pepper of these since it comes more rendered is four kilos green for one dry. That the performance is the same, what happens that the expense is not the same. Of course, a more whole pepper, it costs more to dry it and it takes more firewood, more work, because there are more days in the dryer to jorearle it and for everything. The firewood is burned in the combustion chamber, keeping the bonfire until the peppers are completely dehydrated. This drying system requires a significant consumption of firewood. The prolonged stay of the peppers in the dryer provides an over- ripening time for those fruits that had not completed their ripening in the field, which contributes to an improvement in the degree of color. The task of drying the peppers is the hardest for the farmer, because apart from maintaining the fire, every twenty-four hours he must turn the peppers. Surrounding. This is to turn the pepper, what is at the top is put at the bottom and the bottom at the top. Let it dry everything evenly, all at the same time, because if you leave it without turning it over, the bottom pepper dries everything and the top one does not. The heat and smoke produced in the combustion chamber rise by convection through the frame of boards, drying the layer of peppers that are placed on it. To achieve uniformity in the drying of the fruits, a turning is carried out regularly, which is called "surrounded". This so that peppers do not fall on the fire when you turn it over. Well, when the pepper burns there, it throws a lot of smoke and there is no one who can stand up. Now I am going to surround him, I am going to turn him over so that the pepper that is on top is on the bottom and so that everything dries equally. This slow, gentle and not very aggressive artisan drying makes it possible for the fruits, at the end of the process, to maintain their carotenoid content, and even in some cases, it is increased. At the end of the drying process, the fruits should not contain more than 15% moisture. Once the peppers have reached their optimum degree of drying, the veratos pepper holders proceed to remove them from the dryer and crush them. The farmers sell the dried peppers, called "peel" or "branch", to the milling industries of the area, in which they proceed to obtain the paprika. But, for this, they must be well crushed. It has always been crushed on foot. What happens is that times are changing and all this is modernizing, but before it was crushed up there and thrown down. This work was aimed at reducing the volume of the peppers to increase the capacity of the bags. Well, this so that it takes in fewer bags, because if you leave the pepper whole, then it fills many bags, apart from the fact that the whole pepper gets more rubbery. Before he climbed upstairs, he stepped on everything, he stepped on it well so that all the pepper was split , then he threw it through a window that has the corners of the drying room down to the ground and put it in sacks. Come on, not before, there are many people who continue to do it now. And then he also used a stick. There were some who were throwing the pepper here and you with a stick pointing at it to fill as few bags as possible. Before, the factory sent the truck and they paid the shipping and they paid for that and then, by bags, and then, all those, because the fewer bags they carried, the better. And then, people used to put themselves there with a stick, pim, pam, come to encañar, come to encañar ... The peppers, dried and crushed, are already ready to be transported to the factory and make the paprika Since its inception, the process of grinding dry peppers in La Vera has undergone modifications. Formerly, grinding was carried out in hydraulic cereal mills. With the arrival of the electric current, the modernization and development of the paprika industry began. Although the varieties arrive at the factories selected by the Regulatory Council, the first thing that is done is to check the product through a conveyor belt where the leaves and the rotten fruits are separated by hand. From there they go to a shredding machine that, by means of a system of hammers and sieves, separates the tail or peduncle. In this first phase of cleaning the product, which is called “return”, a machine intervenes that separates the dust by suction and the earth by gravity. In the desbinzadora, which is a kind of sieve, the peel of the pepper is crushed and the seeds and impurities are separated. The residues and dirt that have accumulated in this operation are collected in bags at the foot of the factory. The product resulting from the "return", after checking its thickness, is stored in a large pile to move on to the following milling phases. The pepper has its natural fat and it must be squeezed to extract it, so the next phase of grinding is carried out in emery stone mills. The operator is in charge of regulating the separation between the stones, depending on the thickness that he wants to give to the resulting product. The crushed pepper or "return" goes through an endless, and is distributed in the regulating hoppers of each of the mills placed in battery. In the right measurements, the return enters between the vertical stones of the mill and leaves through a tube, being transported by an endless to the corresponding pile. As the paprika growers say, in the first passes is where you have to punish the most because the fat has not yet come out, that is, you have to bring the stones closer and that there is little fall so that the paprika stays longer between the friction surfaces . The product will have to go through the stones at least five times to achieve the desired granulate and the characteristic color. In the collection pile, the expert operator checks the result obtained and determines the quality based on its texture, coloration and gloss. The grinding process must continue, but this time automatically bringing the stones closer together so that they grind the pepper powder more finely. In the last two passes, the fall of the paprika is further increased and the approach of the stones is reduced so that the product acquires the ideal consistency. Through an auger located under the pile, the paprika is led into the mills, which are increasingly closed. The resulting product, finer, red and aromatic than the previous one, is collected in another pile. As in the previous occasions, it is necessary to carry out a control of the samples to verify that the paprika comes out with the desired qualities. The next step in grinding, called "transmission", occurs in horizontal stone mills , where there is one fixed and one mobile. There, the paprika is rubbed on the paprika, that is, it is heated, to increase the color of its natural fat. The paprika obtained is classified into three different varieties, according to its origin, called: spicy, ocal or bittersweet and sweet. As the pepper consignments that arrive at the factories are from different farmers, the paprika obtained is stored and homologation is carried out for consignments of 10 or 12 tons, following the regulations of the Regulatory Council. During the grinding process, special attention must be paid to the temperature reached by the product, to ensure that a red, fine and uniform powder is obtained. In the past, the mixture of the product resulting from the different batches of the same variety was made with shovels. At present, the paprika is passed through the sieves, because some product may remain without grinding. Although the paprika is already prepared, it cannot be marketed until the Regulatory Council gives its approval. Due to the fact that the main destination of Pimentón de la Vera is the sausage industry and other related industries , the most common is packaging in raffia sacks with a capacity of 5 to 50 kilos. Paprika, the result of dried pepper, with a smoky aroma and flavor, is a natural, intense red coloring that is essential in good cooking. In stews and sauces, as well as in dressings and marinades, La Vera paprika is a touch of distinction from traditional cuisine, the same as always, which cares for its dishes with care and care, obtaining characteristic flavors of the chef's know-how . I am Eugenio Monesma, director and producer of the documentary you just saw. If you liked it, I encourage you to subscribe to the channel by activating the notifications from the bell so that you can enjoy the hundreds of documentaries that I already have on the channel and which I will upload weekly.
