Bitter orange trees decorate streets in Spain

Orange fruit and cross section (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The orange trees that decorate the streets and squares of the towns of the south and southwest of Spain are not fit for human consumption because the fruit skin absorbs all gases and toxic by-products of pollution in cities. Precisely, the orange peel is the fundamental ingredient of bitter marmalade, mainly exported to Britain, Ireland and the Scandinavian countries.
Bitter orange, used for the manufacture of jam by aggregating strips or tripping, is widely consumed in Anglo-Saxon countries, where there has been no need for promotion campaign. Not surprisingly, the best ambassador of this product has been the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, who usually have breakfast with this type of jam. The raw material is retained in the production of Sevilla, with 20 million kilos per year, followed by Cordoba, Cadiz and Huelva, to add 24,000 tonnes.

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But urban oranges, planted by municipalities and converted by the children into small balls for impromptu football matches or demonstrators protest any throwing weapons, is a "food product", according to the Association for the Defence of the Bitter Orange (ADNA), formed to defend the cultivation of this fruit and chaired by Dora Fraga, sister of President of the Regional Government of Galicia, Manuel Fraga, who has spent nearly half a century based in Mairena del Alcor, a town in the countryside of Seville.

ADNA warning of "high risk" that involves the use of orange in the streets for making jam because "your skin absorbs all gases and toxic by-products of urban pollution, such as lead and heavy metals emissions of vehicles. "

The president of the Agricultural Cooperative of Alcores Naranjera Joaquin Troncoso, fears that the problem runs splashing around a sector "because of the lack of ethics of some people who do not mind making a product that they know does not have the health records. " "The orange that occurs in the field goes through all the records and health checks and meets the quality guidelines of the EU food", argues Troncoso.

The president of the cooperative ensures that all the process has "more fringe than a tight and there can be none without control."

Must be destroyed

Two companies based in Seville and Valencia oranges continue to use the streets that get at a "ridiculous" because, according to the complaint Fraga, "for municipalities these fruits are just a nuisance because dirty streets."

Municipalities then seek a company that for twenty thousand pesetas or remove them completely free after thousands of tons sold at a price that destroys the market.

In this situation, the association has made agreements with several municipalities, including the city of Seville and the Council of Seville, to pick oranges and destroy them with tractors that "crushed in landfills," said Troncoso.

Plantar other orange

In addition, the association wants to go further and even change the type of orange trees are planted in cities. This would not affect the character of the orange ornamental as new leaf pattern is also perennial, has the same flavor and the same orange. The only thing that varies is the traditional orange fruit, which is "embedded and only the shell and that is because you can not market it to jam pulp also needed," said Troncoso, for whom marmalade " is the best in the world. "