A thousand years of rice in Sa Pobla

The Sa Pobla fair used to just be the autumn fair.

It still is the autumn fair, just that it now has a rice them. Sa Pobla also has a potato fair, as it is better known for its potatoes. But rice has a longer history than potatoes in Sa Pobla, which only started to be cultivated in the nineteenth century. Rice, on the other hand, was grown back in the Muslim centuries. After the Catalan conquest, it ceased to be grown as it was thought to be unhealthy because of how it was grown - in water.

A big attempt at reviving rice-growing came at the start of the last century, but this project was abandoned when flooding ruined the crops. There was a very limited rice business for the rest of the century until a genuinely concerted effort was made in the 1990s. Production has been intensive ever since, and the rice is what contributes to the traditional dish of arròs brut. The fair is officially ‘fira de l’arròs pobler’ and there is a grand cooking of arròs brut pobler.