Olive oil thieves target ‘ liquid gold’

Spanish farmers patrol to protect their groves

NAVAL VILLAR DE PELA, SPAIN• To the families who depend on the olive groves of Extremadura in central Spain, the oil they produce is “liquid gold.”

However, the vital harvest that sustains them has also attracted mafia- backed thieves. Now, after a year of relentless nighttime raids, farmers are fighting back.

“We’ve always had some thieving here, but I’ve never seen anything like this — looting has become the order of the day,” said Antonio Masa Canada, who spent most of Christmas not with his family but out on patrol.

In the 4,000-strong village of Navalvillar de Pela, where almost every family has a clutch of trees, the Christmas carol service took place at 3 a.m. around a bonfire lit to keep the locals warm as they defended their crops.

Masa Canada’s wife, Rosa Arroyo Baviano, admits the family Christmas was spoiled for the couple’s 14- year- old son, Sergio. “But this is our living,” she adds. “We don’t have a life at the minute; you come home from picking, have a shower and then go out again on patrol.”

In recent weeks, as the olives began to ripen, the toll has been extreme as mainly Romanian and Bulgarian thieves have taken advantage of unseasonably clement nights to strip entire groves, carting off sackfuls of olives to sell on the black market.

In just one night in midNovember, 26,000 kilograms were stripped from the trees, a haul worth $16,000 U.S. at the rate paid by the local San Isidro co-operative to its 300 members this season. Once processed, the best virgin oils fetch $4 a kilogram.

Masa Canada, 43, set up his crime- busting group in April, but it was only when the number of thefts increased as harvest time approached that the initiative caught on. “Once we showed people that the thieves could be caught, things changed.”

Now up to 40 people, using a dozen vehicles, head out on patrols from 8 p.m., communicating via a WhatsApp group chat.

Even so, Masa Canada fears there is a risk that some farmers might take matters into their own hands, despite his warnings that they should follow the law.

“This is a powder keg and it’s about to go off. Imagine what could happen if the wrong person finds someone stealing in a very remote spot and we will be in the news as the village where someone got lynched.”

The thefts have also caused tensions between small family growers and large producers, who they suspect of “laundering” stolen olives by mixing them in with their own crops before taking them for processing.

“We think there is a mafia behind this. Clearly, if they steal olives, someone is buying the stuff,” said Masa Canada.