by Ken Cross
First published in The Almanzora Group of Friends Magazine, August 2011
Esparto, or Spanish Grass is the grey-green needle grasses that cover our landscape it is indigenous to southern Spain and northern Africa.
It flourishes in sandy, dry and sunny situations on the seacoast so is especially abundant in the sterile and rugged parts of Murcia and Almería.
It attains a height of 3 or 4 ft and grows in clusters of from 2 to 10 ft.
The leaves have a tenacity of fibre and flexibility so for centuries have been used for the making of ropes, sandals, baskets, mats and other articles. Ship's cables of esparto, being light, have the quality of floating on water, and have long been in use in the Spanish navy.
| Esparto grass, which grows freely in the vicinity of Cartagena, is the spartum, or Spanish grass, which gave the town its Roman designation of Carthago Spartaria. It is still used locally for making shoes, ship's cables, mats and a kind of spun cloth |
Esparto In Almería
Once the cultivation and harvesting of Esparto was big business in Almería which in 1864 had a plantation covering 2000 sq kilometres (Nearly one quarter of Almería).
It was very strictly controlled, and to ensure the supplies continued there was a harvesting season and no gathering was allowed between 15 July and 31 December. Due to their adherence to the stems being so firm as often to cause the uprooting of the plants in the attempt to remove them.
The leaves were gathered by hand, and from 2 to 3 cwt. could be collected in a day by a single labourer.
Almería would export 20,000 tons pa and in 1914 there was a big paper factory in Almería city. Most esparto went to France and UK.
Águilas was the main port for our region exporting straight to the London Docks where barges would then take the esparto up the Grand Union canal to Croxley and Brentford where the paper mills were.
A lot of Esparto was imported in Scotland where In the 1950s, about a third of all the esparto grass that came into the UK arrived at Granton a major port for the import of esparto grass to the UK. - 100,000 tons of it.
Esparto paper = High class paper
- The fibre makes a high quality paper often used in book manufacturing. First used in Great Britain in 1850, it has been extensively used there and in Europe, but is rarely found in the United States because of the cost of transport. It is usually combined with five to ten percent wood pulp.
- The "Spanish" grade is usually regarded as the higher-quality, while the "Tripoli" grade, from Africa, is the lesser in quality.
- Some manufacturers of cigarette rolling paper may use esparto, which might lead to a slightly higher carcinogen level when burned.
- The paper takes ink readily, presents minimum problems with regard to shrinkage and stretch, has excellent folding properties, and does not tend to dust or fluff during printing. Its major shortcoming is its low strength, which is due to its relatively short fibre length.
Esparto was important in the mining industry in the area where it was used to manufacture the large baskets that carried the ore, the rope that pulled them and the shoes for the miners.
- For the Great Southern Spanish Railway esparto was the 2nd biggest export after iron ore.
- In 1940 landowners sold concessions creating hardship for the workforce and creating an illegal trade.
- The invention of Plastic was the beginning of the end for a lot of products.
- Cheaper supplies were sourced from North Africa, due to cheaper labour cost.
- The First World War affected supplies and then subsequently the Civil War.
- Rags and wood pulp became better and cheaper options for paper.
- Locally esparto is still popular around the Nijar area, employed for crafts (cords, baskets, espadrilles, etc.)
| Manchego Cheese is pressed in a barrel shape and the rind is rather waxy and inedible due to it being wrapped in sheets of woven esparto grass. |