The Authentic Encyclopedia of Spanish Rice

Just over a month ago, the rice harvest ended, but to the residents and farmers of the Valencian region of l'Horta-Albufera, it may seem like an eternity. Despite the calamities brought by the water, at least they did not have to worry about losing this year's rice crop. The rice is harvested between late September and early October, so it was safely stored when the lands where it grew were devastated by the DANA. Unfortunately, when the news stops covering the disaster in towns like Alfafar, Benetússer, Massanassa, Algemesí, Catarroja, or Sedaví, which live by and for the Albufera rice, they will have to worry about the next harvest.

The environmental red alert has been on for weeks due to the immense amounts of mud, plastic waste, and other pollutants that have accumulated in the Albufera natural park, where much of the cereal with the Designation of Origin Arroz de Valencia is cultivated.

Now, when they should be busy with the 'perellonà' or winter flooding of the fields, the 'arrossers' of the South Huerta are cleaning the affected lands (around a third of the production area) and crossing their fingers that the analyses or studies conducted until spring will give the green light to the cultivation process and the rice plants can perform their traditional role as a natural "filter." There's little I can do for them, but I can remind everyone of how much we owe to Valencian rice and its workers.

Currently, rice production is as important or even more so than Valencian production in other areas of Spain such as Andalusia (especially in the Guadalquivir marshes of Seville), Catalonia (Ebro Delta, in Tarragona), and Extremadura (Guadiana meadows), but in almost all of them, the knowledge, seed, and labor originally came from the Levantine wetlands. The exquisite paella and most of the information on how to cook or make use of rice also originated there.

Interestingly, it was a government initiative that encouraged Spaniards to lose their fear of rice. On November 19, 1927, the National Rice Consortium was created by royal decree, an institution based in Valencia city, whose aims included safeguarding the commercial interests of the sector, establishing minimum prices, promoting its consumption, and increasing product exports.

Landowners, farmers, product processors, and export traders from the provinces of Valencia, Castellón, Alicante, and Tarragona were required to join the Consortium, paying an entry fee, an annual fee, and a surcharge for each metric quintal of rice they processed. To the forced members, this seemed an abuse with little or no benefit, while the excluded (the rice growers of Murcia, Albacete, Seville, or Girona) were outraged.

That project ended in failure, and the consortium was abolished in March 1930, but its 28 months of existence were quite productive. It organized a poster contest to promote "the world supremacy of Spanish rice," held informative conferences and tastings, and in 1929 set up information pavilions at the International Exhibition of Barcelona and the Ibero-American Exhibition of Seville, also arranging for the major hotels in both cities to offer rice dishes on their menus.

There was even a plan to reach every corner of the country with vans equipped with kitchens where various rice-based recipes would be taught for free, with tasting included. The press announced that "leaflets with apologetic indications of rice and forms for seasoning it in various ways" would also be distributed. To publish a monumental work on the gastronomic possibilities of rice, the renowned chef Ignacio Domènech, whom we recently discussed here, and the Valencian painter José Segrelles were hired. One would write the recipes, and the other would illustrate them.

The sudden liquidation of the consortium meant that the rice recipe book never saw the light, but in reality, the work was already done. In 1932, Domènech independently published a monumental book titled '160 Rice Dishes,' and shortly after, the documentation and resources of the original setup were used by its various successors (the Association of Rice Exporters of Spain, the Federation of Rice Processors, and the National Rice Union) to publish several booklets between 1933 and 1956.

All of them were based on what Segrelles and Domènech had prepared, and although the successive editions of 'Culinary Recipes of Rice' differ in the number of pages, illustrations, or cooking formulas, they are a compendium of almost everything that can be done with this ingredient, from the indispensable Valencian paella to arroz a banda, to Zamorana or with milk. They were given away in stores for years, and with them, several generations learned to cook rice, so in the end, the consortium triumphed. Although, like El Cid, it did so after its demise.