The small, sweet local Ibiza strawberry is blooming again

01/08/2021

The variety was thought to be extinct, but they found what they were looking for in the garden of an old farmer lady. After years of searching, a technician for agricultural and food promotion at the Consell managed to find an older woman who still grows them: the local strawberries from Ibiza.

A test field has now been set up in the Can Marines agricultural training center. For several years now, Josep Lluís Joan has made it his business to find local fruits and vegetables, some of which have practically disappeared, in order to resume production and enable these varieties to be sold on the local market.

His work on the experimental farm on the road from Santa Eulalia to San Carlos began years ago with the production of the potato variety “vermella eivissenca”, which was adorned with the “Sabors d’Ibiza” seal of origin, same as the melon “meló eriçó”, the onion “ceba vermella” or the “tomata de penjar”.

The Ibiza strawberry is “very small, but very tasty, more like wild strawberries,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the large mainland strawberries that dominate the market.”