How Olives Flourished in Spain

Before they came to the Americas

Read the first, and second of this series.

Para leer en español, deslice la página.

Through the colonization of Puerto Rico by the Spanish, as I mentioned previously, there was a process of transculturation: cultural traits were exchanged and established the  ethnic parts that would later create a “criollismo”— that is, a salad of the ingredients from here, Spain, Africa, and other ethnicities, such as the Arab. This Arab presence exists in both Spanish and Puerto Rican culture, although in the latter, it goes unmentioned.

Among the things exchanged is cooking with olive oil and even the integration of olive trees into Puerto Rican cuisine. (During colonization, there was also the production and integration of other vegetable oils such as coconut oil, an African technique.) To understand how olive oil came to be so central to Puerto Rican cuisine, it’s first important to know how it came to Spain. It was significant to the Arabs not just for cooking.