Inteview with Ana Labarta

 You claim that today’s techniques to obtain sugar from sugarcanes are the same ones used by the Arabs, only modernised. Has technology been unable to supersede traditional techniques? 
These techniques come from India. But I don’t think this is a technological matter, but an economic one. Investment on technology has to be made considering the potential profits of sugar production. It is not always worth the risk. On the contrary, with traditional means, the investment needed is minimum. Your benefits are also limited but constant. Anyway, this does not mean the sugar industry is not working.

What is the process carried out in order to obtain sugar from sugarcanes? 
First of all, you have to squeeze it and get the juice out of it. Later, the juice has to go through some chemical changes to get rid of the proteins that won’t crystallise. Then, the product is put to boil until there is only a fourth part of it left. Afterwards, the remains have to crystallise. This can be done very easily with some containers, or the way it is done in modern industries— it is crystallised and then it is placed into a centrifuge that separates liquids and crystals. The product obtained can be refined again adding animal carbons or sulphurs to clean the product and make it whiter. What I am interested in is not the white kind of sugar, but the traditional one, obtained using containers similar to the ones used to make cheese, which is brown.

From all the innovative techniques developed to obtain sugar, which do you find to be more important or revolutionary?
I think that the most revolutionary technique used to obtain sugar was to bite the cane. The fact that humans realised that you could bite and eat this plant.

On the 15th century, La Safor was living its golden age of sugarcane production. They produced so much that they even exported their surpluses to other countries. Time has gone by and everything has changed but, where is La Safor standing nowadays regarding current sugarcane production?
I have no idea. Precisely, today’s production is not my field of research. Besides, Spain has its limits within the European Union and produces what it is allowed to produce. It has a quota for its own use, a quota for European use, and a quota for exporting… Currently there are some European laws that make the sugar industry different from what it was in the middle Ages, obviously.

 Why was La Safor an ideal area to grow this plant?
Because the sugarcane is a subtropical product. A subtropical plant needs good soil, rain, protection from the mountains and to be located in a flat and low area. La Safor was not an ideal area. It was a borderline area, and that is why the Canary Islands and Madeira, and later on America, replaced it as a sugarcane producing area. Their climate, humidity and land were far better for sugarcane growing than our own. Of course, compared to Galicia or England, La Safor’s climate was quite good.

Do you think that people living in towns like Oliva or Gandia know about the importance their towns had six centuries ago?
I don’t know. I think so. I mean, there are websites on the Internet that talk about it. Pep Gisbert, director of Denia’s Museum, has looked for every trapig¹ ruins and remains. There are some people that have actually studied this, but I don’t know about the knowledge of the common people. Cultured people, historians, archaeologists and the such do know about this.

La Safor lost prestige as a sugarcane producing region by the end of the 16th century. It was due in part to the expulsion of Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, who were the ones growing this plant. Were we incapable of taking their work on?
I don’t think that’s true. Sugar production was already decaying when Muslims were expelled from Spain. American sugar was already competing with sugar from the Canary Islands and Madeira. The situation here was already a disaster.

In your opinion, have we been capable of preserving the heritage left by the Arabs? Speaking in terms of language, architecture, harvesting techniques…
Spaniards tend not to preserve their heritage. Our country preserves nothing of what it has been left with.

According to you, what is the most important heritage left by the Arabs at the region of Valencia?
I wouldn’t know what to choose. Probably the irrigation systems with its irrigation channels, water distribution techniques that are still used.

And back to sugar, it seems people buy refined white sugar more than your defended pure sugarcane sugar.
Well, refined sugar comes also from sugarcane or beetroot.

That’s right, but refined white sugar is more consumed than the brown one, which has more additives.
This is a marketing issue. White sugar dominates the market, but currently people are more prone to choose more natural products. In fact, sugar has some very important religious and philosophical issues around it I cannot talk about in my conference because I only have one hour. We could be talking about sugar for years. There are many books and articles written on the subject, and the quantity of branches and ramifications it has are unthinkable. For instance, people used to discuss whether eating sugar was breaking Lent or not. The Catholic Church engaged in many arguments regarding this matter. They were not sure how to classify it— as food or merely as a condiment.

In fact sugar affects us also biologically. It has been proven that it is less healthy eating refined white sugar than brown sugar.
Of course. That’s another brand for research —the whole medical issue. Is it good or bad for our health? When beetroot sugar became known, they used to say that it was really good, that thin and weak people recovered after having some sugar. But later on they started to say that it caused cavities in teeth and that it was really dangerous for people with diabetes…Nowadays they also say that it is the cause for childhood obesity. All of these beverages contain sugars but, are they responsible for childhood obesity? Of course, sugar sellers say the fats taken when drinking juices, a Coca-Cola or a Fanta cause obesity and not sugar.

 You said earlier that there is a section in society that is trying to follow an ecologic lifestyle. Do you think this will encourage people to consume unrefined sugars? Like brown sugar, for instance.
Brown sugar sold in stores usually isn’t unrefined sugar, but refined sugar with artificial colours added. I mean, they have taken white sugar and added caramel or artificial colours to make it brown. It is not the sugar we are talking about, but some kind of forged sugar.

So you are saying pure sugar can only be found in the tropical countries where it is still grown?
Colombian panelas² can be found in Latin American stores. I once went to one and for one or two Euros you can get a bag with four panelitas.

You can make manufacture products from sugarcane. From rum to vinegar, wine, sweeties, clothes, alfeñiques³… Could we say it is one of the most profitable plants?
Sugarcane has many uses, but making it profitable or not is an economic matter. It depends on how it is treated, on the investment made on technology, on the market price of the product. If you invest a lot in the sugar industry and world sugar rates drop, you will be ruined. On the other hand, if your make no investments and you have a trapig qthat works with wooden cylinders and a donkey walking in circles, and afterwards you just put to boil what you obtained, then you might get a profit of the sugar produced, but it won’t make you rich, of course. In addition, governments could also tell you that you can’t do that because it is not hygienic. The same happens with rum and cachaça production. Their distillation places can be repugnant, but for them it is profitable. However, if they had to invest in a more hygienic environment, it probably wouldn’t be very profitable.

Sugar has been linked to many cultures along history: China, Cuba, India… Which one has made the most of it?
India, without a trace of a doubt. In fact, today is still the first sugarcane producer in the world.

According to your research, sugar has helped in the development of areas like philosophy, biology, and politics, among others. Which area is more appealing to you for research nowadays?

Right now I am very interested in pre-industrial technology— whether they placed cylinders vertically or horizontally, or if they used clamps, for instance. I have seen one that has some sort of stick that holds the cane and it looks like as if it was biting it. In India they have some kind of large mortars, whose diameter is one metre long, and is worked by an animal. Well, I know my field of research is the Arab world, but right now I am interested in this area— technological knowledge that will help me having a better understanding of medieval texts related to sugar. An example is the way sugar is stretched to make alfeñique. I was reading about it in an Arabic text from the 11th century and I could not understand it until I saw it was a technique used in South-America nowadays.

Notes:

1. Stone mills  used up until the 16th century for sugarcane grounding . (Back to text).
2. Special kind of sugar produced in prismatic pans. (Back to text).
3. A kind of sugar sweet. (Back tol text).

Andrea González Garrigas. Student of Journalism at the University of Valencia.
© Mètode 2012.