The Seeds
Our grandmothers grew tomatoes whose flavour no longer exists in supermarkets.
Themes we follow:
- Seed saving & seed guardians
- Heirloom and native varieties
- Biodiversity
- Why seed saving increased food safety
Heroes in this pillar
The people behind The Seeds
The Seeds
Vicent Dominguís
Rice farmer, Pego
From half a kilo of forgotten rice seeds, his family brought Pego’s own rice variety back to life.
The Seeds
Vicente Todolí
Citrus custodian, Palmera
Vicente Todolí ran Tate Modern in London, one of the most visited art museums in the world. Now he curates almost 500 varieties of citrus, spending his days among citrus trees, on the land his family farmed in Palmera.
The Fire
Pep Romany
Chef-activist, Dénia
His cooking begins in the field, with a forgotten wheat variety that he brought back to life, three days of sourdough patience and real fire.
The Seeds
Ana Climent
Heritage peanut seed guardian, La Nucía
Every spring, she plants heritage peanut seeds her family has kept alive for more than a century. Each generation saved it and planted it again, and now it is in her hands.
Related stories
Reportage from the field.
3 May 2026The season nobody films
August is the month when the least is happening in the fields here. The vines are waiting. The olives are small and green and months away. The citrus is invisible. The rice is standing in water doing nothing anyone can see. It is hot enough that sensible work stops at noon.
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18 May 2026What you are actually driving through
I have done that drive hundreds of times. Out of Xàbia, past the shoulder of the Montgó, inland through Pego, then either north towards the Safor or west into the mountains where the road narrows and the villages get very small.
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30 July 2026A grape with a memory
Pepe Mendoza gets the same question at every tasting and answers it with enormous patience. No, Giró is not Garnacha. He will explain why for as long as anybody wants to listen, and he has been explaining it for years.
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25 September 2026The man who calls his oven a Maserati
Five minutes. That is how long a coca spends in the oven at Pont Sec, and Pep Romany times it the way a man times things when he used to work in physics and hospital computing before he ever ran a kitchen.
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25 September 2026Five hundred grams of seed
The rice that made Pego famous vanished in the 1960s. Somebody found half a kilo of it.
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25 September 2026The man who curates fruit
Vicente Todolí ran Tate Modern. He now looks after around five hundred kinds of citrus in a village of a thousand people, and he calls it a museum.
Learn moreExplore the other pillars