The World of Iberian Ham and its Tourist Potential in the Sierra De Huelva (Andalusia, Spain)

Abstract

In the context of agricultural post-productivity, rural spaces acquire new functions or reinforce the existing ones. Thus, the production of quality food, as a part of agroindustry, and tourism appear as common activities in rural development strategies. Special attention is drawn to gastronomic tourism and the creation of routes as a creative expression of the integration and structuring of the territories. The Iberian ham is a unique product, known worldwide, produced exclusively in the SW quadrant of the Iberian Peninsula. It is linked to a unique agro-system of the anthropised Mediterranean forest, also known as dehesa4, and comparably limited Iberian pig livestock, which has given rise to traditional culture and industry constituted in Local Productive System in many municipalities, supported by Protected Designation of Origin. The central objective of the research is to analyse existing tourist attraction related to the Iberian ham, its potential and the routes and products that have arisen around it. Having placed the territorial recognition as the starting point, the analysis of the resources and locations of the activities related to the Iberian ham was carried out based on scientific literature and the use of different databases. Secondly, the analysis of the potential tourism activities in the Sierra de Huelva region was implemented based on primary sources, namely surveys and interviews with intervening actors. The following results are obtained: a) the tourist potential of the Iberian pig world; b) complementarity with other tourist activities; c) difficulties in structuring existing attractions; d) multiplication of disconnected and sometimes coincident tourism initiatives; e) scarce participation of private actors in the initiatives launched.

Factors that characterize oleotourists in the province of Córdoba

“…Many studies focus on what motivates gastronomic tourists [14][15][16][17], as well as on gastronomy by country, e.g., France [18,19], Italy [20], Portugal [21,22], Croatia [23,24] and Spain [25][26][27], or by products, e.g., wine [27][28][29][30][31][32], cheese [33][34][35], and Iberian ham [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36]; however, there are fewer analyses of tourist offers [37][38][39] or demand forecasts [40][41][42][43]. In the case of oil, research on olive oil stands out.…”

Changes of Dynamics in Local Productive Systems Based on the Iberian Pig Transformation Industry in Western Sierra Morena (Spain)

“…In the SW of the Iberian peninsula, there is a unique agro-silvopastoral system that encompasses the dehesa, a historically cleared Mediterranean forest in which extensive livestock farming of the Iberian pig, known as porco preto or alentejano in Portugal, has traditionally arisen and taken advantage of the acorn of holm oaks and cork oaks during the montanera 1 (see Figures 1 and 2) [57]. 1 The period of autumn and winter during which Iberian pigs eat acorns in the dehesas.…”

“…As in other agro-industries, these factors converge in the territory of tradition, know-how, ancestral values, non-transferable tacit knowledge, behaviours and institutions and social capital [15,20,25]. These factors also acquire identity values common to the population [63], which result in "the world of the Iberian pig" [57], where the know-how contributes to territorial development [63] through internal economies based on social capital.…”