The Big Freeze of 1956

Or how the landscape of the Empordà region was changed forever...

Back in June, I wrote an article about a trip we made to Cadaqués to visit the Martín Faixó winery, in which I promised to elaborate on a couple of intriguing facts that cropped up during that tour. So since I’ve drawn a bit of a blank on this week’s newsletter, mainly due to the amount of rum consumed during the Cuban festival last weekend in the interests of research, I thought now might be a good time to revisit one or two of those facts.

So, there we were back in May, standing in the grounds of the Martín Faixó winery with the most sensational views stretching before us, northwards over the Cap de Creus massif towards Port de la Selva and eventually France. The proprietor, Rafael Martín, led the tour in person and gave a fascinating explanation of the winemaking history of the area and his own family’s involvement in it. All in Catalan, naturally.

Most of it I understood clearly, despite the howling tramuntana wind that had sprung up out of nowhere, apart from one word he kept repeating endlessly – lafret. Lafret this, lafret that. “Lafret de 1956” cropped up a lot. Eventually I was forced to ask our friends what the fret he meant.

Turns out it meant “the cold”, but in this particular context, THE cold. What we might call The Big Freeze. Of 1956, obviously. The Catalan word for cold is fred, pronounced “fret”, but everywhere else in Catalonia it’s a masculine word: el fred. Yet it seems that in Girona, and specifically in the Empordà region, it’s feminine: la fred. Hence my confusion.

Catalan is a fiendish language that students often suspect has been designed to deliberately confound Spanish speakers. Apart from the fact that gender is sometimes flexible depending on where you are in Catalonia, as in the above example, many Catalan words are identical to Spanish but have a different gender, which of course impacts any adjective you happen to use with them. Classic examples include el calor/la calor (heat: Spanish/Catalan), la señal/el senyal (sign: Spanish/Catalan) and la duda/el dubte (doubt: Spanish/Catalan). I could go on, but you get the idea.

Anyway, as Rafael Martín explained, the Big Freeze of 1956 was something else. There is even a book about it, entitled 1956: L’any de la fred.

In a nutshell, in February 1956 a cold front swept down from Scandinavia across most of Western Europe. For much of Catalonia, it turned out to be the coldest month of the twentieth century. In the Alt Empordà region, vast tracts of which were planted with vineyards and olive groves at that time, the temperatures failed to rise above -5ºC for 24 consecutive days. Needless to say, the impact on agriculture, which was the primary source of revenue for much of the region, was catastrophic. Pretty much all the winter crops were lost, but worst of all was that some 60% of olive trees were killed and had to be uprooted, many of which were hundreds of years old (not to mention the damage to citrus, almond and hazelnut trees). Thankfully most of the vineyards managed to escape unscathed as they were still in their winter dormancy period.

What happened was that December and January had been exceptionally mild – so mild, in fact, that the almond trees were already blossoming – so the farmers decided this would be the ideal time to prune their olive trees. This caused the sap to rise, as the trees assumed that spring had sprung, but on 1 February the cold arrived with an unprecedented vengeance, accompanied by exceptionally strong tramuntana winds. Branches were snapped off like twiglets; whole trees were uprooted by the gusts. Most trees were damaged beyond all hope of recovery.

Of course, nobody had central heating in those days. Taps and pipes froze and often exploded. Fountains, tanks, ponds and streams also froze. People everywhere were left without a water supply, as were many industries. Inland, there was heavy snowfall. Streets were turned into ice rinks. In some of the Costa Brava’s coves, the edges of the sea actually froze. Pitifully, the bodies of songbirds lay everywhere; most froze to death, but those who didn’t died anyway as all available water was frozen solid.

At the end of that dreadful month, the damage had to be assessed and some kind of solution found for people’s lost livelihoods. The municipal authorities, who were at least aware of the situation, initially suggested a reduction in taxes, but the Ministry of Agriculture in Madrid – let’s not forget that in those days there were no autonomous communities and the whole of Spain was run by Franco’s government – sent out a circular ordering the farmers not to get ahead of themselves but to try to recover the olive trees. The suggested solution was to apply either two kilos of nitrate per stump or a more complex mixture of ammonium sulphate, superphosphate, potash and nitrate. Once some time had passed, and the affected trees had been properly assessed, they could start pruning any dead branches. In the meantime, the Ministry would prepare a report on the damage. Surprise, surprise, it turned out that this solution was completely ineffective and by the end of summer 1956 the Ministry grudgingly allowed farmers to dig up the trees, but first, of course, they had to seek the proper authorization. The local town councils and farming associations were responsible for drawing up these applications which involved providing precise information on the number of olive trees on each farm, how many had to be uprooted, how many needed “energetic pruning” and how many needed “normal pruning”. Once the relevant inspection had been done, permits would be issued. Finally, finally, the Ministry issued a ruling on 17 October 1956 that allowed farmers to uproot their olive trees without obliging them to replant with the same crop if their productivity was less than 25% of their usual production before the Big Freeze. It also ordered them to complete the uprooting process by 30 April 1957.

This ruling overturned the archaic Decree of 1946 which prohibited the uprooting of olive trees because they were “an important species for the national economy”. Not everything was uprooted immediately, however, nor were all the olive trees  dug up. Some were “topped” in the hope they might sprout again, but many of them simply dried up. There had to be a waiting period to see what would happen. According to one farmer, “we spent two years in limbo when we didn’t know if they would die or recover”. The process was extended to 31 December 1961, with permission for a general uprooting: “when there is no possibility of replanting, the farmer may uproot the damaged olives with no further requirement”.

In that five-year period between 1956 and 1961 a mass uprooting took place. Gangs of small-scale farmers and day labourers were organized to start digging up the trees manually. They were paid by the quintar (about 42 kilos) – three pesetas per quintar for uprooting and chipping the trees, five for the landowner, and one for the truck driver. This provided work for a good number of people over five years.

Those 24 days had a tremendous economic and demographic impact on the people of the Empordà region (and, of course, elsewhere in Catalonia). Many people were forced to move to the cities in search of work. Others sold their land to developers and constructors, and often ended up working for them too.

By the end of this period, some 62% of the land planted with olive trees in the Alt Empordà had been uprooted. Even so, they managed to salvage some 1,800 hectares of olive groves and today the Alt Empordà accounts for 85.5% of all the olive trees in Girona province. Due to the fact that the price of olive oil was quite low in those days there was little interest in replanting new trees, so after the dead stumps had been uprooted the fields were replanted with wheat, oats and fodder crops, especially alfalfa. In rockier and hillier areas such as the Albera range and Cap de Creus, the olive groves were simply abandoned and taken over by scrubland and thickets.

A lesser-known anecdote in this whole process was the rumoured involvement of Salvador Dalí, a resident of Cadaqués. Dalí owned a house in Port Lligat, just outside the town, which had a fairly large olive grove attached to it. Dalí was not especially popular locally, being very matey with Franco and his cronies. In the wake of the Big Freeze of 1956, the local council was desperate to have the government declare a state of emergency, which would release government grants, and sent an official request to this effect to the central government. However, according to Dalí, whose olive grove was in a slightly more protected area very close to the sea, his olive trees were recovering well from the application of the mixture recommended by the Ministry of Agriculture. In June 1956, he had an official meeting with Franco, where it is suspected he disparaged the council’s request for catastrophic status, since his olive trees were fine (actually they weren’t, because he mistook a type of bloom on the trunks for fresh shoots). Whatever the case, the council’s request was refused. All supposition and rumour, of course, but ever since then Dalí has been held in very low esteem by Cadaqués locals.

Eventually, for the people affected in the Alt Empordà, compensation for lost jobs and wages arrived in the form of two new industries: construction and tourism. But there can be no doubt that the Big Freeze of 1956 marked a turning point not only in the transformation of Girona’s agricultural landscape but also in the economic future of the province.