C4

ACTIVITY

Entrepreneurial Mindset

SPAIN

1-5 JUNE 2023

Winery, Local Business and Ethnographic Museum

On 3rd June, the students and teachers of our Erasmus+ program visited a small town of about 2300 inhabitants called El Provencio, which is near our town, Belmonte. The City Hall of this town has created what’s called in Spanish a “Vivero tecnológico”, a business incubator to help entrepreneurs who want to start up their own businesses by giving them advice, contacts and so on. Many people from abroad have established themselves here through this program, for example a family from Argentina opened an Argentinian Grill Restaurant. For the Town House this is a way to fight the serious depopulation that rural areas of Spain are experiencing.

We visited two of their most traditional and well-established industries. The first one is called “Osma & Guerrero” and started as a paper mill. Nowadays, they have expanded and make different cleaning products that they sell worldwide and employ many people in this town.

After this, we had a fast-morning snack or “almuerzo” and tried some typical local dishes. Then, we walked to the local winery where the process of winemaking was explained to us and where we took a tour of the facilities. This winery is a cooperative business in which most of the families in this town are involved. They are also selling wine worldwide currently. It was founded in 1950 and has around 600 hectares of vineyards.

Finally, we visited a traditional wine cellar which has been turned into an ethnographic museum, “La Bodega del Doctor Antonio García Plaza”. This museum is a typical Castilian house where you can find many traditional objects used in agriculture and wine making.