A day in the marshes of Aponiente

• INTERVIEW Ángel León: "We have stopped looking at nature with hunger"

• RESTAURANTS Five 'gastro' openings that look very good

Chef

never thought that gastronomy could be such a beastly platform to reach people.

When he was studying at the hotel school and he liked a girl, he would tell her "that he was studying medicine".

Now, he is one of the biggest promoters worldwide of the consumption of food grown with seawater, launching a message of awareness about the scarcity of fresh water on the planet.

From his homeland, Cádiz, his restaurant with three Michelin stars to his credit, is the nerve center of his "crazy project".

"

. Aponiente looks for those proteins in water that supposedly are not on earth".

León believes that he does not want to change the way of doing things.

But he is not resigned, as he shows in projects such as La Huerta del Mar, the

that he stars in for

, promoted by Cervezas 1906.

The abandoned coasts, the thousands of kilometers of marshes, are presented as the opportunity to become a source of food for human beings.

For this, León is no longer alone.

Aponiente, in Puerto de Santa María,

, which generated movement of the wheels through the entrance of the Atlantic tide.

From its windows you can see the marshes of the Guadaletea River, around which a group of specialists works with whom to change the perception of algae (osmudea, codium, wakame...), halophytic or marine phanerogams.

Rafael Monge, creator of Exiled Cultivation.

"As a designer, I always told myself that my role was to provide solutions to the system, but I can't think while I'm inside. I have to get out of it. That way you acquire a much broader vision."

speaks

, who after developing his career in London and New York turned his eyes to his land and focused on his father's work to create Exiled Cultivation, where he produces

, an ancient system that uses water sea ​​for irrigation.

"It has happened here and everywhere. When we leave the earth we do not leave the system, we explore and we are seeing it in a different way. When we return to it, in my case, when I returned to Sanlúcar, I realized many things that I myself, for 20 years, had overlooked. And it continues to happen to people.

. When you have those resources, it's hard to see that it's something everyday It's extraordinary. You need to get away" says who has returned to his land and after shining the work of his father and grandfather with a business, innovative and cosmopolitan vision, now serves as an example to the London School of Economics.

Putting the focus on the place where one was born, another of the distinctive features of Aponiente, has not been easy either.

"

to promote ourselves . It seems that we live in the apathy that this is for us and we have to avoid external people coming. And if you go to another autonomous community, they are able to value much better what it has and to carry it as a flag. It costs us a little more," explains

, technical director of CTAQUA (Technological Center for Aquaculture).

"It's part of the culture," adds Monge, who cannot explain why the potatoes from Sanlúcar, which could be sold as a delicacy, have not yet been given the market they deserve.

"In France, from

they have been able to position themselves, there has been an institutional culture for gastronomic exploration, to provide solutions to food.

," he assures. "In the end, when there is any type of crisis, people change their perception of what is closest.

Then he values ​​more the day to day, the family... and the place where he lives.

" Agraso points out.

Juan Martín, head of R&D and environmental advisor at Aponiente

Juan Martín

is responsible for R&D and environmental advisor for Aponiente, and a key person in the development of its project around marine cereals.

"

bubbles. It goes slower than I would really like, but you do see those green shoots".

Martín has been in Cádiz since 2006, when I arrived at the Toruños marshland and considers that there are more and more examples "that add up little by little".

"We are going very slowly. Because in the end I am 45 years old and I started this when I was 24. And you say 'But ostias, quillo, he says but I'm still saying that there are 5,300 hectares of abandoned salt flats'"

The marshes are "a channel for seawater that enters, where you also let the fish in, but you don't let it out," says Chef del Mar himself. "They are fish that have no predators, that do not swim against the current, that have a point of salinity even higher than in the sea.

. That's why that surplus of fat and that flavor".

That is why León claims the green of the Atlantic Ocean.

"It's turbidity, food, food."

But he continues to mistreat himself.

"In nature, the barter is I give you a vegetable, I give you a meat, and then you give me something in return. Today we have money and an ecosystem that is not integrated into nature. With the pandemic we have had a good moment to reflect. When we have been standing still, the trees grew, the birds sang. Everything followed its course... and our ecosystem did not," says Monge.

"

We are not integrated. We have to see that we really need to improve our ecosystem and see our responsibility: who do I buy from, where do the vegetables come from ...

. And if it is, then so will we."

The marshes of Aponiente, in Puerto de Santa María (Cádiz).

The vision of Monge's Theory of Capitals coincides with that of Martín.

"It is very strong how this world is, it has been moving away from it.

... but, nevertheless, all these are isolated from the natural capital, which is on which all the others depend: if there is no plant, there is no colonization, there is no sea water that produces phytoplankton and produces oxygen, so there is no Starbucks, neither Lehman Brothers, nor financial capital, nor the Stock Market... It is what should be tried: These financial capitals return them to natural capital and give it the importance of the land where we live".

"I have been working in the estuaries of the area for approximately 20 years and

. The time has come and I say: 'we are absolutely the same,'" says Agraso.

"Everything does not change radically, but steps are being taken so that what was going very slowly speeds up a little more," says Monge.

In his opinion, "our ecosystem has to go together with ecosystems where the barter is I give you an animal, I give you a leaf, you give me something in return. Our barter is money.

l. We have to be profitable, because otherwise it is unsustainable".

"That's what enlightened people like Rafa Monge and Ángel León teach us," says environmentalist Martín.

"I have been a professional for 21 years with my binoculars hanging, restoring ecosystems, managing natural spaces, but in a somewhat puerile, somewhat bohemian way. And these gentlemen from other lands, from other fields, have to come to make you see it Angel has one thing very clear. He tells you 'yes, yes. Everything you are telling me about the salt flat is wonderful, but I want to take a 10-hectare salt flat, 5, 8, 20 hectares and I want to know If I can pay for it, if it's profitable, what do I need? Five employees, eight, three? Come on, okay, what can I produce?' And I answer: you can produce salt, you can produce salicornia, you can produce seafood, you can produce orchards , vegetables, tomatoes, peppers,

goats, milk, birds, ornithological tourism.

Then he answers you '

?

If the navacero does not recover the money from the pepper, then the next day the carrot will be cultivated with phytosanitary products and poisons."

María del Mar Agraso, Ángel León, Rafael Monge and Juan Martín.

"The business is totally different.

. You cannot say that you are going to sell a kilo of sea bream and sea bass at the market price, which is six euros. You have to say that your product is different, distinguished. So that product has to be sold at 20 euros per kilo. And there are people who want to consume it because they know that its flavor is special and exceptional. And that is what nobody is able to see at first," explains Agraso.

And that is why it has to be Ángel León who captures it in his restaurant.

"When I talked about my ideas 16 years ago,

. They felt insulted because I gave them the fish that nobody wanted," he says.

"I would like us to forget for a moment about the gourmet and the gastronomic because what we are talking about is health. It is not that it tastes better or that it is avant-garde. No. It is that you are eating a pepper, a tomato, an aubergine with all its properties, just as it tasted 250 years ago", intervenes Martín.

"

.

We have an impressive selfish culture: I see a backpack for two euros, three euros. How is this going to be?

A backpack cannot cost two euros in your life, nor can a kilo of potatoes cost 50 cents.

It is impossible.

What is there that has been lost along the way?

Environmental externalities.

So that communication is necessary, as with virgin sea salt, which has all the periodic table of elements in 100 grams.

.

It is fundamental to physiology.

Industrial salt, which is not defenestrated, because it has to coexist, has 99% sodium chloride.

It does not have that biodiversity, it does not have that culture, that verb, that vocabulary, that coexistence.

We lack didactics to explain to the citizen, to the consumer, that virgin sea salt apart from the fact that it will last an egg, because salt is a product that lasts a long time, it is healthy;

that the estuary fish that you are eating is of high quality and that the retinto meat is much healthier," concludes Martín.

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