{"id":14667,"date":"2026-04-30T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/14667\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:11:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:11:00","slug":"spain-panic-over-the-future-of-paella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/14667\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain panic over the future of Paella"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president of the Arroz\u00faa cooperative, Francisco Pe\u00f1a P\u00e9rez, has denounced the situation of \u201cuncertainty\u201d facing the 2026 rice<\/a> season \u2014despite the water problem having been resolved\u2014 due to massive rice imports<\/a> from countries such as Myanmar, India, Pakistan and Vietnam, which have \u201ccrashed the market\u201d and generated competition he considers \u201ctotally unfair\u201d.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Europa Press, the president reported that \u201cthe European Union<\/a>\u2019s trade policy continues to sign agreements with Myanmar, India, Pakistan and Vietnam\u201d and warned that Mercosur is now adding to this situation, \u201cwhich further exacerbates the crisis in the sector\u201d.<\/p>\n

Pe\u00f1a stressed that \u201cthese are countries that engage in totally unfair competition against us, as they do not comply with any regulations and we have to comply with all of them because Europe is very demanding of its farmers<\/a> regarding environmental standards, workers\u2019 rights and achieving a carbon footprint of practically zero\u201d.<\/p>\n

He also insisted that \u201cwe have very little fungicide and insecticide to work with\u201d whilst \u201cthey have everything\u201d, which means that \u201cour rice has very high production costs and theirs very low\u201d and, consequently, \u201cwe cannot compete with imported rice\u201d.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the president warned that they have 60% of the rice from the previous season in storage (60 million kilos). Therefore, \u201cwe have sold only 40% of the production\u201d. They are currently wondering where they are going to store the rice from this new season.<\/p>\n

Pe\u00f1a explained that to tackle this crisis they have met with the Regional Minister of Agriculture<\/a> of the Andalusian Regional Government and that they are going to set up a working group to examine \u201chow to promote and explain to retailers, as well as to distribution chains, that people should consume a high-quality, locally sourced product\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the president emphasised the importance of \u2018transparent\u2019 labelling, stating that \u2018you cannot pull the wool over people\u2019s eyes and package imported rice whilst practically claiming it is domestic\u2019. For this reason, \u2018it is very important to state on the packet that it is produced, processed and distributed in Europe, in Spain<\/a> or in Andalusia\u2019.<\/p>\n

Finally, he highlighted the environmental role of the rice sector, noting that \u201cwe are supporting the entire wildlife of Do\u00f1ana. We feed thousands of flamingos, thousands of ducks and thousands of all kinds of waterfowl\u201d.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, he stated that they have even considered the question of \u201cwhether to plant or not to plant\u201d, as \u201cif this situation does not change, we will have to turn to something else, which would have serious consequences because if we do not plant, the wetlands of the rice sector in Seville or the Albufera in Valencia, for example, will be lost\u201d. Despite the situation and the uncertainty, Pe\u00f1a has assured that the sector plans to start the 2026 season in mid-May and that they hope to be given a new date to meet with the Regional Ministry of Agriculture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The president of the Arroz\u00faa cooperative, Francisco Pe\u00f1a P\u00e9rez, has denounced the situation of \u201cuncertainty\u201d facing the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8611,197,333,8612,7918,8610,8609,605,7926,8614,8613,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-14667","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-spain","8":"tag-agriculture","9":"tag-environment","10":"tag-european-union","11":"tag-farmers","12":"tag-food","13":"tag-gastronomy","14":"tag-imports","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-paella","17":"tag-restaurants-in-mallorca","18":"tag-rice","19":"tag-spain"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}