Refinería De Azúcar

Carmen the Bonita Senorita I've got a soft spot for popped round today with some doughnut nibbles. What a kafuffle, first the little blighter got stuck to my paw. It was dripping with sticky sugar. Then I dropped it on my tummy. It got stuck to my whiskers, my nose, everywhere. And it didn't even taste that nice when I finally got it to my mouth. I didn't let on to Carmen that it was quite yucky. Just grinned like a Cheshire cat and licked my lips, and my paws, and my tummy, and and. I wish Carmen had offered to help. That would have been nice.

Factoid: Around the towns of Motril and Salobrena, on the southern coast of Spain, sugar cane is still grown, an interesting remnant of a regional agro-industrial complex that has existed for a thousand years. Unfortunately the practice is about to come to an end with the closure of the last remaining sugar mill to produce sugar in the whole of Europe.

The Muslim Umayyads first introduced it in the tenth century, and it persisted throughout the medieval and modern centuries, despite rather marginal growing conditions. In favoured valleys, such as the Vega of Granada, the countryside around Seville, and along the rivers near Motril and Málaga, sugar cane found a warm climate that in most years escaped freezing temperatures.