Juan Candelas Fernández, today we talk with Juan, a man who began as an apprentice in the sector at 14 years old. At this time, then donkeys were still moving the grinding stones in the oil mills. Juan has various years of experience on his back as he has worked in more than 2,000 mills, some olive pomace mills, and other refineries. After that, he moved on to the commercial side as he began to sell what he made before. He ended his professional career in Westfalia Separator Andalucía as commercial director, although he did most of his professional work in Fuentes Cardona. He lived through the transformation of the sector that changed from paving stones to presses to continuous 3-phase extraction systems to the 2-phase systems. He dedicated more than 50 years of his professional life to the sector.
What do you think was done better in the sector in the past?
Back then it was a much more humane sector. It was more based on personal relationships, trust, values, there were no mobile phones, and in order to be able to communicate with the office while travelling you had to do it from phone booths or switchboards from where you asked what was happening, or if there was a change in the trip or journey for a recent occurence that you might not have known about. So prices were not seen as a determining way to do business, they were based more on human ties. As for the quality of the oils, they were definitely much worse than the ones we have now.
What do you think is better than before?
Nowadays, everything functions at an unnecessarily fast speed. We have much more technology than before, which makes life more uncomfortable for us on the contrary. It may sound a bit far-fetched, but that’s what is happening. Personal relationships have given way to commercial ties with big businesses, and loyalty and trust have been lost. In the oil field, they are of better quality, they are not in contact with materials that used to cause fermentation, oxidation, etc. Despite this, in my opinion, the sector needs technological change and innovation and it is almost certain that a technological change is coming soon. Let us bear in mind that in 5 decades we have seen 3 drastic technological changes in the sector, and since then, we have spent almost 5 decades without any substantial change.