Chocolate

Brought by the Mexica Indians, Granada was one of the first places in Europe where chocolate was consumed, at the end of the 15th century, and it was drunk as a liquid.

Although references to chocolate production in Europe date back to 1534, it was not until 1736 that the first chocolate factory was reported in Granada, specifically in Loja, and the document found indicates that there was also ‘chocolate cultivation’. At that time, its consumption was restricted to the aristocracy and the clergy. Although it was not considered a food, it was believed to have medicinal properties.

In the 18th century, the chocolate manufacturing process was entirely manual. First, the cocoa beans were roasted, and then the pulp was removed using a rough, concave piece of pottery called a mate, a process that was not very different from the one that had been developed thousands of years earlier on the other side of the ocean.

At the end of the 19th century, there was a boom in both the manufacture and consumption of chocolate throughout Europe, and it was then that the first industrial factories appeared in Granada.

Although none of the companies that emerged in Granada in the 20th century have survived, artisan factories have been set up in La Alpujarra region where a wide variety of products are made.

Abuela Ili

Abuela Ili is an artisan chocolate factory that has been based in Pampaneira since 2007, although it was founded a few years earlier, in 1999. The production process is entirely artisanal, with no industrial processes involved, and always using local products as far as possible. They produce numerous varieties of chocolate bars—more than fifty different ones—and assortments, mixing them with typical local products such as almonds and figs.