Thieves attempt to steal nearly half a ton of olives as harvest begins in Spain | Spain

Police in southern Spain have foiled the theft of almost half a tonne of olives. The country’s harvest season has begun and the lucrative fruit has become an attractive target for opportunistic thieves and professional criminal gangs.

The green – or the gathering of green olives – takes place in early autumn and marks the start of the harvest season. As it kicked off this week in the province of Seville, officers from Spain’s Guardia Civil prevented 465kg (73st 2lbs) of olives from being stolen near the town of Albaida del Aljarafe.

Officers found seven people “collecting olives in the act,” according to a police statement, and arrested a woman who claimed to have been paid to hire and supervise a team of six pickers. Police also found false shipping documents that would have allowed the stolen olives to be sold with false claims about their origin and traceability.

“Thanks to the rapid intervention, the theft of 465 kg of manzanilla olives, which had already been collected and loaded onto vehicles, was prevented,” the statement said, adding that the fruits had been returned to their rightful owner.

According to the Guardia Civil, 48 people were arrested for stealing olives during the 2023-24 harvest season, while 371 people were investigated. Officers also found 213,489 kg of olives during the season.

“In the province of Seville alone, 129 people were investigated or arrested for offences including theft of olives, possession of false papers, fraud and other crimes related to the olive harvest,” the statement said.

In the same province, the Guardia Civil seized 150,000 kilos of stolen olives and almost 100 five-liter bottles of olive oil. These bottles had false labels, claiming that the contents were of a much higher quality than they really were.

The fruits and their “liquid gold” oil have long attracted the attention of criminal gangs and counterfeiters.

In December last year, agents in Spain and Italy arrested 11 people and seized more than 5,000 liters of counterfeit olive oil, breaking up an international gang that allegedly sought to profit by passing off cheap oil as more expensive varieties.

Olive oil prices have risen across Europe as drought and other adverse weather conditions have affected harvests in recent years. In Spain, prices have nearly tripled in the past four years. Buyers who paid less than €5 for a litre of high-quality extra virgin oil four years ago have seen prices rise to as much as €14.

Spanish production has suffered from drought and heat waves with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), while the crisis has been worsened by extreme weather in other olive-producing countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, Turkey and Morocco.

Spain, which produces half of the world’s olive oil, produced more than 851,000 tonnes between October 2023 and May 2024. That’s up from 664,000 tonnes during the poor harvest in 2022, but still far from the 1.3 million tonnes expected in previous years.