“The Olive from the Soil to the Heart” is the title of this edition’s opening speech, which aims to create awareness and nourish all those attending the event with knowledge.

The next 12th of May at 20.30h, the traditional opening speech of the XIX edition of the Olive Tree Fair will take place in the Miguel Romero Esteo Municipal Theatre in Montoro (Córdoba), under the direction of Doctor D. Francisco José Tinahones Madueño, an unmissable event for professionals in the sector, lovers of the liquid gold of our land and the general public, whose protagonist of the event will not leave the audience indifferent with his oratory.

Montoreño and a renowned researcher in the health sector, Francisco Tinahones has an intense professional curriculum related to the field of nutrition, obesity and advances in endocrinology: is president of the Spanish Society for the Study of Obesity (SEEDO), last year he was appointed Scientific Director of the Institute of Biomedical Research of Malaga (IBIMA); he also holds the position of Head of the Endocrinology and Nutrition Service of the Virgen de la Victoria University Hospital of Malaga and is Professor at the University of Malaga and coordinator of the area of clinical medicine and epidemiology of the state research agency.

He is also the author of more than 300 articles in leading international journals, the principal investigator of more than 25 public competitive projects (national and European) and the protagonist of more than 80 clinical trials in the areas of diabetes and obesity. He has 22 supervised doctoral theses and is also awarded the National Prize for the Best Group Career of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (SEEN).

Tinahones has contributed with a few brushstrokes before his opening speech, which he will make a journey through from his childhood and the close relationship that unites him to the olive grove and his village, Montoro. All this, in a line marked by parallelism with his current work as a researcher, where he will introduce the benefits of olive oil on our health: “With the title The olive from the ground to the heart, I will try to do what olive has meant to me as a childhood by transferring it to the way in which olive oil has been modulating my life, because I have ended up researching its beneficial effects. I started out picking olives and I ended up researching the health effect of olive oil. That’s going to be the speech,” said the town crier.

He also points out that the opening speech will be marked by three main messages to the audience: “On the one hand, we should feel proud of our land. On the other hand, we do not know what a treasure we have in our hands with olive oil from the point of view of health. And finally, we Andalusians have to break the glass ceiling, that is, we have to believe that our land is one of the best in the world, that our people are one of the hardest working and most imaginative people in the world and that we have to defend our identity. This social stigma must be broken.

As for the presentation of the town crier, it will be given by Fernando López Segura, Internist Doctor, specialist in Nutrition and Dietetics and preacher of the previous edition in a ceremony led by María José Sánchez Ruiz, journalist of Canal Sur.