We are a family business with more than a century of experience, located in Guijuelo, Salamanca. Perhaps a journey down my personal history will help you understand in my own words what the culture of the “Iberian pig” means to me. In my land growing up, things were never easy, its people are seasoned in farm work, in handling country horses, in raising the brave bull, cows and of course the good pig, fed with the naturally grown cereal our land gives and supplemented with the acorns provided by the precious oak trees of our forests in La Dehesa. Since we were little when the month of October arrived, the Iberian pigs were sent into the mountains, (“La Montanera”) to finish off their feeding with natural acorns, from the hand of a man (el Porquero) who beat the oak trees so that the acorns would fall to the ground, so the pigs could eat them in abundance. I have an indelible memory in my head as a 12 year old boy, when the month of June arrived, and classes ended at school, we were then required to “help at home”. One of my first tasks was to take “lunch” to our field workers with my bicycle. The women in the village would oversee the preparation of the sausages, while the men had the hardest jobs: Choosing the meat well, removing the excess fat and thus obtaining the different noble pieces of meat that the Iberian pig has. We were initiated in this tradition from youth in this work with continuous reprimands: "do it well and ensure that it is well chosen" After six months, the sausage was already well cured and they were transferred from poles to a semi-underground cellar so that its curing would cease. The hams once salted and covered in lard and hung up on ropes however needed continual pampering to protect and prolong the curing process, because a good ham can take anywhere from 2 to 5 years to cure properly. Daily surveillance employed many techniques, if a rainy season came, charcoal braziers were put in to combat excess humidity, if frost appeared, in the morning the windows would be opened to let in the sun, numerous tricks were employed to permit a long and natural curing process. Fortunately the climate of our land in Guijelo, means that we do not have to salt our hams excessively, achieving, in comparison with other areas of Spain, a sweeter and less salty ham. So we belong to a land where, through history and by tradition, its people have dedicated themselves to making Iberian pork products and "CURED HAM for hundreds of years. Although we are now called ham “manufacturers”, it is a product that is not manufactured, as if they were metal screws. Producing cured Iberian ham follows ancestral processes that have been transmitted from generation to generation. However, with mass production demanded by large supermarket chains, some factories are run, in many cases by foreigners, who do not know or have any respect for the tradition of good quality. In these gigantic factories these Iberian pork products are no longer made, but are manufactured “en masse”, generating “performance pigs” through the use of low-quality feed, and artificial dryers to accelerate curing, machine cutting for the production of cheap ham products for sale to supermarkets. Our case is fundamentally different, we strive to choose the best specimens of our beloved Iberian Pig, and control the process from the pasture until they reach our facilities in Guijelo, where 100% natural and slow-curing combined with tradition and experience over many generations makes our product GRAN DUCADO a reference of excellent quality, while we aim to priced competitively, our benchmark is and must always be quality. GUMERSINDO DELGADO