Scoping CeMAT
Not an hour’s drive inland from Almerìa through the mud coloured mountains is CeMAT, the home of solar energy research in Spain. A few hours west are the sun loungers and chippies of the Costa Del Sol, but in Almerìa, the smiles are broader and the English more broken (though not as damaged as my Spanish). This may be where Club 18-30 fears to tread, but the climate is ideal for the CeMAT scientists to catch some rays.
Agriculture in Spain is about control of water and sunlight. On the jouney from Malaga, we drove past acres of covered crops, tents filling the valleys between the mountains like giant summer music festivals for plants. Stopping for directions en route to CeMAT, one side of the road was home to old vines and new saplings; the other side was a stony desert. So we arrived with the aims of Mitravitae in mind: taking energy from the sun and rejuvenating the soil. The evidence of the necessity of water for life was, if not all around us, then certainly on the southern side of this particular road.