Salou, in the Camp de Tarragona area, has planted 848 new grapevines at Pla de Maset Park as part of a municipal project to recover ancestral and lost grape varieties. The work was carried out on 25 May 2026 and continues a scheme that began in 2024.
The latest planting brings the experimental vineyard closer to 1,000 vines and completes the plot with a rectangular layout inspired by older farming areas. The aim is to help restore the agricultural landscape of the 18th and 19th centuries and to keep alive a part of Salou’s viticultural past.
The new vines include 348 plants of pàmpol girat, a black grape variety central to the project, and 500 plants of escanyagos, an ancestral white variety linked to the area and planted at Pla de Maset for the first time. The first vines used in the project came from Finca El Encín in Alcalá de Henares, from material that traces back to a mother sample from Camp de Tarragona.
Mayor Pere Granados took part in the planting and said the project helps recover the pàmpol girat vineyard and add escanyagos to Pla de Maset. He said it connects people in Salou with their agricultural history and with a landscape that forms part of the town’s collective identity.
The project involves Salou City Council, INCAVI, the URV Faculty of Oenology, and the Department of Biochemistry and Biotechnology. Francesca Fort, head of the Biochemistry Department at Rovira i Virgili University, also joined the planting and said the work will help study how the vineyard responds to sandy soil and climate change.
Salou wants Pla de Maset to become a visitable themed space linked to heritage, wine tourism, and a more varied, less seasonal tourism offer. For readers following local heritage and tourism projects across Catalonia, see the news tag.