Tarbena

This village, in the Province of Alicante, is both a gastronomic delight and an important centre of Spanish social history.

Here you can obtain delicious local versions of  sausages and other pork products normally only made in Mallorca. The population speak the Mallorcan version of the Catalan language and are mainly descended from those who re-populated the village after the 1609 expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain.

The people who were brought to the village were all specialist producers of pork products, typical of Mallorca.At the time these were highly prized in Catalonia and Aragon.

The empty village was the property of an Aragonese nobleman whose business included exporting pigs to the island of  Mallorca and importing the specialist pork products such as  Mallorcan Morcilla ( a distinctive blood sausage ) back to the mainland.

He persuaded a group of Mallorcans to come to the mainland and gave them all houses in the village. This saved him the cost of transporting both the live pigs and the  pork products.

The production of these delicacies, of Mallorcan origin, is still a mainstay of the economy of Tarbena but over the centuries they have evolved into a products with a distinctive style of their own. The village is particularly famous for this version of Sobrassada, a sort of cross between a  cured sausage and a paté which is most commonly eaten by spreading it on local bread.

As well as the gastronomic and cultural interest the village has a number of important pre-historic sites and a ruined Moorish castle.