“It looks like a kidney, with a thin skin, that when you eat it you can´t feel the skin at all, its tender and has a starchy flavor, with a special texture, you can feel it as you touch it”, says Carmen Seijo, the grower of the Lourenzá beans, the queen of the Galician pulses. It´s the only one of the many hundred of species of the green bean (judia) which enjoys the denomination of Protected Geographic Indication, and it really tells much about its high quality. This International Year of the Pulses is a very important year about promoting and taking into consideration such crops and most importantly to be able to eat them.
The variety, which grows at the Mariña lucense is the Phaseolus vulgaris, aka Faba Galaica. It arrived, as many other Galician produce , from the Americas and soon became a star produce in Galicia. The General Archives of the Kingdom of Galicia had already mentioned it in the XVII century at the Lourenzá flea market, due to “a fertile and joyful soil”, at that time, the chroniclers coined this place as “garden of the county”. Its conditions are ideal for the growth of this pulse due to a fertile soil, warm temperatures all throughout the year and moderate rains.
Possibly, the last name Lourenzá is a product associated with the celebrations at this ancient flea market, nevertheless, the denomination of the IGP expands to over fifteen towns at the Mariña (Alfoz, Barreiros, Burela, Foz, Lourenzá, Mondoñedo, A Pontenova, Ribadeo, Trabada, O Valadouro, O Vicedo, Viveiro y Xove etc). This denomination was conferred in 2008, but the growers had been already making a case for ages about the much worthy bean, specially since they held the first celebration of this bean at The Bean Fest, in 1990.