The Asturian chef living in the United States, José Andrés, has endorsed a reforestation with nearly 30,000 specimens, mostly pines and oaks, that will be carried out in the Sierra de la Culebra de Zamora after the fires that devastated the area on summer of last year.

To find out the details of this reforestation project promoted by the Palencia company Cascajares, José Andrés, who is one of the most popular Spanish chefs and has won the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord, visited Villardeciervos this Wednesday, one of the towns hit. for those fires, as reported by the meat company in a statement.

The so-called “Cascajares Forest” that will be created with this reforestation is a solidarity initiative promoted by that company from Dueñas (Palencia) that also suffered a fire that reduced its facilities to ashes on January 26.

In this reforestation project, Cascajares has had the support of the Caja Rural de Zamora Foundation and the Regional Government of Castilla y León, in addition to chef José Andrés himself, who devised a pularda recipe called “Ave Fénix” that he now puts on sale. Cascajares sale with the commitment to plant a tree for each pularda sold.

If the forecasts are met, this forest recovery will entail the planting of 30,000 specimens that will occupy thirty hectares, mostly pines and oaks, which will make up the “Cascajares forest.”

On his visit to the area this Wednesday, José Andrés was accompanied by the mayor of Villardeciervos, Rosa María López; the general director of Caja Rural Zamora, Cipriano García; the president of the Zamora Provincial Council, Javier Faúndez, and the president of Cascajares, Alfonso Jiménez.

The NGO of chef José Andrés, World Central Kitchen, was already present in the second of the Sierra de la Culebra fires, which was the most devastating and ended the lives of four people, to feed the members of the means that worked in the extinction efforts.

José Andrés has assured that the forest that is going to be planted is a “nice initiative” that will give “hope to the local people.”

He highlighted that when a forest burns, “the future” is lost because with the trees, “the dreams of many people who depend on what this land generates” are burned.

For his part, the president of Cascajares and promoter of the initiative, Alfonso Jiménez, thanked José Andrés for his permanent willingness and recalled that his company has Zamorano origins since it raised its first capons 35 years ago in the town of Granja de Moreruela. .