Inside Spain’s first Blue Zone (Netflix take note)
12% of Spain’s centenarians live in Galicia. I visited Celanova, the “Galician Okinawa” to find out why this area of extreme longevity is set to become Spain’s first Blue Zone.
In Celanova, locals don’t act their age.
Two hours of solid midweek mid-summer rain could have postponed play, but in Bar Nova America at half past seven — Spain’s no-man’s-land window between the meriendaand cena — I sat adjacent to the action. With a snooker table-style green cloth for a playing surface and a notepad to keep score, the five women only loosened their poker faces after each round of cards to swap gossip and share news about grandchildren.
After an hour of people watching and eavesdropping, I followed a loud group, with that unmistakable Galician lilt, into Tapería Esmorga. With a glass of local Mencia wine, squid ink croquetas, and a dish of fresh prawns sizzling violently in a broth of olive oil and chopped garlic for company, I watched three middle-aged men with flushed faces and bulging beer bellies at the bar watching football. It was highly unlikely, I thought, that any of them would be following in the extreme longevity footsteps of their forefathers.
Greying Spain
“Spain is aging and the numbers confirm it,” wrote in Maria Sosa Troya in El País. “In the next 15 years, the population aged 80 and over will grow by 47.5%, from around three million in 2024 to 4.35 million in 2039.”
Galicia, home to 5.8% of Spain’s population and around 12% of its centenarians, is doing something very right. There are some 2,039 centenarians in Galicia today. Around the turn of the century there were fewer than 340.
Without the pandemic, the centenarian club would be even bigger. According to the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), 2,284 people over the age of 95 in Spain died as a result of confirmed cases of Covid-19 during the first five months of 2020. During the same period, another 1,772 died with suspected cases (but not confirmed) of the virus. Because of its elderly population, social distancing measures were far stricter and longer-lasting in Galicia than other parts of the country. During the two months between December 2021 and January 2022, five of the eight oldest people in the region died.
What’s more, it’s impossible to put a number on the health impact that social isolation during extreme lockdown had on those towards the top of the population pyramid.
As the above illustration shows, there are wild swings in the prevalence of centenarians between Galician municipalities, but there is one epicentre of longevity. “The confluence of the provinces of Pontevedra, Ourense and Lugo has the highest concentration of people over 100 years of age in Spain,” wrote La Opinión.
Galicia’s increasingly top-heavy population pyramid, however, is at risk of toppling over. The number of centenarians in the province of Ourense is expected to double in the next decade. With parts of the region home to five times the number of centenarians than the national average, southeast Galicia is now preparing to officially become the sixth Blue Zone on the planet. What’s more, El Mundo’s report, The secret behind the eternal youth of the 2,039 Galician centenarians, pointed out that it would be the first Blue Zone without a direct access to the coast.
Wedged between misty, lush valleys deep in the province of Ourense, the Terra de Celanova zone is tucked into the south-east corner of Spain’s most north-westerly region. Home to some 5,500 inhabitants and 56 centenarians, it forms part of interior Galicia, an area that El Mundo called the “Spanish paradise of longevity” and “an exceptional demographic laboratory.”
At 10pm, Celanova’s damp streets were deserted. The following day was going to be a big one — Thursdays always are. Close to closing time, I stopped and looked in the window of Bar Nova America. The only remaining patrons were still playing cards where I’d left them. That the women had outlasted the men was no surprise — in this part of the world, more than 75% of centenarians are female.
Thursdays and birthdays
In Celanova, Thursday — market day — feels like a Friday. Each week, locals mill around the Plaza Mayor market buying fresh produce, local honey, salted cod, cured meats, flower pots, and young fruit trees.
It’s also the day for people from the countryside to kill several birds with one stone: pharmacy, bank, and, of course, the bar to catch up with chums over crispy churros and cafes con leche. There was a time when it was also the day for registering home births — just in case anyone ever wonders why so many why so many in the zone were “born” on a Thursday.
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Erica, who works in the pharmacy on Plaza Mayor, tells me about her centenarian grandmother (105) who lives in a nearby village. For her, the autonomy and freedom of movement that the elderly enjoy here is completely normal. Earlier in the morning, she said, a 91-year-old had popped in, unaccompanied, for a prescription.
Having breakfast with market views, I mopped up the last of olive oil with toast while watching locals roll their Rolser shopping bags up and down this hilly town. 530 metres above sea level, every day in Celanova is leg day.
The town’s Plaza Mayor, meanwhile, is probably the least imposing in Spain. The tips of gently rolling hills peek over the roofs of its low-rise buildings, bars and shops and homes. Vendor vans with foreign registrations reminded me how close I was to Portugal, Spain’s serene Iberian sibling.
Bar Entre Amigos (among friends), a five minute-walk from the Plaza Mayor, marks the border between urban and rural Celanova. It faces a plot of landed tended to by a farmer who digs the land with the conviction of a younger man. “The hoe is one of the most useful therapies against depression and boredom,” wrote Galician anthropologist Manuel Mandianes in El Mundo. “In the village, I’ve never heard anyone complain that they’ve nothing to do.”
During a short circuit of Celanova, I saw vegetable patches ripe for on-demand picking, pristine gardens, and window boxes flush with flowers like balconies dressed for a special occasion. Around here, with cabbage patches and grandkids, there’s always something and someone to be taken care of. And in a country which pays fierce attention to aesthetics, appearances have to be kept up, especially on market day.
Galicia’s recipe for extreme longevity
Spain has one of the longest life expectancies in the world (84 years). Today, one in five Spaniards are over the age of 65.
“I often hear it said that ageing is a problem,” José Maria Faílde, President of the Galician Association of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SGXX) told me, “but in reality it’s the greatest social and health achievement of the last 100 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, global life expectancy was 34 years.”
Faílde and his team are currently collaborating with bodies such as the Galician regional government (La Xunta) and Ourensividad, a not-for-profit dedicated to studying longevity in the Ourense zone, in order to get Galicia’s Blue Zone status over the line. Their studies will be crucial to guiding public health policy as western societies approach a critical crossroad. Physical activity and nutritious food intake are plummeting among younger generations. The uncontrolled consumption of ultra-processed foods is contributing to the falling life expectancy in the United States. Stress and social disconnectedness levels are at an all-time high. Loneliness is a public health emergency across the western world.
It would be a reckless own goal, therefore, if these centenarians took their simple health lessons with them to the grave. The people behind Galicia’s push to become the sixth blue zone in the world are determined to ensure this does not happen.
Faílde told me that these centenarians are “a living and breathing part of a health heritage that must be studied and preserved — just like we research and preserve artistic and cultural heritage — to transfer this knowledge into strategies for health promotion and disease prevention.”
So what’s special about these dark blue smudges on the map of Galicia?
Faílde and his team have found the highest concentrations of centenarians are clustered in areas with an altitude of between 500–1,000 metres, pointing to studies that have found that people who adapt to living at altitude improve their respiratory and vascular systems. “In the province of Ourense, one of the great obstacles to agricultural and livestock development has to do with smallholdings,” said Faílde. “However, this could also be an ally for longevity, since everyone has a small plot of land. Taking care of it gives a purpose to life and prescribes a physically active behaviour that is rewarded with local, high quality and excellent tasting food.”
When watching the Netflix documentary, there is one thing you quickly notice about these centenarians: none of them had it easy. Adversity (geographical, political, economic) was never far away.
As Faílde outlines, Galicia is no different:
In the first half of the 20th century, Galicia was immersed in a deep economic crisis with a shortage of resources. It had to endure mass emigration, a civil war and the post-war years that followed. Life was tough, and a livelihood had to be earned with great physical effort and personal sacrifice. Those who left tried to send money home. Those left behind had to look after relatives. Galicia has also been a territory that has been relatively isolated for many years. This may have contributed to generating a balance between the benefits of modernity (improved social and health welfare), but also to preserving traditional lifestyles that favoured longevity.
The Galician expression “malo será” epitomizes the resilience of the people from this damp corner of Spain. It’s used by Gallegos to convey the optimism that a difficult situation will turn out fine in the end. In Ireland, we have “(It’ll) Be grand.”
“The spirit of malo será, brimming with confidence about the future, helps avoid the stress that is so common in other countries that tend to resort to fighting in order to solve conflicts,” wrote Anxel Vence in La Opinión. “It’s an optimism that may even help explain the longevity of Gallegos.”
In May 2024, the Galician Association of Geriatrics and Gerontology (SGXX) hosted its 34th International Congress titled “Longevity: Challenges and Opportunities” in Santiago de Compostela. During the event, whose central theme was “Galicia: a good place to live and age healthily,” Faílde and Michael Poulin, one of the three founders of Blue Zones, presented the results of the exhaustive studies carried out before and after the pandemic, while outlining the next steps for Galicia to be officially recognised as a Blue Zone by May 2025.
The recipe for longevity
- What’s the best tea to drink on a daily basis?
- Wine.
It was one of my favourite scenes in Blue Zones, but the elderly Greek lady with the mischievous smile was onto something.
The 2023 MDPI study The Southern European Atlantic Diet and Its Supplements: The Chemical Bases of Its Anticancer Properties found that Galician wine contains a variety of bioactive components such resveratrol, one which has been known for lowering cholesterol and preventing blood clots. “The Mencía grape variety, one of the most cultivated red grapes in Galicia, is known to be particularly rich in resveratrol,” said the report. “Moderate consumption of wine rich in resveratrol has been suggested to contribute to reducing the risk of cardiovascular diseases and have positive effects on health, including anticancer therapy.”
The report examined the three key pillars that define the Southern European Atlantic Diet (SEAD):
- A phytoplankton-rich food chain yielding quality marine products such as fish, seafood, and seaweed.
- Abundant olive oil consumption and distinctive inland products with vegetables such as turnip tops, cabbage, collard greens, potatoes, onions, and garlic. Olive oil consumption in the SEAD is even higher than in the Mediterranean diet.
- Culinary techniques that preserve raw material nutritional value. The primary culinary technique in the SEAD is boiling, which is considered the healthiest and main method of preparing potatoes, leaving the skin on to retain its bioactive molecules. Stewing and roasting also feature heavily, while the use of the frying pan is more common down in the sizzling south of the country.
Because of the quality of local produce, cooks can let the ingredients do work. “Galicia has long been shorthand for Spanish seafood supremacy,” wrote Matt Goulding in Grape, Olive, Pig, “a distribution centre as much as a destination, a fountain from which flows the most sterling examples of rockfish and razor clams, oysters and urchins, monkfish and mussels.” Galicia’s emblematic dish, pulpo á feria, is octopus dressed with olive oil, coarse salt, and paprika. According to the SEAD study, red paprika is the most characteristic condiment of the SEAD is red paprika. It contains various components that can provide health benefits due to their antioxidant properties.
When I spoke to Pablo García Vivanco, President of Ourensividad and member of the SEAD study research team, he was keen to also highlight the absence of processed food among the elderly Gallegos. He pointed me to a 2022 Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and food study which positioned Galicia as the region with the lowest per-capita consumption of ready meals in Spain (average 10.33 kilos per person per year).
Catalonia (20.75 kilos) ranked top of Spain’s ready-meal table.
“The low consumption of processed food is directly linked to the high levels of self-sufficiency that exist in Galicia,” said García Vivanco. “This is particularly the case for Ourense, the only province in Galicia without a coastline, an area that has been able to maintain deeply-rooted customs because of this isolation.”
On-demand access to healthy foods makes healthy eating an auto-pilot habit. The people here are taking care of their health without giving it a second thought — no gym memberships, no Operation Bikini, no Dry January. “My aunt who’s 87 brings me fresh vegetables from her plot all the time,” says Teresa Barge Dapía, deputy mayor and head of the departments for education, social services, and equality in the local government. “People around here don’t retire.”
Active retirement
After a late-morning cafe con leche, Teresa shows me around the municipal social centre in the San Salvador monastery. Dating back to the year 936, the building is also home to Celanova’s town hall.
The social centre has a bar (naturally) at the end of the hall, and the main open area at the entrance has several tables, taken over each evening by groups of women who come to play cards. A once nun-run kitchen is now home to yoga, painting, and memory classes.
During my tour, we meet Lola (86). With an umbrella for a walking stick, she says she lives ‘soliña’ (by herself). She visits the centre several times a week to attend a gym class and to see friends. In a part of Spain with a climate defined by extremes — very cold winters and extremely hot summers (Ourense is the Madrid of Galicia) — these third places are vitally important to the physical, mental, and social health of elderly people.
Looking at the timetable outside the main activity room, I can see why it’s easy to keep busy and active and connected. On Mondays and Wednesdays, the centre hosts back-to-back yoga classes (there are more than 50 participants each day). There are morning Tai chi classes, chess on Wednesdays, and Latin dance classes on Friday evenings to loosen the hips for the weekend.
Back at the market I purchased a small plant, but it wasn’t coming back to A Coruña with me — it was a gift for one of Galicia’s stars of the summer. And that’s who I was on my way to visit.
An Estrella in Galicia
- Estrella, there’s a guy here to ask you a few questions.
- Are they good ones?
I don’t expect to last a century, but I hope that I’ll have some of Estrella Almeida’s quick wit when I’m on the back nine of this thing we call life.
Estrella (the Spanish word for star) is now a household name in Galicia. Having just entered her 104th year, she recently featured on the news and in newspaper features. I first saw her on TV while having my lunch. During my visit to Celanova, I had the honour of spending 20 minutes with her.
“You’re going to be famous outside of Spain now Estrella!” joked the nurses. The other 15–20 elderly residents in the communal living space were probably sick of the sight of journalists fawning over her at this stage, but their time could come. Especially the women in the room.
Speaking in gallego, Estrella told me about the tough times that people in the zone endured when she was a young woman. Many family members emigrated to Cuba and other parts of Latin America. Most never came home. Just like many Galician women, she had to help pick up the slack as the vast majority of those of who emigrated were either sons or fathers. “I worked hard,” she said, showing me her hands. She became a widow at 42 after 20 years of marriage. She beat Covid-19 twice. “She’s made of different stuff,” said the nurse Noelia Novua Grande with affectionate admiration.
According to Noelia, Estrella performs better than many 80-year-olds in Residencia San Carlos during memory and physical tests. I showed her pictures of my daughter and told her about Ireland — her eyesight and hearing were remarkable. She stands up firmly from her seat unassisted, core strength developed from decades of giving and taking from the land.
She told La Voz de Galicia that the trick for living so long is to “spend time in the countryside and sing a lot.”
How to buy time
It pays to learn another language.
Like regions such as the Basque Country and Catalonia, Galicia is a part of Spain with two official languages. Almost all signs I see in public hospitals and clinics, for example, are in Gallego. El País cited a range of studies that have confirmed that bilingualism helps to delay the symptoms associated with dementia by four to five years.
During my interviews and research and visit to Celanova, I found five key factors that behind Spain’s emerging Blue Zone:
- Purpose: The sense of responsibility that comes with having to take care of farms, plots, and gardens.
- Vitality: Staying active and productive. The feeling of being important, contributing member of family and society.
- Nutrition: On-demand access to healthy ingredients and cooking techniques that maximise their benefits.
- Relationships: Frequent socialising in bars, markets, social centres. Maintaining relationships takes work and pays dividends.
- Attitude: The ability to show positivity and resilience in the face of difficult situation. Malo será!
The centenarians in Celanova, I found, had developed their healthy habits over decades. They have worked, ate, and socialised their way to a long and healthy life.
On January 1st, 2024, Spain had 16,902 centenarios. That figure may only represent 0.04% of the entire population, but, as a proportion, it’s ticking up faster than any other segment of the country’s population pyramid. Since 2019, it has increased by 50%.
In the next fifteen years, Spain’s centenarian publication will increase three-fold to around 46,000. Many will come from Spain’s first Blue Zone.
Here’s to many more years of champagne in Celanova.
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