The olive tree is a treasure that is inseparable from reality, identity and the people of the province of Jaén. Not only because of its economic importance, but because it has generated, over the centuries, a specific culture that has its reason for being in this tree and its fruit. That is why we can speak of an olive tree culture, whose ingredients are landscapes, farmhouses, oil mills, popular festivals, etc.

The tasks of cultivation and harvesting as well as the process of obtaining oil, generate a whole world with a very particular idiosyncrasy (own signs of identity, jargons, ways of life and customs, landscapes, models of economic development, etc.). Jaén, the world's leading olive oil producer, offers the visitor the best setting for the practice of “oleotourism”, through a varied offer related to olive groves and oil: museums, farmhouses, oil mills, festivals, trade fairs, etc. . The olive tree is an arboreal species native to the eastern Mediterranean (Asia Minor), where it began to be cultivated, but the high value of its productions facilitated the expansion of the olive tree along all the Mediterranean shores. As a genuine Mediterranean tree, the olive tree is very well adapted to harsh environmental conditions, such as droughts, high temperatures, or poor soils.

The olive tree blooms at the end of spring (April-May) and its fruit, the olives, develop throughout the summer until its green ripening in early autumn (September-October). The color change (veraison) then follows, until its physiological maturity is completed in the first months of winter.