Manuel Valls i Sanfeliu was born in 1922 in Vilanova de Bellpuig, a town of less than 1,000 inhabitants situated in the centre of the most important agricultural area in Catalonia, north-east of Spain, at about 130 km from Barcelona.
All sorts of crops are grown here thanks to the water that the Canal of Urgell, which was built in the mid 19th century, brings to the area. The water comes from the Pyrenees, a range of mountains between France and Spain with various peaks over 3,000 metres.

The way of life and thought of Manuel, a naturist and health lover since he was a teenager, has been the ideological base on which “Cal Valls” has developed: healthy and balanced diet and respect towards nature.

His son Manuel Valls Felip was born in 1945 and, from an early age, he got interested in agriculture. He was disappointed with a more and more artificial agriculture with more and more chemical products; that is the reason why he started to look for new alternatives. As a result of visiting some agricultural fields in the south of France, he discovered the existence of Ecological Agriculture and, little by little, all his fields followed this way of growing and cultivating the land. This happened in 1979.

At the beginning of 1980s, Manuel fist tried to commercialise his products from the Ecological Agriculture, but he failed since the market of this kind of product was almost inexistent in Spain.

This made him change the direction of the products towards the production of preserves. This was possible because, traditionally, all kinds of preserves were already prepared for their own consumption by the Valls family. As a consequence of this change, the facilities had to be made suitable for the preparation of preserves and, little by little and up to now, they have been adapted and enlarged according to the needs, keeping the ideology for the natural product and the respect towards the nature.

Nowadays all the Valls family work in the firm. Manuel Valls continues working in the fields together with his daughter Maria. His wife Rosa is in charge of the store and the distribution of the products to the Barcelona area. Their two other sons, Daniel and Rubén, work in the elaboration and packaging of the items, and in the commercialisation respectively.

Every morning Manuel Valls Sanfeliu still drops in “Cal Valls” to give them a hand.

Nowadays the firm is structured in 3 areas:

• The agricultural production, where tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, onions, cereals and all kinds of vegetables are produced.
• The elaboration of the products, not only those produced in our own land but those produced by other peasants.
• The commercialisation of the products, most of which are home-produced.