Wearing a flowered shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, Leonardo D’Errico, an Italian who has lived in Spain since the 1990s, looks back over his career surrounded by oil samples and hunting trophies that decorate the walls of his office in Torredonjimeno (Jaén). His story is also the story of the olive oil trade. It is the story of a powerful Italian industry that built an empire based on mass production in Spain, a neighbour that has now overtaken it in global export markets.
He is an oil broker, an intermediary who puts traders in contact with mills. Italy has always needed oil to export,…
