In October the flower is picked at dawn, before it opens.
Juliana Toledano is seventy-nine and has spent seventy years stripping saffron flowers in Camuñas. Every October the kitchen of her house fills up with purple flowers and neighbours. They strip them at night, around the table.
Her granddaughter Irene is twenty-six and a nurse at the village health centre. Three years ago she planted half a hectare of bulbs with her grandmother. This autumn they have two.
A kilo of saffron takes about a hundred and fifty thousand flowers, every one picked and stripped by hand. Irene says no machine can do it, and that is why it costs what it costs. Juliana says that is why the whole family sits down to strip.
