“La Matanza”, Spain: is killing our own food the only way to eat ethically?

A pig is killed and skinned at a traditional Matanza in Southern Spain

Just 40 kilometres inland from the hotels and souvenir shops of the Costa del Sol lies the Genal Valley, where tiny white villages forgotten by the march of time cling to pine-fringed mountains. These picturesque pueblos blancos, their crumbling houses brightened by red geraniums, are a quaint reminder of a rustic bygone age.

Here, self-sufficiency is not an alternative buzzword but rather the default way of life. Men in battered flat caps use mules to plough the earth, firewood is collected from the surrounding forest to heat homes in winter, and the majority of people in these villages- some with populations of under 200- have smallholdings, growing organic produce and rearing animals for meat all year round.

Sheep, goats, chickens and pigs are kept by most families, and the latter are killed at the end of the long winter in an event known as La Matanza – literally ´the slaughter´. Relatives and friends lend a hand, preparing meat products to be stored for the coming year. Perishable meat is eaten immediately and washed down with copious amounts of alcohol. Like everything else in Andalusia, La Matanza is as good a reason as any for a fiesta.

Travel: Northumberland and the Farne Islands

Just two miles off England’s stunning Northumbrian coastline, grey seals laze on rocky outcrops jutting from the rolling waves while puffins, kittiwakes, cormorants, razorbills and guillemots soar in the blue sky high above the water carrying fish for their young.

Here lie the iconic Farne Islands, the most easterly point on the Great Whin Sill, a rock formation that runs for some 70 to 80 miles across the northeast of England.

I boarded a boat from the quaint coastal town of Seahouses to reach these North Sea islands, which number 16 at high tide and 28 at low tide.