The Full Life of Empty Rural Spain

Palma Del Rio is a small rural town in southern Spain located halfway between the storied cities of Cordoba and Seville. Its lifeblood is the Guadalquivir River, which originates in the Sierra de Cazorla mountains and flows westward through the Andalusian countryside, before emptying into the Gulf of Cadiz at the Spanish edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The town is home to 21,000 people, many of whom make a living in some fashion from the surrounding Guadalquivir-fed orchards and fields. The land is rich with the bounty of sunflowers, durum wheat, potatoes, citrus, olives, almonds, walnuts, and more recently pecans, which bring me here annually.