Sugarcane Afterlives: Heritage Landscapes, Industrial Memory and Circular Materials on Spain’s Tropical Coast
- BAGACEIRA Studio
- Jan 5
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 20
Arrival on Granada’s Tropical Coast
“Next stop: Motril!” the bus driver announced. Bags shifted, zippers closed, and we prepared to step into Andalusia’s Costa Tropical, where Bagaceira had come to do two things: deliver a series of workshops in Salobreña and install our first Sonora acoustic panels in Motril.
The name Costa Tropical quickly proves itself. It was early May, yet the sunlight already had the steady confidence of midsummer, unsurprising in a place that counts more than 300 sunny days each year. Along the coast, Mediterranean and subtropical ecologies overlap: cypresses and maritime pines give way to palms, orchards, and layered gardens of fruit and nut trees. A few minutes south of Motril, the Playa de Granada opens into warm sand and clear water. Then, if you turn inland, the horizon flips: the Sierra Nevada rises, still holding snow at its peaks, a reminder that the coast’s humidity and abundance are not accidental but hydrological, shaped by altitude and seasonal melt. In this narrow corridor between mountain and sea, a series of distinctive microclimates emerge, historically hospitable to crops that elsewhere in Europe struggle to persist.
The journey descending from Granada city offers a survey of Andalusia’s agricultural systems. The Vega de Granada still shows the logic of irrigated plains, with horticulture, cereals, and scattered almond groves and vineyards. Further south, the Valle de Lecrín transitions into a mosaic of terraced citrus, olive, almond, and grape orchards. As we approached the Presa de Rules–Vélez de Benaudalla, signs of intensification became more visible: invernaderos and semi-protected cultivation systems producing tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers.
Finally, the coast announces itself as a different agricultural world, dominated by cherimoya, avocado, mango, and loquat. Sugarcane cultivation has retreated in recent decades, with 339 hectares remaining in Motril compared to roughly 2,000 hectares thirty years ago, but the municipality’s recently-designated Parque de Cultivo de Caña underscores that cane remains an actively safeguarded land use, supporting continuity of local supply.
If region’s historic narrative is built around sugar and rum, our entry point is different: we arrived looking not at the “main product,” but at what remains after extraction, the fibrous residue known as bagasse.
This story is not only about preserving the region’s sugarcane heritage, but about what happens after harvest. In many agricultural systems, the priority product is taken and the majority of plant biomass is treated as waste—burned, stockpiled, or left to decompose—returning its biogenic carbon to the atmosphere quickly. Bagasse offers another pathway: turning a locally abundant residue into high-value, non-toxic interior products that keep carbon in use longer while creating skilled local jobs in processing, testing, fabrication, and installation.
A Landscape Reigned by Cane
Yet sugarcane’s history in the region runs deep. The crop originated in Oceania and South Asia, and it expanded globally alongside empires, labor regimes, and appetites for sweetness. In al-Andalus, there is evidence of sugarcane cultivation from around the 10th century, particularly along the coast of the former Kingdom of Granada. Over time, cane moved beyond agronomy into social rhythm: harvest seasons drew labor from surrounding towns, and local food traditions embraced molasses or “miel de caña”.
Industrialization amplified sugarcane’s role in the region. Factories multiplied along the coast. Workers operated the machinery around the clock. Transport infrastructures emerged to move goods at scale. One of the most striking examples is the Dúrcal–Motril aerial cableway, inaugurated in the 1920s, which carried multiple commodities tied to the coastal economy, most notably, sugarcane.
Along the Tropical Coast of Granada (Motril, Salobreña & Almuñecar), sugarcane reached its peak expansion in the late 19th century, shaping both economy and identity. Today, that “climax” is still apparent through monuments and civic memory: the Acarreto – Camino de las Cañas or the Mondera Motrileña sculpture in Motril and the sugarcane monument in Salobreña (La Caleta) function as markers of a once-dominant crop, labor system, and cultural icon.
Later, came the shift. As yields and mechanization surged in tropical regions elsewhere, and beet sugar dominated European markets, the industry went into decline, and farmers transitioned to more profitable options like fruit trees and nuts. The Azucarera del Guadalfeo closed after its 2005 campaign, a date often narrated locally as the end of an era. Many factory structures fell into disuse, leaving ruins that still punctuate the coastal region.
At the same time, not everything disappeared into silence. In Motril, the former Fábrica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar has been restored as a museum, offering visitors a way to encounter industrial memory through space, machinery, and testimony.
We were guided through the museum by Juan Carlos, and the experience was unexpectedly intimate: exhibitions, recorded interviews, and a walk through machine rooms gave voice to the labor behind the landscape. What might otherwise be “industrial heritage” becomes personal when you follow the journey of the cane up the belts and through the gears, hear the roar of mechanical intensification, and listen to the way factory bells once structured daily life.
The culture of cane also persists in living memory. Ask about sugarcane, and people answer with taste and anecdote: miel de caña in home cooking; childhood stories of chewing stolen stalks; recollections of harvest labor or factory careers. And while local cane production is now rare, some actors still stand out, including Ron el Mondero, producing rum and molasses from locally grown sugarcane in Salobreña.
From Residue to Resource
In 2024, Bagaceira began collaborating with Ron el Mondero, which cultivates and processes sugarcane locally for high-quality rum and molasses. What interests us is the byproduct: bagasse left behind after pressing the cane. In parallel, through the EU-funded WORTH Partnership Project, we collaborated with researchers from the University of East London to explore a new application for Sugarcrete®, an ultra-low carbon bagasse-and-mineral composite. The partnership allowed us to further develop the Sugarcrete® Acoustic Board, test its material performance and develop the Sonora Acoustic Panel system.
The geometry of the Sonora design draws from seed structures and growth patterns. Inspired by the agricultural landscape of the Costa Tropical, its curves evoke germination and shoots in motion while also echoing arches and arabesques, references that resonate strongly in Andalusian architecture. The bagasse, sourced locally, ties the object back to place, so the “residue” is not merely a technical feedstock but a cultural connector.
Installing the panels in the museum’s open gallery turned the work into a public dialogue. As we mounted and adjusted the pieces, visitors and museum staff asked practical questions: Is the bagasse local? How is it pressed? Does it tolerate humidity? How does it differ from cement-based materials? Reactions moved between surprise and technically-grounded curiosity. Several conversations drifted into memory: grandparents and relatives who had worked in cane fields or factories, serving as a reminder that material innovation often reactivates social history rather than replacing it. In our case, the panels now sit across from recorded testimonies of former workers, a juxtaposition that places past voices beside a new material future.
Making in Community
Alongside the installation, we came to share our process and commitment to experimentation through Salobreña’s art festival, ArtePeazos, and with the support of Ivonne Cabrera, we held a hands-on workshop at La Azucarera del Guadalfeo. The invitation was simple: to make together, using Sugarcrete® as a shared medium.
Participants arrived with varied backgrounds, teachers, makers, architects, and people with little fabrication experience but a great deal of curiosity. We worked with modular molds referencing regional geometries: horseshoe arches, keyhole doors, and organic curves reminiscent of leaves and sprouts. Over the course of the session we created collective sculpture that carried traces of local history, contemporary experimentation, and shared authorship.
Planting New Seeds
Today, Motril’s planning framework includes a protected Parque de Cultivo de Caña of 102.31 hectares, intended to safeguard the historical agricultural landscape rather than announce an immediate return to large-scale cultivation. In practice, any future trajectory will be shaped by the region’s defining constraint: water, increasingly limited under climate stress.
Bagaceira’s position is explicit: a return to monoculture should be avoided. Resilient futures require diversification, ecological buffering, and economic flexibility. Yet heritage crops can still have a role if cultivated at an appropriate scale alongside environmental safeguards, especially when paired with value-added transformation rather than commodity dependence. If interest grows in artisanal and locally grounded products that keep sugarcane’s identity alive, bagasse-based material innovation can become one of several pathways to extend that legacy without romanticizing the past.
From green construction to interior architecture and artistic applications, new jobs and skills can emerge around these residues: collecting, processing, testing, designing, fabricating, and maintaining. The bottleneck, as we see it, is rarely inspiration. It is coordination, infrastructure, and the craft of building durable collaborations.
So we proceed in the only way that feels honest to the territory: listening, making, testing, and improving, “poco a poco”, panel by panel, partnership by partnership.
Ultimately, this work is not only about preserving sugarcane’s history, but about recognizing what past models left underused: the bulk of the plant, treated as secondary, can become the basis for new value. By turning bagasse and other agricultural residues into high-performance, non-toxic products designed for responsible end-of-life (towards biodegradability), Granada, Andalusia, Spain, can stand at the forefront of circular material innovation, creating skilled jobs, new local markets, and exportable know-how. What is prototyped here can strengthen local economies while reducing reliance on carbon-intensive trade. By Igor Barboza & Julia Steketee
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