The basis of all candies that were produced in the factory was glucose, sugar, with which a paste was kneaded to which dyes and essences were added with formulas that in this industry are usually kept under wraps, and which gave rise to different flavors. The work, partially mechanized, included kneading, molding, punching and wrapping.
A The Asturian Candies Orders are still coming in from foreign clients who are unaware that the factory has closed and the liquidation process of its assets is still pending, according to Fermín Cuervo, one of his former workers. There will be no sweets for them or for launching in a good part of the Three Kings processions throughout Spain, which the Gijón factory supplied, which in a normal year “began work in September to produce 300,000 kilos before January 5“, points out José María Rodríguez, who was in charge of the firm for 38 years, in which his father had already worked and which his wife later joined.
After the last Christmas season, last January, the businessman sold the machinery to a company from Extremadura and the workers took to the streets to protest, where they have remained after the closure of a company in which the eucalyptus candy was the base of the business, to whose production the factory was dedicated three days a week, to make between 24 and 30 tons for the national market. “The best known were the eucalyptus caramel, the cuba libre and the filling“, points out Miguel Ángel Álvarez, while another of the former factory workers, José Ramón Miranda, adds that “those that are now sold no longer taste the same, because we used natural essences.”
For the Christmas season, a special type of product was made: candies filled with nougat, almonds, praline or apple pulp, recalls Margarita Carril. The candies from this endangered company reached customers in Germany, England, Croatia, Portugal, France, the US and Israel, among other countries, in the latter case with the presence of a rabbi at the factory to bless the machinery and ingredients that were used in the manufacture and set some guidelines on the way in which it should be produced, recalls José Ramón Miranda.
“Our strong season was always Christmas, because of the parades and the jumble. We sold non-stop,” explains José Ignacio Goutayer, one of the workers who joined the company after having studied Vocational Training at Revillagigedo, with whose teaching team he maintained good relations with the founding family of the company. Most of the incorporations to the staff, however, were made through an acquaintance of those owners, who also used their own employees to attract new workers when they needed staff for a family business.
The company was founded in 1941 by the Otero family. The former owner, who every day supervised on the factory floor how the tasks were going, is still called “Don Miguel” by his former employees. Initially, the factory was established on Calle Infiesto, with a majority of women on its staff, who were in charge of all tasks except those that required more force, such as kneading where 50-kilo blocks of dough had to be moved. In 1990, the factory moved to the Mora Garay industrial estate, moving the machinery and incorporating some new ones, including a second line for the manufacture of eucalyptus candies.
The company came to have more than 60 workers and operate “with three shifts“But, when it closed, it barely had 28 left. Last May their collective dismissal was approved within the bankruptcy in which the company had entered in April, which is now pending the approval of the plan of liquidation by the commercial court of Gijón.
The former workers of the company attribute the shipwreck of the same to the change in the rudder. The generational change in the Otero family was not possible when he was diagnosed with leukemia and the son who was called to take the reins died as a result of it, recalls another of the workers, Víctor García. In 2003, the company was transferred to the brothers Ismael and Evaristo Sierra Crespo and, three years later, the company was left in the hands of the latter. José María Rodríguez remembers that eight years ago “we managed to produce 14 tons of candies a day.” “It was when we were working three shifts, distributing sweets to supermarkets in Spain and Portugal,” he says.
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The former workers of the company agree that it was viable and that it was the business’s goings-on that prevented its continuity. Among them, the sale of the machinery in January, at a low price, something denounced by the SOMA-FITAG-UGT union, as well as the fact that the employment of workers had been temporarily regulated while the packaging of sweets was done in individual houses “and in blocks” point out the workers. Robustiano Iglesias, union representative in Gijón, points out that the La Asturiana brand “is not patented”, so any company can bring it back to the market whenever they want.
The last ones from La Asturiana have received small amounts after years in which the businessman was accumulating debts with them. The luckiest have been able to retire and some find other jobs, but there are also workers over 50 who have become unemployed. The company’s assets, valued at 1.97 million euros, are pending the approval of their sale by the judge. Its liquidation will certify the bitter end for a historic company, with which an industrial sector in Asturias that already suffered the loss of the Chupa Chups factory a few years ago will practically disappear.