Spanish carnations

To meet the demand for flowers in winter, Migros established Florispania. The Catalonian carnation farm offered housing for its workers and a day care centre for their children and was considered to be a model farm. It was also seen as a form of development aid for struggling Spain.

Carnations are so popular with Migros customers that supply shortfalls are common, especially in winter, when the outdoor carnations in Italy and Spain freeze. Migros’ solution is to found the company Florispania together with its Spanish suppliers in 1961. In Mataró, north of Barcelona, the company owns the largest “flower farm”, covering some 80,000 m2, on the Spanish Riviera. Hothouses for flower cultivation, as well as management premises, laboratories and packaging facilities are built there. The operations are state of the art and also include residential housing for the staff and a day nursery. Migros is proud to soon be awarded a medal of honour for its exemplary operations by the Catalan agricultural department.
Just one type of flower is cultivated in Mataró, the American Sim carnation. Its cultivation brings certain risks and requires a specialist to manage it. He controls the “sterilisation of the soil with steam” and ensures that the cuttings are free of viruses. “As the Sim carnations are planted as a monoculture, an invasion of pests would be disastrous,” explains the Brückenbauer. “It is therefore the duty of the chemists to experiment with pesticides.”
Migros has developed and patented a procedure to keep the cut flowers fresh for as long as possible: a polythene pouch is filled with a mixture of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and oxygen, and then sealed around the flowers. In the coldest months, the flowers are transported to Switzerland via air freight or by train.
In 1969, Migros calls its commitment in Spain an “experiment” and an “interesting possibility for practical development aid”. Fourteen years later, and eight years after the death Franco, this view has been overtaken by the spirit of the times. Migros sells Florispania: the reason for the sale is not known today.