Jordi Saltiveri gazes across his farmland, on which he keeps 8,000 pigs, and remembers the day late last year when the news emerged that African Swine Fever (ASF) had been detected in Spain.
"I felt sad, angry, impotent," he says. "Once it's known that a country is positive for ASF, other countries will stop importing its pork."
Saltiveri's farm, owned by his father and grandfather before him, is in an isolated spot in the province of Lleida, in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
An old Catalan independence flag hanging by its entrance flaps in the wind, and the sound of pigs grunting and squealing in the farm buildings can be heard in the distance.
The outbreak of the virus remains relatively contained and it has not reached this area. Even so, Saltiveri, who is president of the federation of farming cooperatives in Catalonia, and almost every other pork farmer in Spain, is feeling its impact.
