Manolito: the Malaga name that guarantees you a tasty melon as part of your five-a-day

"There is no tapping, no female, no male; a good melon can be seen by what's written on its skin", explains Manolo Prados Ramos, who at 72 years of age does not want to hear anything about retirement so that he can continue to look after the business he inherited from his father, Antonio. Experience is the key to understanding the success of the Manolito brand. 'Manolitos melons' is a term that has been coined for both melons and watermelons produced in the south of Spain that pass through the warehouse in El Morche in the Malaga municipality of Torrox.

"Here we go over them one by one and discard the ones we don't like", explains the head of purchasing, Manolo Prados González, son of the manager and third generation of this family business that has been distributing fruit and vegetables throughout the country for the last 45 years.

The Manolito brand is part of the company that is now known for tax purposes as Prados Ramos SL, which currently has a large warehouse in El Morche and a prime spot in Mercamálaga (fruit wholesaler market in Malaga city).

"In the past we worked with various supermarket chains, but now we only work with greengrocers, because it is in these establishments that we work mainly on quality and not so much on price", explains the purchasing manager son. In the meantime, his father shows us a melon that is ready to go on sale. He points out the cracks in the skin that have already been marked by the passage of time. Or as they call them there, the 'writings'. They serve to show the quality of that melon and the optimum time for consumption.

"Today there are many melon hybrids and we try to work with the best varieties, the ones that yield the most fruit and the best for eating", Manolo Prados Ramos sums up.

In chronological order, each year they work with melons from Almeria, Murcia, Cordoba, Seville and Ciudad Real. Once they arrive at the warehouse the norm is that they will spend between three and five days "resting" so that they acquire the sweetness sought by the most demanding end clients.

The label Manolito, which both melons and watermelons carry, is a guarantee of this process, where time and treatment given to the fruit in the warehouse are important, but also the state in which the fruit arrives. Manolo Prados Ramos, in whose honour his father Antonio created the Manolito brand, knows a lot about the latter. Until recently, he used to scour the fields of southern Spain looking for the best melons and watermelons at source. Now he is delegating this duty to another.

Since a very young age Manolo has dedicated himself body and soul to melons. So much so that he has taken an active retirement in order to continue working in this business, which he co-owns with his brother Pepe. Today it is a prosperous family business with melon as one of its star products in summer, although they also handle many other local vegetables and fruit. In these summer months they bring in everything from peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers to the mangoes now cultivated in tropical greenhouses across the region.

They work on the premise that you have to put all five senses to work and refer to the last wholesale auction to get the most balanced price and then distribute the goods from the auction or via Mercamálaga. Thanks to this family business the fruit and veg grown in El Morche, a coastal town with a long-standing agricultural tradition and an excellent beach with dunes, manages to reach as far as France. A lot of produce can also be found in greengrocers around Malaga, the type of establishment that Manolo Prados Ramos believes is on the verge of extinction. His son adds that "there are many people who prefer the convenience of a supermarket to the quality offered by a greengrocer." In spite of this they are satisfied with the role their company plays in the food chain, often the middleman between farmers and greengrocers in many parts of Malaga province.

Who would have thought that Antonio, the founder of Prados Ramos SL, who started his business in the basement of his house, now converted into a garage, would have such a long history in the province of Malaga and beyond.