The retired professor who now exports luxury Iberian ham (ABC Andalucía)

Macroeconomic theories were his passion, but he had never had to file a VAT return or look at his own balance sheet beyond household expenses. Chelo Gámez devoted her professional life to the University of Málaga., on whose stage was the first woman to be appointed to the classroom.

But at the age of 59, the professor - whose thesis on exchange rates still serves as a textbook - decided to retire to care for her seriously ill husband. With the misfortune that he died a few months later.

Widowed and unemployed at the stroke of a pen, she wondered what to do. Staying home certainly wasn't for her. Gámez had offers from other private universities, but decided to turn her life around. Years ago, and thanks to a comment from one of her students, she had decided to to acquire a farm in the Genal valley, close to Round. An area of lush nature full of oaks and cork oaks, where traditionally came to raise their pigs some of the major producers of Iberian pigs from other areas of Spain.

So he decided to look up from the books and get down to business. With superb taste, I might add. Could you get a pure quality ibérico ibérico malagueño Would it also be possible to take advantage of one of the most abundant fruits of this ecological orchard but with a deep economic depression, the chestnut?

In 2009, after a few trials raising piglets for other farmers, he was born. Dehesa from Monteros. A decade later, his company is already kills a thousand pigs which breeds on some 1,000 hectares of owned and mostly rented land; billed more than half a million euros and, above all, it has «invented» a exclusive product that to some 450 euros a carcass will be The best palates and now especially the Asian market.

«CheloMacro», as she was known in the faculty, will always be «Chelo the ham» and, with the support of her children, has become the "Chelo of the hams". leading businesswoman in the area. Not without difficulties. A woman and from the capital; what does she know about raising pigs, she has had to listen more than once in the countryside. «At the university I hardly suffered from machismo; the worst treatment I received was in rural areas,» she stresses.

But it has been precisely the innovative methods The company has introduced in its dealings with its suppliers and employees, and above all in the breeding of its piglets, which have allowed it to obtain a different and coveted genre for its quality and particularity. With the collaboration of experts from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of Córdoba, Gámez was in charge of improve animal control and feeding.

And, fundamentally, it was decided to early introduction of chestnuts in the swine diet. Before the acorns arrive, the pigs in semi-freedom gobble the chestnuts in a premontanera that ends up providing the pigs with some of the best quality chestnuts in the world. unique oily qualities and sweet nuances and highly appreciated to the Iberian ham and the rest of the products it sells.

Gámez's brains, hardened in economic policies, do not stop. Now, as he finishes consolidating his business, he is thinking about how to to obtain the Denomination of Origin for the zone. And it is committed to recovering the «golden blond», an inbred breed of pigs that has almost become extinct. But whose first tests have resulted in an even more select ham. And more expensive. Never before have classes yielded so much profit.