Marcial

The story

Marcial Castro S.L.U. is based in Guijuelo, in the province of Salamanca, Castilla y León, and has been working with ibérico across five generations. The company's website traces the family's involvement in the trade to more than a hundred years ago, when activity began locally in Guijuelo — at the time a zone of limited agricultural and pastoral productivity — through the exchange of raw materials, principally tocino for jamón. Trade spread through the Sierra de Salamanca and later reached the Comarca de La Vera, the provinces of León and Zamora, and the south of Galicia. With the arrival of the railway, pigs began to be moved from the dehesas of Extremadura and Andalusia to Guijuelo for slaughter and processing, consolidating the family's specialisation in ibérico.

The Marcial Castro brand was established in the early 1980s. The company raises pigs at its own estate, El Encinar de Poniente, situated in the dehesa extremeña, a landscape of encinas and cork oaks with ponds and streams. During the montanera, between October and February, the pigs feed on acorns across the estate's pastures. The product range covers jamón and paleta de bellota ibéricos, lomos, artisan embutidos, and carnes selectas from pigs raised on the estate. The facilities in Guijuelo were comprehensively renovated, with that work completed in 2021, and now accommodate sliced formats — cut by machine, by knife, or deboned — alongside traditional whole-piece production.

Facts checked on 10 October 2026