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Spain's latest montanera season has ended with a small but meaningful rise, giving the Iberian pork sector a reason to breathe a little easier. According to ASICI, the interprofessional association for Iberian pork, the 2025/26 campaign closed with 598,090 acorn-fed Iberian pigs slaughtered , a 3% increase compared with the previous season. That may sound like just another production figure, but in this sector, numbers carry weight. It means 17,425 more bellota pigs reached the market this year. More importantly, it breaks a three-year period of adjustment and makes this the second-strongest montanera campaign of the last five years, behind only 2021/22. For producers, this feels like a careful recovery. Not a boom. Not a rush. Just a sign that the countryside, the animals, and the market are starting to line up again. What Montanera Really Means To understand why this matters, it helps to understand what montanera actually is. Montanera is the final fattening stage of the Ibe...