Life is made of changes, from the moment we are born until we leave this world. Some are given and others imposed, but many of our plot twists are driven by ourselves. This is the story of one of those vital turns, a career change. Marta Jordi went from earning a living behind a camera, to doing so on the other side of a counter.
At a time when local commerce, neighborhood stores, and the daily lives of freelancers have to overcome so many threats (online shopping, taxes, inspections...), Marta has opened an herbalist shop in the Eixample, at number 167 Girona Street, on the corner with Rosselló. She has named it Les Trementinaires, in memory and homage to the women who went to the forests and meadows of the Pyrenees, which they knew well because they lived in the surrounding villages, and harvested plants with medicinal properties that they then took throughout Catalonia. They could prescribe them to cure ailments, either in contact with the skin, as ointments or creams, or for ingestion.
The name of the profession, trementinaires, comes from turpentine, a substance extracted from red pine resin with which poultices were made for pain, blows and sprains, or also to cure bites, ulcers and infections. Those women knew the necessary doses of everything and the effects on the body of flowers, plants, herbs and oils that nature itself produces. Their knowledge was so great that many of them were persecuted and accused of practicing witchcraft, and were even burned for it. The last known journey of a trementinaire, as explained in the Museu de les Trementinaires de Tuixent, in the Alt Urgell region, was made by Sofía, from the village of Ossera, in 1982.
Marta, once she decided to open her herbalist shop in Barcelona, was clear about the name she would give it. She knew the history of the trementinaires and admired them. She identifies with these women, "itinerant sellers who went through the villages healing people." Right now she is doing what they did, only everything she sells comes to her, she doesn't have to go look for it in the forest.
She used to go to the forest and the mountains a lot as a child, with her parents. She enjoyed collecting leaves and flowers and making albums with everything she found. She tried to identify plants and was interested in what each thing was and if it could be eaten. She still keeps a sticker album with the trees from squares and avenues in the city of Barcelona. She would be accompanied by her father or grandfather to go find these trees, to see them live. She especially remembers one: the ginkgo biloba, the extracts of which she now dispenses in her herbal shop for its beneficial properties for memory.
The beautiful art of photography
At ten years old, her godmother brought her a camera as a gift upon returning from a trip to the Canary Islands. And with that machine, she began to fill rolls of snapshots that she would later have developed. She had decided to study Fine Arts, but when she was in her second year, her practical spirit took over, leading her to doubt that she could make a living painting pictures. And she thought that the closest thing within the artistic world with which she did see that she could open up a professional path was photography, and she enrolled in the Institut d'Estudis Fotogràfics.Working in a photo lab gave her knowledge of photographers and, from contact to contact, and knocking on doors, she ended up being a regular collaborator for different print media. But, what she very soon intuited would be the future of photography, digital cameras ----with the arrival of mobile phones, especially---, has ended up invading professional photography so much, that commissions in this field began to decrease. And the pandemic was, practically, the final point in her professional path as a photographer.
Thanks to a friend who was a natural products salesperson, she learned that an herbalist on Comtal street was looking for someone to work. It was the store Agricolia, a business opened in 1930 that, like so many others, due to the increase in rent prices, had to close. "Now it's one of those supermarkets run by Pakistanis. It went from selling health to selling Coca Cola and potato chips," Marta summarizes.
She could only work there for a few months, but it was enough time to realize that she really liked it. Her empathy with people made her connect pleasantly with that bond between saleswoman and clientele. In reality, that new work location was also connecting her with an interest that had always been latent in her. So much so, that about fifteen years ago, just for the desire to learn, she studied naturopathy and acupuncture. "I had many problems getting pregnant and I wanted to know if, with some natural treatment, after having consulted doctors, it could help me," she explains. And it was an acupuncture teacher who, with Chinese phytotherapy, helped her become a mother.
With great empathy as an ally, day by day she is consolidating herself as a trementinaire of the EixampleEverything she already knew about the power of plants, with her personal experience, further elevated their value and function. Two more work experiences in different herbal shops, after the one on Comtal Street, made her realize that, upon learning that a place very close to her home was for rent, she could imagine her own shop of herbs and natural remedies in that commercial space.
In March it will be a year since she opened it. One of the first orders she placed was La Mel d'en Pere, jars of honey that the small producer from Torelló, in Osona, personally brings to her. "When he comes, he tells me about the adventures of his bees," Marta comments. She designed the labels with the names of the herbs contained in the fifty or so glass jars with cork stoppers that we find in this herbalist shop. Bulk herbs are the main product of the establishment. "The strong point of the shop is the herbs and the supplementation of vitamins and minerals, and also some products like spirulina or maca," she explains. "I also bring in things that the clients themselves know and ask me for. If I don't have it, I have it brought in," she says.
Herbs for sleeping and digestive herbs are what people ask her for the most. Also remedies for colds that, "depending on the stage it's in, can improve more with one herb than with another. Each stage of a cold has its recommended plant," she specifies. Of all the herbs, she highlights thyme, because it is ---she affirms--- "the all-terrain herb, with which you can make infusions and also soups."
Alongside the most classic ones ---the lifelong ones that, like popular sayings, have worked from generation to generation, centuries and centuries, and still make sense---, in establishments like Marta's, new things and trends arrive every era. Now is the time for ashwagandha, "an Indian plant from Ayurvedic medicine considered an adaptogen, because it regulates cortisol levels and, therefore, helps to achieve emotional balance," she details.
"I really like listening to clients and also seeing how they are interested in what I explain to them," she comments. With great empathy as an ally, day by day she is consolidating herself as an trementinaire of the Eixample.
She also has henna for dyeing hair, because she uses it, "and so ---she says--- I introduce people to the world of natural dyes." She is already thinking about starting workshops on natural cosmetics, and fermented foods, because she is passionate about kombucha.
She also offers incense and candles that scent, purify, and renew energies, just as -she says- herbs do. "Beyond their best-known effect on the body, they also have their particular energy." Combining several herbs, she prepares Els saquets de Les Trementinaires, to place somewhere in the house or in any specific space and let it do its effect. For example, "laurel, chamomile, and orange mixed go in the luck sachet. The love one carries roses, lavender, cinnamon, and strawberry, because love wants sweetness," she concludes.