Alcoy - The City That Invented the Rolling Paper
Most rolling papers sold anywhere in the world share one thing in common: a connection to a city most people have never heard of.
Alcoy, known as Alcoi in the local Valencian language, sits in the mountains of the Valencia region in southeastern Spain. It is an industrial town of around 60,000 people, surrounded by hills and cut through by the Molinar river. And it is where the modern rolling paper was born.
Why Alcoy
It was not a coincidence that the rolling paper industry took root here.
Papermaking is water-intensive. Processing fibres requires large, reliable quantities of clean water, and the Molinar river provided exactly that. Water-powered mills had been operating along its banks since the medieval period, and when the paper industry expanded across Spain in the 18th century, Alcoy was already well-positioned with infrastructure, workforce, and water power.
The region also had access to esparto, a tough grass species that grows across the dry plains of southern Spain and northern Africa. Esparto fibres were the dominant raw material for Spanish papermaking for centuries, and having local access to it gave Alcoy a natural head start over cities that did not.
The combination of water, raw material, and generations of accumulated craft knowledge made Alcoy a natural centre, and that position strengthened with every passing decade.
Esparto: the grass that built an industry
Esparto, or Stipa tenacissima by its botanical name, is one of the stranger raw materials in manufacturing history. It is a coarse, tough-fibred grass that thrives in dry heat and chalky soil, the kind that covers the Spanish and North African steppe. It needs no cultivation, no irrigation, and no fertiliser.
The fibres in esparto are short and even, which produces a paper with a characteristically smooth surface and consistent fibre flow. It burns predictably, leaves little ash, and does not affect the taste of what is rolled inside. Those properties are exactly what a rolling paper manufacturer is looking for.
During the industrial expansion of the 19th century, esparto was transported in large quantities from southern Spain and Algeria to the factories in Alcoy. First by mule along mountain paths, then by railway as the infrastructure was built out. The raw material was cheap, readily available, and produced a paper that no other fibre quite matched for the purpose.
Today, esparto is used in rolling paper only to a limited degree. Hemp fibres and rice paper have largely taken over, partly because they produce an even thinner and more neutral paper, partly because esparto harvests have become inconsistent. But the techniques and machines built to work with esparto in Alcoy laid the foundation for everything that followed.
What makes rolling paper different from other paper
A rolling paper is not simply a thin piece of paper. It is a product engineered to meet a specific set of requirements that ordinary writing or printing paper has never needed to satisfy.
Weight and thickness. Rolling paper is measured in grams per square metre (g/m²). Standard office paper sits at around 80 g/m². Rolling paper is typically 10–14 g/m², sometimes thinner. Producing paper that thin while maintaining structural integrity requires precision at every stage of manufacturing.
Burn rate. The paper should burn at roughly the same rate as its contents. If it burns faster, the paper is consumed before the tobacco or herb, which produces an uneven experience. If it burns too slowly, smoke accumulates in the paper. The porosity of the fibre, how tightly or loosely the fibres are packed together, controls this behaviour.
Flavour interference. Paper bleached with chlorine or treated with chemicals leaves a taste. This was a problem long ignored in the industry but became more prominent as consumer expectations rose. Unbleached paper, which has not undergone chemical whitening, produces a noticeably cleaner experience.
The gum strip. The adhesive strip along the edge, moistened to seal the roll, is not a trivial choice. Cheaper manufacturers use synthetic adhesives. Quality producers use Acacia gum, a natural adhesive derived from the acacia tree, which is water-soluble, flavourless, and vegan-friendly.
Alcoy’s manufacturers have been refining all of these parameters for generations. That kind of deep knowledge cannot be bought or copied. It has to be taught, practised, and refined over time.
The French connection
To understand why demand for rolling papers exploded during the 19th century, it helps to look at what was happening to smoking habits across Europe during the same period.
Pipes and cigars had dominated for centuries. The cigarette, rolled in paper, was known but uncommon. What changed was the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s. French soldiers, spreading across large parts of Europe, had a habit of rolling their tobacco in paper, a technique they likely picked up during campaigns in Spain and Portugal. When the soldiers returned home, the habit travelled with them.
By the mid-19th century, cigarettes were growing quickly as a tobacco format in France, and from there the habit spread north and east across Europe. Each new market that opened was a new market for paper, and Alcoy was already positioned to supply it.
It is one of history’s more unlikely connections: the smoking habits of Napoleon’s armies created the industrial foundation for an entire industry, and a small mountain city’s water mills in Spain ended up handling most of the production.
The 19th-century boom
Factory after factory opened in Alcoy during the latter half of the 1800s. Brands like Pay-Pay, founded in 1703 and one of the world’s oldest rolling paper brands still in production, and Smoking, which has existed since 1879, were established in the city during this period.
By the turn of the 20th century, Alcoy’s factories were exporting rolling papers across the world: to Latin America, North Africa, France, and Belgium. The city did not have one dominant company but a network of mid-sized factories that together controlled a disproportionate share of global production.
This created a self-reinforcing effect. More factories attracted more specialists. More specialists built up a local knowledge base that no other city could match. Machine manufacturers, raw material suppliers, and technicians gathered around the industry, driving down costs and pushing up quality further.
The 20th century: war, dictatorship, and survival
The Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 and the Franco dictatorship that followed left deep marks on Spain, and Alcoy was no exception. The industry was disrupted, and international trade was restricted through decades of economic isolation.
But the rolling paper industry did not die. An industry whose strength lies in accumulated knowledge rather than patents or equipment is difficult to dismantle. The factories kept producing, even in a changed political and economic climate.
When Spain opened to the outside world after Franco’s death in 1975, and then joined the European Community in 1986, Alcoy’s manufacturers regained full access to export markets. The industrial base was intact.
A tradition that survived
The upheavals of the 20th century reshaped Alcoy, as they reshaped manufacturing towns across Europe. But the rolling paper industry did not disappear. The technical knowledge had been built up over generations and could not simply be relocated without losing what made it valuable.
That is what Josh Kesselman, the founder of RAW, understood when he travelled to Spain in the 1990s. He was not looking for a factory that could make paper. He was looking for the specific expertise and machinery that existed in only one place in the world.
He found it in Alcoy.
RAW and the Alcoy legacy
When Kesselman worked with the Spanish factory to develop RAW, he was not starting from scratch. He brought an idea, an unbleached, chemical-free paper, and combined it with centuries of accumulated manufacturing knowledge.
The criss-cross watermark built into every RAW paper, designed to prevent uneven burning, is the kind of detail that only becomes possible with deep experience in papermaking. It cannot be improvised.
That RAW is made in Alcoy is therefore not a marketing decision. It is a practical necessity for anyone wanting to maintain that level of quality.
Alcoy today
The city remains active in paper manufacturing, though the industry no longer dominates the local economy the way it did during the 19th-century peak. Textiles and other industries have taken a larger share.
But within rolling papers, Alcoy is still the reference point. Factories with roots in the 19th-century manufacturing wave still produce papers that reach smokers across the world, and the knowledge of how to make a genuinely good thin paper remains concentrated in this one city.
The RAW paper you hold between your fingers is, in a sense, the end result of a history that begins at a river in the Valencia mountains several hundred years ago.
You can explore RAW’s full range on our RAW brand page and find our complete selection of rolling papers and accessories.
FAQ
Where are RAW papers manufactured?
RAW is manufactured in Alcoy in the Valencia region of Spain, where rolling paper production has been ongoing since the 18th century. Founder Josh Kesselman specifically travelled there to find the expertise and machinery that exists nowhere else in the world.
What is esparto and why was it used for rolling papers?
Esparto is a coarse grass species that grows in southern Spain and North Africa. Its short, even fibres produce a thin, smooth paper with consistent burn rate and minimal flavour interference, making it close to ideal for rolling paper. It has largely been replaced by hemp and rice paper but laid the foundation for the techniques still used today.
Why is Alcoy significant to the rolling paper industry?
Alcoy has been manufacturing rolling papers commercially since the mid-1800s and was the global centre of production by 1900. Brands like Pay-Pay and Smoking were founded there. The accumulated knowledge about thin papers with controlled burn rates remains concentrated in the city.
What is the difference between unbleached and bleached rolling paper?
Bleached paper undergoes chemical treatment, typically with chlorine, to achieve a white colour. This can leave a chemical taste in the paper. Unbleached paper, like RAW, is not treated in this way and produces a cleaner, more neutral burn. The brown colour is simply what paper fibres look like without chemical whitening.
Are Pay-Pay and Smoking from Alcoy?
Yes. Both brands were founded in Alcoy and are among the oldest rolling paper brands still in production. Pay-Pay was originally founded in 1703, making it one of the oldest brands in the category.
Why can the same quality not simply be manufactured elsewhere?
It is not about patented processes but accumulated knowledge. Generations of specialists, machine manufacturers, and technicians have gathered around the industry in Alcoy. That kind of expertise builds up over a long time and cannot easily be replicated elsewhere without losing what makes it valuable.
