You have to be careful with fairs and fairs. And more so now that Christmas is approaching and the lack of useless detail is at its peak. They can turn you from bull to fat beast with abysmal ease. Without going too far: I just came back from Frankfurt – oh, – with an empty box, which cost me four euros and extra. The box was to contain a small rotating artifact with stars, which would be illuminated by a star base. When I opened it, already at home, the box was empty, completely empty, that’s right.
Of a party that you will not return with empty hands or stomach is . You can already mark it on next year’s calendar, the last weekend of November, the first of December, because… aren’t you going to do it again? Why do I mention it? For a primary reason that summarizes its motto: “We preserve the environment to the teeth”. At Roca Umbert, in Granollers, combining the interior of a ship and the spacious patios, the Queixalada gathered coherence and a playful sense around the table and the food, the producers, the nearby environment and the culture. You felt at home there, because it hosted producers – of oil, beer, wine, tomatoes, eggs – nearby. And cooks, with a Sant Cristo Gros like the inimitable Pep Salsetes, exhibiting stove arts, and musicians who play with it, such as Carles Belda and Jaume Arnella, Xantal de Remei from Ca la Fresca and the . Perhaps the idea is this: everything played, everything connected and nothing was left as a negated aioli (sorry, in the attempt not to be a dumb duck, my gastronomic metaphors do not go beyond this). Sixty-two producers, eight restaurants, three breweries, three oil producers, bread workshop, chocolate pairing, bean tasting… The lunch, the work of the chefs of the was the definitive point to grasp the familiarity and universality of the proposal. After some finger-licking rice or lamb, you could start dancing with the greatest hits that Arnella and Belda offered, as if they were playing a game of stopping time or letting it pass.
Two days later, I participated in the presentation of the two volumes of , curated by the University of Barcelona (Jordi Marrugat, Víctor Martínez-Gil and Núria Santamaria). One of the essays, the one that Eloi Grasset dedicates to the management of tradition in the first Catalan postmodernity, mentions it as one of the artistic expressions that brought Catalan society out of cultural isolation, as one of those that blew in favor of imagining a new world. The coincidence and time jump amused me. In the middle of Queixalada, I thought how nice it was to still dance with Arnella, how nice to find so many people you know from far or near, by sight or hearing, how nice a place that connects you with the place despite all the disconnections, how nice to see tradition so well. And I thought that getting out of postmodern isolation, the 21st century version, with a bang and a dance is a pretty fantastic thing.
