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Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies Hispanic Studies

2015

Eating Spain: National Cuisine Since 1900

Matthew J. Wild
University of Kentucky, [email protected]

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Matthew J. Wild, Student

Dr. Susan Larson, Major Professor

Dr. Moisés Castillo, Director of Graduate Studies

 Eating Spain: National Cuisine Since 1900

DISSERTATION

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
College of Arts and Sciences
at the University of Kentucky

By
Matthew J. Wild

Lexington, Kentucky

Director: Dr. Susan Larson, Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies

Lexington, Kentucky

2015

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION

Eating Spain: National Cuisine Since 1900

Analyzing cookbooks, gastronomic guides, literature and film, this dissertation

outlines the creation of a Spanish national cuisine. Studying the works of Carmen de
Burgos, Emilia Pardo Bazán, Dionisio Pérez, Ana María Herrera, Juan Mari Arzak and
Ferrán Adrià among others, the project examines the evolution of this nationalist
discourse by identifying common and recurring themes in an effort to extrapolate and
describe the historical and cultural evolution of food from 1900 to the present day.

Within the framework of Food and Cultural Studies, this project treats
cookbooks, culinary manifestos and guidebooks as texts. Influenced by a variety of
culinary and gastronomic of critics such as Roland Barthes, Arjun Appadurai, Benedict
Anderson, Stanley Mintz and others, this dissertation analyzes nationalism through the
perspective of gastronomy as a cultural practice that contributes to individual and
collective identity building.
This dissertation concludes that Spanish national cuisine has been defined as a
unique, pluralistic blend of regional cuisines since the early twentieth century. While
early authors such as Pardo Bazán admit to heavy French influence and the centralized
hegemony of Madrid due to its privileged status as economic and political capital of
Spain, most subsequent authors acknowledge that Spanish national cuisine is a
construction of various regional influences and by the 1960s, this regional view of
national cuisine is universally accepted. Shaped during the twentieth century by civil
war, Francoism and globalization, Spanish cuisine today continues to be a blend of
regional cuisines that mutually influence each other while also exhibiting the effects of
a globalized world by incorporating non-Spanish ingredients and techniques into
nationally accepted dishes.

KEYWORDS: Spain, National Cuisine, Food Studies, El Bulli, Michelin

 Matthew J. Wild
Student’s Signature

12/3/2015
Date
EATING SPAIN: NATIONAL CUISINE SINCE 1900

By

Matthew J. Wild

Dr. Susan Larson

Director of Dissertation

Dr. Moisés R. Castillo

Director of Graduate Studies

12/3/2015
To Alex, Mom, Dad and Kristin
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Susan Larson for her guidance on this project and

throughout my time at Kentucky. Her help has been invaluable in my professional

development. I would also like to extend my gratitude to my committee members, Dr.

Kimberly Miller-Spillman and Dr. Matt Losada for their helpful reviews and corrections.

I would also like to thank Dr. Rebecca Ingram for her participation in this project and for

her Spanish Food Studies experience that she has shared. I also extend my thanks to my

outside member, Dr. Lance Brunner. Thank you to both Suzanne Dunnai and Alison

Atkins who graciously shared their work with me.

I would like to thank the University of Kentucky Department of Hispanic Studies

for their generous funding and travel grants as well as the Target Corporation in

conjunction with the Department of Retailing and Tourism Management at the University

of Kentucky for their scholarship.

Thank you Alex for your support over these last five years. Thank you to my

family for giving me lifelong support in everything.

iii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements........................................................................................................ iii

List of Figures................................................................................................................. vi

Chapter One: Eating Spain: National Cuisine in the Twentieth Century....................... 1

Preface................................................................................................................. 1
Theoretical Framework and Literature Review................................................. 5
Food Studies and Literature, Linguistics and Geography................................. 14
The Current Project............................................................................................ 17

Chapter Two: The Spanish Foodscape.......................................................................... 21

What is Spanish Cuisine? A History................................................................. 21
The Cookbook and Gastronomic Writing in Spain........................................... 29
The Next Course................................................................................................ 46

Chapter Three: Austerity, Autarky and Hunger in Postwar Spain, 1939-1955............. 48

Hunger, Scarcity and the War........................................................................... 61
Wartime Cookbook Production........................................................................ 64
Cooking up the Shortage.................................................................................. 66
Menús de guerra: Writing the War Experience............................................... 74
The Official View.......................... .................................................................. 82
“Nanas de la cebolla” Onion Lullabies............................................................. 85
The Next Course............................................................................................... 92

Chapter Four:
Modernity in Spain: Gastronomic Technology and Tourism, 1955-1975................... 95
Official Regional Views................................................................................... 95
Under Pressure............................................................................................... 101
Pressure Cooker History................................................................................ 102
In Spain.......................................................................................................... 104
Tourism Boom................................................................................................ 114
Eating Spain.................................................................................................... 117
The Next Course............................................................................................. 125

Chapter Five: Eros in the Kitchen: Sexual Culinary Liberation in Post-Franco Spain,
1975-1980.................................................................................................................... 127
Consuming Sex................................................................................................ 127
Sex Cookbooks: A New Genre?...................................................................... 131
Eating for Healthy Mind, Body and Soul........................................................ 135

iv
 Sexual Politics................................................................................................. 139
Sexual Eating.................................................................................................. 144
Eating Nationally............................................................................................ 146
The Next Course............................................................................................. 148

Chapter Six:
The Alta Cocina Revolution: Spanish Michelin Cuisine, 1980-2014........................ 150
Vázquez Montalbán’s Culinary Nationalism................................................. 150
Spanish Alta Cocina........................... ........................................................... 151
El Bulli and the Redefinition of the Cookbook.............................................. 159
Spain: A Michelin Analysis........................................................................... 182
The Michelin Guide....................................................................................... 183
Michelin Stars and Urbanity.......................................................................... 187
Spanish Gastronomic Urbanity...................................................................... 190
Spanish Michelin Foodscape......................................................................... 191
The Next Course............................................................................................ 201

Conclusion: Economic Crisis in Food and Spanish National Cuisine...................... 203

Eating the Crisis............................................................................................ 204

Bibliography.............................................................................................................. 212

Vita............................................................................................................................ 224

v
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Cocina de Recursos............................................................................................ 69

Figure 2 Menús de guerra................................................................................................. 75
Figure 3 Menús de guerra recipe...................................................................................... 79
Figure 4 Cocinando con la olla a presión...................................................................... 110
Figure 5 Recetario para olla a presión y batidora eléctrica.......................................... 111
Figure 6 Recetario recipe................................................................................................ 113
Figure 7 Spain for You.................................................................................................... 117
Figure 8 Afrodisiácos y estimulantes eróticos................................................................ 129
Figure 9 Guía de la dieta y el sexo................................................................................. 130
Figure 10 El Bulli............................................................................................................ 164
Figure 11 Las recetas de Arzak....................................................................................... 166
Figure 12 Arzak recipe.................................................................................................... 170
Figure 13 Arzak recipe.................................................................................................... 171
Figure 14 Historic Michelin Star Data............................................................................ 192
Figure 15 Historical 3 Star Map...................................................................................... 198
Figure 16 Michelin 3 Star Density 2014......................................................................... 200
Figure 17 2014 Michelin Density................................................................................... 200

vi
 Chapter One:
Eating Spain: National Cuisine in the Twentieth Century
Preface
Everyone knows the saying “You are what you eat,” but few know that it is
attributed to the nineteenth-century gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.1 While
this phrase has been trivialized and clichéd over the past two centuries, the meaning of
the expression is at the crux of this project. By exploring food and its development
through its interaction with people, we can not only define what Spanish food is but also
how it is influenced by specific social, cultural, historical, economic, and religious milieu
and how it in turn informs those spheres. Food is a reciprocal process. It both reflects
individual and national identity while also contributing to the creation of these same
ideas. Food is also very much a dichotomy in that it separates and brings together. It
marks a person as foreign or familiar, rich or poor, conservative or liberal. And as much
as these definitions fluctuate and evolve, so does food. It constantly codes and recodes.
The overall goal of this project is to define Spanish gastronomic culture as it
relates to the construction of Spanish national cuisine. Specifically, the aim is to analyze
how cookbooks, literature, film, and other gastronomic writing such as the Michelin
Guide promote ideas of Spanish national cuisine. By studying food history, we can better
understand what Spanish national cuisine is and how it has developed and evolved during
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By exploring the evolution of gastronomic
discourse since 1900, we are able to identify and analyze common and recurring themes
and trends in an effort to extrapolate and describe the historical and cultural evolution of
food and how these processes have contributed to the creation of a national cuisine. By
paying close attention to how each food trend reflects and creates a concept of Spanish
national cuisine, we are able to piece together the varied ways in which food intersects
with national and regional culture, history and politics.
This dissertation is written for a broad audience. While focusing exclusively on
Spain, my hope is that the following chapters will be of interest to Hispanists who focus
on twentieth-century literature, history and culture, providing a gastronomic analysis that
contributes to a greater understanding of each work. This dissertation also asks questions

1
Brillat-Savarin’s Physiologie du gout was first published in 1825.

1
about the literary canon and argues for the expansion of said canon to include more
cultural and gastronomic works. Food culture manifests itself differently than traditional
literary culture but nonetheless contributes to the formation of Spanish culture in equally
significant ways. The research undertaken in the following pages will affirm that Food
Studies is a viable field of study in Hispanism and Spanish Cultural Studies, offering new
ideas about Spanish culture. This dissertation is also written in the hope that this
project’s findings will also prove to be of interest to a general Food Studies audience for
whom the relationships between food, nation and culture are central.
In order to justify this type of research, we must situate the interdisciplinary field
of Food Studies in relation to Spanish Cultural Studies. In their seminal work Spanish
Cultural Studies: An Introduction (1995), Helen Graham and Jo Labanyi establish the
scope of Spanish cultural research while also defining key terms. Following in their
footsteps, this project will define culture “to mean both lived practices and artefacts or
performances, understood as symbolic systems. The notion of ‘performance’ effectively
ties various categories together, inasmuch as they are all forms of signification produced
for an audience. For this reason, it has become common to talk of lived practices, as well
as artefacts and performances, as ‘texts’ designed to be ‘read’ (Graham and Labanyi 5).
In this way, the acts of cooking, eating or any other lived gastronomic practice as
well as the physical artifacts (cookbooks, menus and dishes themselves) can be thought
of as texts to be read and analyzed. The act of cooking can both be thought of as a lived
practice and a performance wherein the cook or chef (amateur or professional) reflect the
prevailing notion of cuisine within a nation. Graham and Labanyi continue to explain
that “all cultural forms – whether lived practices or performances – have an underlying
narrative: culture can be defined as the stories people tell each other to explain what and
where they are” (5). We can extend this definition to acknowledge that cultural forms are
also responsible for telling the stories of what we were and from whence we came. When
speaking of gastronomic culture, whether we are dealing with cookbooks, restaurants or
specific dishes or ingredients, we are really reading and analyzing the textual stories that
each manifestation of that culture provides. These stories will have, whether explicitly
confronting them or not, national implications. Although Graham and Labanyi correctly
affirm that “culture is a site of power that is always negotiated and contested” (5), this

2
dissertation will not venture deeply into the power structures or struggles at play in Spain
during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. While it is important to clarify and
document certain assumptions about the social, political and economic circumstances
during the Franco regime, we will limit our discussion of these sites of power as they
pertain to the construction of a national cuisine.
In an effort to answer the central question of what constitutes Spanish cuisine, this
dissertation studies how authors of a variety of genres (literary, film and non-literary)
approach this question. Do writers and cultural manifestations focus mainly on a version
of Spanish cuisine dominated by a hegemonic culture centered in Madrid? Or does a
sensitivity exist toward the cultural pride and differences of a variety of regional
cultures? How and when do these ideas shift and what does that mean for Spanish
cuisine today?
These ideas and questions are at the heart of this dissertation’s desire to
demonstrate that food culture is as organic as the products it represents, ever growing and
constantly transforming. As such, there is oftentimes an inherent confusion that
dominates food culture. Modernization, war, famine, migration and a multitude of other
factors convene to constantly disrupt, change, strengthen or eliminate gastronomic ideas
and trends. Food is also simultaneously both collective and individual and as such reflects
national, regional and local tendencies. Spanish cuisine is a product of its many peoples
and their socio-cultural beliefs, incorporating ingredients and techniques rooted in
centuries of gastronomic invasions and explorations and reflective of the many cultures
represented within the Iberian Peninsula.
Food culture and national food cultures, specifically, are more akin to
impressionist art. Seen from up close all that is perceptible are indistinguishable colors
and patterns. Step back, however, and you see that the portrait is really comprised of a
confluence of multiple individual brush strokes that represent many individual trends.
Identifying these trends and patterns is the first step in painting the national gastronomic
portrait. But as with impressionism, the trends often overlap and sometimes are painted
over and forgotten. In order to make sense of Spanish gastronomy as a whole, this
project seeks to identify a sampling of the foundational trends, both historical and

3
contemporary. By analyzing carefully these gastronomic themes, we begin to construct
the larger national picture.
I usually get two responses when explaining my dissertation. The first is
nonverbal, a general scoff, a judging distrust. Then come the questions: “Why?”
“Really?” “You can do that?” are the most common follow-ups. My own first reaction to
Food Studies followed a similar line of questioning. I thought that discussions about
food were not a part of academia. But once I started to think, to really think about food, it
all made sense. Food is so pervasive in our society, in our culture and our everyday lives,
but warrants little thought. We are hungry so we eat. But what does eating say about us?
Do foods reflect our personal views? Does how we eat comment on who we are and
what we stand for as humans? Food Studies delves into these profound questions and
explores the social and cultural meanings of what we eat.
From the biological basis of our existence and growth as human beings to the
incessant barrage of food advertisements, food is, at first glance, the “inescapable noise”
(15) but it is also a language, as Gaye Poole suggests. That inescapable nature, the
ubiquity of food desensitizes us from the many meanings that food creates in our
everyday lives. Food clichés and idioms are used more than sports metaphors. “You are
what you eat.” “She’s the apple of my eye.” “He’s as cool as a cucumber.” “As flat as a
pancake, as easy as pie, as slow as molasses.” “He’s a bad apple, a rotten egg, but he
brings home the bacon.”
“In a nutshell,” food is one of the only universal constants. This is why we often
stop thinking about food and the language and codes that it conveys. It’s a habit. Cook,
eat, repeat. Our interactions with food require little or no thought at all. But beneath all
the banality, there is an overarching gastronomic language that speaks to more than just
superficial consumption of food. Food is able to convey feelings, emotions, desires and
beliefs. From it, we can extrapolate one’s social and economic standing. Food is a social
lubricant, bringing people together, celebrating milestones, marking anniversaries and
facilitating business deals and first dates.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s original quote: “Tell me what you eat: I will tell
you what you are” (3) is the tenet of Food Studies. His simple aphorism speaks to the
immensity of Food Studies. It is, by nature, interdisciplinary. It combines history,

4
sociology, cultural studies, economics, psychology, anthropology and most every other
discipline in the Humanities or Social Sciences. Food Studies is the study of the
intersection of food and life.
Theoretical Framework and Literature Review
As will be discussed shortly, the theoretical framework of Food Studies is
comprised equally of interdisciplinary research that is focused both explicitly on food as
well as research that on the surface has nothing to do with food but can be applied to the
study of gastronomy. This dissertation will borrow equally from established Food
Studies research as well as general and Spain-specific cultural, literary and historical
research. The main model for this project is Lara Anderson’s study Cooking up the
Nation: Spanish Culinary Texts and Culinary Nationalization in the Late Nineteenth and
Early Twentieth Century (2013). In her monograph, Anderson examines the roles that
different gastronomic authors played in the creation of a so-called Spanish national
cuisine and questions how early culinary texts and authors conceived of Spain and its
gastronomic national identity during a politically, socially and economically tumultuous
period. The key aspect in both Lara Anderson’s and the present study’s arguments is that
the nationalist discourses, cookbooks and gastronomically inflected texts are socially
constructed discourses. As will be discussed through the dissertation, national cuisines
are nothing but an invented discourse that seeks to classify and describe the food culture
of a nation.
National cuisines are inherently tied to the concept of nationalism. As a
nineteenth century construct, nationalism accepts that countries, cultures and societies
existed long before the advent of national borders. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined
Communities (1983) suggests that nationalism is the result of a vastly diverse populace
joined together by an abstract feeling of belonging due to certain commonalities. For
him, language, print culture and other shared experiences form the basis of one’s sense of
belonging to a certain well-defined political and geographical nation. As Lara Anderson
rightfully affirms, cookbooks and other culinary writings are the perfect tools for creating
this sense of nationalism. Their subject matter links diverse peoples through common
and shared ingredients, culinary processes and language as well as shared experience
through consuming certain dishes as ritual. The idea that many different people from

5
different locations, however, still within a political geography are eating and cooking in
the same way informs our understanding of a national cuisine.
The idea of a national cuisine, however, is a highly problematic one. When
speaking of a national cuisine, specific foods and dishes are spoken of as if they
preternaturally existed in the lands that make up a country, region or locality. It is easy to
presuppose the existence of nations and municipalities, ethnic and religious groups, and
culture at large as it exists today in our contemporary settings and within the realm of our
individual and collective memories. Therein lies the trap of defining any cuisine as one
that belongs to a certain nation, region or locality. What is Spanish cuisine? Is it related
to European cuisine? Foods and techniques are given attributes as being French or
Continental in style. Is it because they originated there? Or were they made famous
there? The term “Modern American” is used to describe today’s restaurants in the United
States, for example. Does that description imply that there exists a pre-“Modern
American” cuisine?
Furthermore, to what do these monikers refer? Is it the ingredients that
distinguish a dish as being Thai? Or does it lie in the preparation of a food that reveals it
to be purely West African? How do we account for the movement of people and ideas?
Has the advent of the technological age removed any possibility of having a pure national
cuisine save for an undetected tribe left in the world’s diminishing unexplored corners?
There is, contrastingly, an insatiable need to define and categorize, classify and label
cuisines as being authentically something. Authentic is popular now and authentic sells.
Authenticity, however, is not real in the way that it is being conveyed. In terms of
gastronomy, authenticity can never exist as a universal, objective concept. National
cuisines are no less constructions than the supposed nations to which they belong. Just as
each nation was demarcated and constructed, so too were national cuisines.
National and other named (regional or local) cuisines are not static. They are
organic constructions rooted in the gastronomic past, present and future of each nation
and dominated by invented discourses. We must look beyond the simple frontier or
border lines and into the past to understand the many places from where each cuisine
comes. We must look at the diversity that exists within each nation today and the many

6
contributions that are incorporated into and eliminated from the national foodscape and
how each author approaches these ideas.
As we will explain in the historical overview in the following pages, from
antiquity through the Middle Ages, conquest after conquest brought food varieties from
all corners of the world. During its colonial and imperial zenith, Spain was arguably the
most diverse and developed gastronomic culture in Europe.2 Nevertheless, almost all of
the Spanish gastronomic tradition is a product of importation. This begs the questions,
what is authentic and what is national? Is there an authenticity in terms of culinary and
gastronomic inventions? Do national cuisines preternaturally exist? Or instead, are they
molded by the incessant ebbs and flows of expanding and contracting worlds, frontiers
and ideas?
Food historian Stanley W. Mintz, speaking of national cuisines, explains that
“[h]ow we humans defined ourselves and were defined by others was…as a matter of
what we ate” (“Communities” 20). Invoking the power of food in self-definition, Mintz
also notes the equal yet opposite force of other defining national cuisines. Shaped
significantly by the Arabic tradition (regardless of how those ideas and foods spread
throughout Europe), Europeans employed the Black Legend and defined the Spanish
cultural tradition, especially its gastronomic tradition, as being the Other.3 Mintz,
however, seeks to redefine cuisines by acknowledging the mobility required to bring
foods and ideas about their preparation to a specific geographical context. He affirms
that these explorations, “these immense changes in food history repeatedly resulted in
what [he] would call ‘indigenization’” (“Communities” 21). He rejects the idea that
foods must exist preternaturally in a locale to be considered part of the so-called national
foodscape. Instead, Mintz believes that these new foodstuffs and techniques were
transformed and “wove[n]…into local horticulture, diet and ritual” (“Communities” 22).
This process of de-novelization and transformation is exactly what defines Spanish
historical and contemporary foodscapes.

2
See Imperial Spain: 1469-1716 by J.H. Elliott and Neil Pinches and Alfred W. Crosby’s The Columbian
Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492
3
Richard Ford’s A Handbook for Travellers in Spain (1845) is a prime example of employing the Black
Legend gastronomically.

7
 Similarly, Heldke notes that the idea of authenticity is related to the ability to
replicate a certain dish or flavor profile (Exotic 29). The ability to replicate a dish and its
eventual de-novelization and integration into the national foodscape creates an ideal of
authenticity. Heldke claims, however, that this idea “tends to demand faithfulness to
ingredients more than, say, fidelity to sources of heat or kitchen utensils used” (Exotic
29). Furthermore, MacCannell examines the construct of authenticity through the lens of
Goffman’s division of front stage and back stage. The back stage produces the
performance and authenticity is seen as the spectacle of the front stage. McCannell,
however, acknowledges that the hidden nature and the ability of the back to manipulate
the performance of the front “requires some mystification” (93). For him, the
performance of authenticity itself is a product of this mystification. Extrapolated into the
context of gastronomy, this implies that any time a gastronomic act is performed for an
audience (a restaurant, a cookbook, any text produced for anyone but one’s self), the
authenticity of that act is shrouded by the mystification of the back room. Unless we
remove the performative nature of the action, we will only be dealing with a version of
authenticity that exists only for the front’s consumption.
Spanish cuisine is an amalgam of ancient cuisines dominated by the Roman,
Jewish and Arabic traditions. The Age of Exploration resulted in New World additions
that quickly became staple items. So what is Spanish cuisine? It is globalization. It is
fusion. It is a combination of foodstuffs that are not naturally their own but adopted in a
way that allows for Spanish flair and Spanish ownership. The ways in which Spanish
cuisine took certain foodstuffs and techniques and incorporated them within their existing
systems demonstrates the malleability of food traditions. Mintz reiterates that National
cuisines are as much products of gastronomic circumstances as they are of political
contexts.4 But even though “local cuisine predates the political construction of the state”
(Mintz, “Communities” 26), local cuisines are equally susceptible to redefinition by food
movements as they are by political ideologies. One must acknowledge the power of
movement as well as the power of dominant, courtly traditions in the creation and
constant redefinition of national cuisines. The evolution of power directly relates to

4
Here we must delineate between National (with a big N) and national cuisines. National refers to the idea
of an objective, absolute cuisine that defines a nation while a national cuisine alludes to multiple, subjective
ideals of how to define a nation gastronomically.

8
national cuisine development if following a top-down theory. While this is not
necessarily true of the twentieth century, it is important to understand the mechanism at
play in how Spanish cuisine has developed historically and the state of Spanish national
cuisine at the beginning of the 1900s.
Along these lines, it is important to note that food often demonstrates both top-
down and bottom-up approaches. Mintz acknowledges that early courtly cuisines were
often “anchored in the regional origins of the rulers” (“Communities” 26). Goody speaks
to this by stating that “higher cuisine incorporates and transforms what, from the national
standpoint, is the regional food of peasants and the cooking of exotic foreigners”
(Cooking 105). Contemporary fine dining today often rescues lost provincial and peasant
foods and elevates them to a higher status as in the case of dishes such as Shrimp and
Grits and Polenta or in the case of Spain, deconstructed versions of provincial stews such
as Fabada or Cocido.
The idea of an absolute National cuisine is moot. There has never existed an
absolute national cuisine since the advent of the nineteenth-century construct of a nation.
There has existed neither a singular nor a pure national cuisine since travelers expanded
borders. National cuisine, much like national and personal identity, is a construct
combining a myriad of influences. With that having been said, however, there do exist
subjective national (with a small n) cuisines. These, like the age of globalization we live
in, are dominated by a give and take between novelty and tradition that continually and
constantly reshape the notion of what is national. There is no fixed definition, rather a
dynamic representation that mirrors centuries of cultural influences, invasions and
reclamations, as well as active attempts to carve out a national identity by those from
within and from outside.
As an academic discipline, Food Studies has enjoyed a burgeoning success in the
last ten to fifteen years and is currently coming of age within the Anglo-American
academy. Each discipline approaches these same questions from different perspectives.
For example, anthropologists investigate the ritual acts of eating, celebration and meals
and cultural distinctions in regard to food choice. Sociologists have studied familial
relations in regard to food as well as the eating habits of specific groups and gendered
food roles. Historians have given us histories of specific foodstuffs and food migrations

9
in addition to chronicles of wartime food production and distribution. Nutritionists focus
on the scientific chemistry and biology of food while literary and cultural critics explain
food imagery and symbolism in novels, film and poetry as well as in daily life through
commercial advertisements and television programming.
Relatively little has been written in the Anglo-American academy from the
vantage point of Spanish Food Studies. What has been written, mainly in Spain and
Europe, tends to focus on the historical: food in the royal courts, the development of
specific foodstuffs like the tuber and the Iberian pig as well as the implications and
consequences of the Triangular Trade that created an exchange of goods and ideas
between the Old and New Worlds as well as Africa in creating a globalized
gastrosphere.5
As a field of study, Food Studies has thus been strongest in the United States,
France, England, Italy and India. Within Hispanism, more has been written on Latin
America (mainly Mexico) than Spain. On a theoretical level, writers as varied as Roland
Barthes, Claude Levi-Strauss and Margaret Mead have written foundational texts in the
discipline focusing on the cultural value of food and its interconnectedness to everyday
life. Barthes’ “Toward a Psychosociology of Food Consumption” (1975), for example,
establishes and questions the deeper underlying structures that dominate food choice and
how it is represented in society. Levi-Strauss’ anthropological concept of the “Culinary
Triangle” reconciled the relationship between culture and food preparation stressing the
transformation of food between the three states of raw, cooked and rotten, and influenced
many studies regarding how food culture contributes to ideas about civilization.
Working within disciplinary boundaries, the 1970s and 1980s saw many
contributions to what would eventually become Food Studies. Historians such as Stanley
Mintz and anthropologists and sociologists like Jack Goody, Stephen Mennell and Mary
Douglas furthered the idea of food as acceptable and worthy of academic investigation.

5
See La cocina de Palacio 1561-1931 (1997) and La alimentación y sus circunstancias en el Real Alcázar
de Madrid (1982) by María del Carmen Simon Palmer. García, Jacinto. Carlos V a la mesa: Cocina y
alimentación en la España renacentista (2000), Antonio Gázquez Ortíz, in addition to his literary
endeavors, has written an important volume on the history of the Iberian pig (Porcus, puerco, cerdo: El
cerdo en la gastronomía española [2000]) while the chronicles of the potato are described in López
Linaje’s De papa a patata: La difusión de tubérculo (1991). Cocina y Alimentación en los siglos XVI y
XVII (2007) and Comer con Isabel de Castilla: La cocina en tiempos de la Reina Católica (2013) by Julio
Valles Rojo.

10
Goody, in his seminal Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative Sociology
(1982), explores the link between food and social structures in his study of West Africa.
In All Manner of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to
the Present (1985), Mennell situates food as a cultural and social process and taste as
subject to fashion and whim as seen in literature, art or music. Detailing the rise of sugar
in Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1986), Mintz traces the
history of sugar and parallels it to social and economic power that arose out of
subjugation in the New World while underscoring sugar’s importance in modern cuisine.
Douglas’ “Deciphering a Meal” (1972) was one of the first works to analyze from a
symbolic and structuralist point of view the function and social symbolism of food and
the act of eating.
Since the 1990s, the term Food Studies has become its own area of study as
researchers work across disciplines to further this academic venture. While each
investigator approaches gastronomic questions from his or her own distinctive point of
view and discipline, the discourse of food is so pervasive in contemporary life that it is
extremely difficult to isolate its inherently multi-disciplinary obligations. Carole
Counihan and Penny van Esterik first published Food and Culture: A Reader in 1997 and
it has since become the de facto Food Studies Bible. Understanding and combining
foundational works from all disciplines, this anthology conveys the essence of food’s
universality through articles that paint how different perspectives convene to create a
culture of food. Topics covered include race and gender, globalization,
(post)colonialism, nationalism, ecology, nutrition, economics, politics and more.
Through its varied yet complementary approach, this collection exemplifies the past,
present and future of Food Studies.
In the 2000s, we see a continued push toward defining a theoretical framework as
well as in-depth analyses of a variety of aspects of food culture. Ashley, et al. in their
work Food and Cultural Studies define Food Studies as the analysis of “food culture in
relation to five major cultural processes: 1) production; 2) regulation; 3) representation;
4) identity and 5) consumption” (vii). It must be noted that the study of food is not
unique to any one of these cultural processes and that it is most often defined by an
exchange between two or more of these processes simultaneously. The authors further

11
state that in regards to food, “meaning is not a wholly private experience, being instead
the product of shared systems of signification” (7). Furthermore, they state that “tastes
are not simply a reflection of our identity but work to construct our cultural
identity…what we eat also produces who we are” (59). These public, shared systems of
signification are constantly in flux working with our own personal, private experiences in
an attempt to define a gastronomic culture. In terms of national cuisine, it is especially
important to study both the domestic and public representations in order to establish the
most accurate concept of national cuisine.
As for the state of Spanish Food Studies, it is a sub-discipline that is on the rise.
Buoyed by the increased interest and legitimization of the discipline, more and more
scholars working on Spain are exploring the role of food in their work. Recently, two
literary Food Studies dissertations have been published. Rebecca Ingram’s Spain on the
Table: Cookbooks, Women, and Modernization, 1905-1933 (2009) presents an in-depth
analysis of cookbooks through the lens of gender in the early twentieth century. Alison
Atkins’ Authorship and the fogones: Gastronomy and the Artist in Post-Transition Spain
(2012) provides invaluable knowledge on the rise of the Spanish alta cocina movement
of the 1980s and 90s. María Paz Moreno’s De la página al plato: El libro de cocina en
España (2012), for example, serves as a foundational work in the examination of
cookbooks as literature in Spain, in addition to Lara Anderson’s previously mentioned
book that contributes to a new dynamic direction for Spanish Food Studies.
Outside of the Anglo-American academy, many Spanish researchers have long
considered the role of gastronomy in culture. Most, however, only focus on culture up
through the nineteenth century. María del Carmen Simon Palmer has many works
examining food within the royal courts as well as a bibliography of food-related works
entitled Bibliografía de la gastronomía y la alimentación en España (2003). Manuel M.
Martínez Llopis has published extensively on many food-related topics and his Historia
de la gastronomía española (1998) is a must-read for Spanish food scholars. Many
books and articles have been written examining the role of food within canonical works
by Cervantes, Galdós and Pardo Bazán. Similarly, authors like Manuel Vázquez
Montalbán combine their literary and cultural endeavors, commenting on the
innumerable ways in which society and food interact. Other works pertaining to specific

12
subjects such as foodstuffs or time periods are beginning to be disseminated widely.6
Additionally, Spain’s culinary boom has prompted many endeavors including
biographies, countless articles in the popular press about TV shows and documentaries
about the lives and restaurants of many great Spanish chefs from Adrià to Arzak.
Nevertheless, the need for more inquiry into Spanish Food Studies is clear.
So now in responding to the inevitable “Why?” “Really?” “You can do that?” I
answer: “Why not?!” Through food, I can understand exotic cultures and far-away
places. Through food, I can understand the politics of urban development and the
economies of developing nations. Through food, I gain insight into personal beliefs,
religion and identity. Food is a gateway to learning and critical thinking. For these
reasons, Food Studies is as unique and important as an academic and popular discipline
as any other. In her analysis of Emilia Pardo Bazán’s early twentieth-century cookbooks,
Rebecca Ingram argues that Pardo Bazán “asserts the centrality of cooking to the national
imagination and the canonical importance of her own volume” (“Popular” 265). Just like
Pardo Bazán, this dissertation asserts the centrality of gastronomy and food to an
understanding of Spanish culture. Food Studies brings enormous insight to the fields of
both literary and cultural studies.
Anthony L. Geist and José B. Monleón argue for the need to expand notions of
the canon in this way in their book Modernism and its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural
Modernity From Spain and Latin America (1999). About the modernizing first third of
the twentieth century in Spain, Geist and Monleón argue against the “proposition that the
life of modernity is fully experienced only in the centers of economic power” (xviii).
While their argument pertains to modern cultural and economic capital, we can transpose
these ideas to the centers of power regarding the creation of the literary and historical
canons. Just as they state their mission for their own book, the mission of this
dissertation can be thought of as introducing new avenues of research and new
perspectives regarding the canon. We can no longer conceive of the canon as a
“hegemonic center of power” that contains the essence of the meaning of a culture as
Geist and Monleón argue. Instead, we must subscribe to the idea that there exists a “fluid

6
See Esteban, José. La cocina en Galdós y otras noticias literario-gastronómicas, Gázquez Ortiz, Antonio.
La cocina en tiempos del Arcipreste de Hita and A la mesa con Don Quijote y Sancho by Pedro Plasencia.

13
exchange between center and margin that ultimately deconstructs that opposition,
questioning not so much the relations of power as the terms in which culture engages that
power” (Geist xxx).
Here, Geist and Monleón are not referring to a stratified high and low culture but
rather culture at large, a study of all types: high, low, popular and of the masses.
Likewise, Graham and Labanyi remind us that in regard to these distinctions that popular
culture “is a construction of the modern state, which turned peasants into ‘the people’”
(6). It is the culture of the people that revealed the true lived experiences of Spanish
society. The modernizing effects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries slowly gave
way to the incorporation of mass and popular culture within top-down cultural forms,
dissolving barriers between high and low distinction. The dissolution of these cultural
distinctions as well as the dissolution of a centralized canon allows for the contributions
of Cultural Studies and Food Studies to be of equal importance to that which has long
been thought of as traditional Literary Studies. The goal of this dissertation is to not
refute the importance of the canon but to argue for the inclusion of parallel lines of
research that nonetheless contribute equally to our overall understanding of Spanish
literature and culture. Neither can exist without the other and both are needed to achieve
a more complete appreciation of Hispanism.
Food Studies and Literature, Linguistics and Geography
Much more than a banal aspect of everyday life, food is rarely an afterthought in
literature, art and film. The use of food in literature dates back to antiquity even though
its study is relatively new. Nonetheless, its appearance and representation in poetry,
literature and film are used as metaphor, for character development and even plot
formation. In her review of food in film and theater, Gay Poole states that “food
uncovers unconscious attitudes” (1). While this is evident in all food writings, in
literature it underscores the ability of food to “connot[e] opulence, poverty, security or
obsessiveness. It can be familiar or exotic. Food can provoke tensions” (Poole 15-6).
Simply stated, “food is often a measure of the values, sophistication, and tastes of the
characters” (Poole 18). As Barthes stated early on, “food permits a person” (32) and
thus, permits a fictional character.

14
 This identity-building process that is so intertwined with food allows us to
extrapolate identity based on food interaction. In literary works, for example, each
character’s food behavior reveals class, religious and social conceptions. Playing off the
ubiquity of food, authors utilize our preconceived gastronomic notions so that the reader
contributes to character development. Rooted in the Social Sciences, the idea of
symbolic interactions plays an invaluable role in understanding people via food
interaction. In its earliest form, Mead described symbolic interaction as a way of
establishing the self and constructing identity through verbal communication. Stone,
however, in the 1960s saw that this type of interaction functioned equally through
nonverbal cues such as clothing. The same logic can be extended to nonverbal food
interaction. Each food behavior builds, consolidates and comments on the identity of
each individual. In terms of literature, Fitzpatrick tells us that “the use of food in novels,
plays, poems, and other works of literature can help explain the complex relationship
between the body, subjectivity, and social structures regulating consumption” (122).7
Using this framework in conjunction with the contributions of scholars like Barthes and
Bourdieu, we can ascertain individual and collective identities, status and beliefs through
the study of food.
Furthermore, food is often used to frame scenes and stories. Poole reiterates that
“there is no better way of signifying community than to eat together” (55). As such, food
is an easy way to bring characters together and create notions of family and love.
Contrastingly, change and separation can be seen through an unpleasant meal and its
“act[s] of disruption” (Zimmerman 212). In regards to food in film, however,
Zimmerman notes that food is still rarely consumed on screen.
Linguistically, food language remains an interesting point of departure for Food
Studies. Food nomenclature and etymology reveal food migrations and foodways.
Descriptions of foods in reviews and in cookbooks shape how those foods are received.
As Dan Jurafsky plainly states, “[t]he language of food helps us understand the
interconnectedness of civilizations and the vast globalization that happened…centuries or
millennia ago” (4). Furthermore, the words we use to describe food, like food behaviors

7
Food choice is connotative of economic status. In literature, how and what a character eats is often used to
either bolster or refute existing socioeconomic class assumptions.

15
and food artifacts, “are also a code that we can decipher to better understand the present”
(Jurafsky 4). Jay Jacobs focuses on the importance of the mouth in studying food. As
the “receptor of four of the five senses” (Jacobs 3), the mouth is the “conduit for both
alimentation and primary social intercourse” (Jacobs 3). Words and the way we speak
about and interact with food reveal the same clues that piece together sociohistorical and
political contexts and reinforce the idea that food does not exist in a cultural vacuum.
This idea reminds us of the inherent connection between food, language and culture.
As with all disciplines, Food Studies employs a specific jargon. Gastronomy
refers to any food related behavior from cooking to eating to writing to anything that
relates to food. Culinary, on the other hand, is referenced to describe the activities of the
kitchen and those related to the preparation and cooking of food. Foodscapes are
gastronomic landscapes that will be discussed shortly. In general, food behaviors or
interactions are those human behaviors that involve food in some way. For this study, we
will focus mainly on gastronomic definitions of food as they encompass a much larger
spectrum of food behaviors. While this project will mainly analyze written texts,
culinary production and its specific contributions to national cuisine will be discussed in
Chapter Six in relation to the rise of Spanish haute cuisine and the conception of a dish as
a text. Similarly, foodscapes will be discussed in detail during the same chapter as the
rise of Michelin-rated restaurants in Spain add another perspective to consider when
detailing Spanish national cuisine of the 1980s until today.
Geographically, foodscapes are represented by a “food
environment…encompass[ing] any opportunity to obtain food and includes physical,
socio-cultural, economic and policy influences at both micro and macro-levels” (Lake).
It must be added, however, that the foodscape also represents all opportunities to create
and sell food as well as the discourse of food itself. By creating a gastronomic discourse,
we ourselves are constantly reshaping and redefining what the foodscape is and how it
interacts with its population. A national foodscape is comprised of an infinite number of
micro-foodscapes that can be classified by geography, food type, type of opportunity and
many more classifications. Each of the micro-foodscapes form the national landscape.
Cartographies of written data such as crop production, restaurant location, grocery store
distribution, and transportation routes yield a visual manifestation of these micro-

16
foodscapes and demonstrate how complex each national, regional and local foodscape
really is. Nevertheless, we must always keep in mind that a national cuisine is only “a
powerful ‘invented’ discourse in the presentation and representation of food and national
or local customs” (Bell and Valentine 177).
The Current Project
This project is organized chronologically. The following chapter entitled, “The
Spanish Foodscape,” will discuss Spanish food and the historical development of what
we know today as Spain. This chapter establishes the frame of this study by documenting
how external factors contribute to the creation of national cuisines and how gastronomic
discourses develop. From its preternatural beginnings to the invasions and settlements of
many different cultures, Spain is a prime example of the ability and the incessant need of
food to travel and its ability to bring with it ideas and values. The cuisine of today can be
traced through each century and reflects the Roman, Muslim, Jewish and Christian
traditions that often co-existed and shaped the Iberian Peninsula during the last two
millennia. With every conquest, each kingdom brought to the peninsula its own
gastronomic traditions and histories and thus created differing concepts of what a Spanish
national cuisine signified.
Detailing the contributions of each tradition, we see that Spain is an amalgam of
cultures and ideas and this extends to its gastronomy. We also see that globalization is
not a twentieth-century construction but instead has existed for centuries. Food is the
great traveler, as Stanley Mintz declares, and as the intersection of the New and Old
Worlds, Spain exemplifies the consequences and implications of gastronomic migrations.
This chapter will also survey the development of written gastronomic culture in Spain
beginning in the sixteenth century and continuing through the twentieth century. The
chapter will present a case study of three authors - Carmen de Burgos, Emilia Pardo
Bazán and Dionisio Pérez - to document how Spanish national cuisine was conceived and
how it is expressed as written culture during the first third of the twentieth century. In the
face of diminishing national political and economic power and internal upheaval, Spain
struggled to distinguish itself from the dominant European (almost always French)
gastronomic traditions. These authors wrote cookbooks and gastronomic guides in order

17
to foment a concise vision of Spanish gastronomy that refuted French influence and
intending to raise Spanish regional cuisine to a higher cultural standing.
The third chapter, “Austerity, Autarky and Hunger in Postwar Spain, 1939-1955,”
examines the immediate gastronomic consequences of the Spanish Civil War and the
varying degrees of discourses of hunger in wartime and postwar Spanish cookbooks. By
studying the state of Spanish agriculture at the outset of the Civil War, this chapter argues
that the hunger and scarcity of the post-Civil War were in equal parts due to the lack of
agricultural modernity and war repercussions. Two documentaries produced by Carlos
Velo and Fernando Mantilla serve as visual evidence of a Spanish agriculture that still
relied on inefficient techniques and philosophies. Using Joan Vila’s Menús de guerra
(1937) and Ignacio Doménech’s Cocina de recursos (1941), the chapter explores the
reality of Spain’s hunger in comparison to “official,” censored accounts as well as
contemporary historical and sociological sources in an effort to understand how the
concept of a national cuisine was conveyed during the years of hunger. This section will
also explore these themes as depicted in literary work such as Miguel Hernández’s poem
“Nanas de la cebolla” to provide an analysis of one of the few firsthand literary accounts
of hunger of this period. Post-Civil War national cuisine can be understood as a return to
provincial roots and an elimination of French influence. This transition was, however,
caused by the necessity of the postwar context.
Chapter Four, “Modernity in Spain: Gastronomic Technology and Tourism, 1955-
1975,” details the emergence of technology in the kitchen and the shift from Spanish
autarky to technocratic economic liberalization. Technological advances, most notably
the introduction of the pressure cooker into the Spanish kitchen, produced a mini-boom
of technology-centric cookbooks, signaling the maturity of the niche cookbook market.
These cookbooks represented technology and its rhetoric as a technocratic attempt to shift
gastronomic (and overall political and economic) discourse away from one of hunger,
scarcity and autarky to one of efficiency, modernity and high standards of living. The
nation was seeking to modernize to post-World War levels seen in other countries and the
national cuisine needed to reflect the influence of technology and the changing economic
and political philosophies.

18
 If in the early twentieth century Spanish national cuisine was still torn between a
Madrid-centric definition and a regionally pluralistic concept, the 1950s definitively
consolidated regional cooking as the primary force behind the Spanish gastronomic
landscape. Analyzing tourist guides and regional cookbooks, this chapter questions how
these regional cuisines were incorporated within what was defined as Spanish national
cuisine during a time when Spain was forced to rebrand itself from within for a foreign
and, consequentially, domestic audience.
Chapter Five, “Eros in the Kitchen: Sexual Culinary Liberation in Post-Franco
Spain, 1975-1980,” links the death of Francisco Franco to the introduction of the sexual
revolution into the Spanish foodscape. As biological necessities as well as pleasure
oriented acts, food and sex naturally converge. This chapter analyzes the trend of recipes
that introduced the previously censored topic of sex into culinary discourse.
Corresponding to the so-called “sexual revolution” of Spain, these recipe collections join
the biological and pleasure aspects in explicit attempts to increase desire, virility,
physical pleasure and most importantly, overall wellbeing, in relation to eating and
cooking. The works in this chapter, however, break from the national cuisine argument
as they represent a cuisine that is relatively free of national ideology corresponding to the
confusion in national identity after the death of Franco. In addition, these cookbooks
serve as a metaphor for the social transition Spain experienced moving from Francoist
sexual politics to a more liberated and democratic view.
The sixth chapter, “The alta cocina Revolution: Spanish Michelin Cuisine, 1980-
2014,” details the rise of Spanish haute cuisine during the 1980s. This revolution
produces a new ideal of Spanish national cuisine and incorporates French and other
foreign influences in ways that still allow Spanish sensibilities to flourish. Studying the
chef-driven cookbooks and the emergence of a celebrity-chef culture, this chapter
outlines the rise of a new Spanish haute cuisine.
Furthermore, incorporating a digital component, the final section utilizes the
Michelin Guides for Spain and Portugal to understand the rise of Spanish cuisine on the
global stage. Using the restaurant data provided in these guides, cartographies are
created in an effort to visually map the (up until now) imaginary foodscapes of Spain.
Examining just one of many sub-foodscapes that make up the larger national foodscape,

19
the maps explore the geographical implications of Spanish alta cocina with the purpose
of exploring how we define what and where Spanish cuisine is. As a culinary world
power in the twenty-first century, Spanish cuisine moves away from its traditional urban
centers of Madrid and Barcelona and relies on less urban and increasingly rural cuisines
that garner Michelin stars as well as positions on the World’s Best list. This chapter also
questions the urban/rural dichotomy in relation to gastronomy.
To conclude, the last chapter “The Economic Crisis in Food and the Future of
Spanish Gastronomy,” comes full circle by analyzing the explicit use of hunger and
scarcity in gastronomic discourse following the 2008 economic crisis. In contrast to the
silence of post-Civil War Spain, post-crisis Spain actively discusses the gastronomic
consequences of La crisis and its authors reconcile what it means to “eat Spanish” while
also navigating the difficulties of the economic crisis.

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

20
 Chapter Two:
The Spanish Foodscape
What is Spanish Cuisine? A History
The only way to define a national cuisine is through a diachronic evaluation of its
gastronomic history. As we trace this history throughout this chapter, we will see that
there may not be a better example than that of Spain to consider these ideas. At the end
of this historical discussion, we will debate why authenticity is not a valid, objective tool
that can be used to define or create a national cuisine.
Today, Spanish cuisine is very misunderstood. As Lara Anderson notes,
contemporary Spanish cuisine is world-renowned for being one of the most avant-garde
cuisines in the world8. The paradox is that not many people know how to define it. Up
until now, and from a North American perspective, the most well-known Spanish
gastronomic tradition may be tapas, which exist in a bastardized form across gastropubs
and restaurants in the United States.
In the popular imagination, Spanish food essentially boils down to a triumvirate
of dishes: paella, tortilla española and gazpacho. These dishes have permeated the
world’s gastronomic lexicon to such an extent that Microsoft Word includes both paella
and gazpacho within their English vocabulary. Even if one adds Spain’s two most
famous liquids, olive oil and wine, the Spanish national cuisine does not appear to offer
much. Lately, however, thanks to the increased presence of Spanish chefs on the world
scene as well as other products such as jamón ibérico and queso manchego, Spanish food
is beginning to reach a broader and more global audience. Made up of diverse traditions
and equally diverse techniques, Spanish cuisine is at the forefront of the kinds of
gastronomic innovation and reinvention that are transforming traditional forms of
national cuisine.
As Mintz has suggested, food is the great traveler. He argues that gastronomic
globalization began when the first travelers shared their foods and tried new ones. On a
culinary level, Spain is the perfect place to see the effects of globalization. It was the
Spanish - the first to conquer the New World - who felt the robust effects of territorial

8
Spain has registered many restaurants with Michelin stars and this year’s Restaurant magazine’s counts 7
restaurants in the top 50 including #1, El Cellar de Can Roca. See Chapter Six for a more in-depth look at
Spanish Michelin culture.

21
expansion during the late fifteenth century. Even before, it was the Iberian Peninsula that
felt the gastronomic consequences of Roman and Muslim conquests. In terms of
gastronomic globalization, the Iberian Peninsula has been, for centuries, a crossroads of
distinct cultures. Spanish history is laced with the triumphs and defeats of great
civilizations past.
But before the molding and shaping of modern Spain, there did exist a native
landscape, one that provided conditions suitable for the cultivation of crops and the
domestication of animals.9 When speaking of the native foodscape, we must look to
epochs of “pre-civilization” to understand what grew originally within the peninsula.
Dionisio Pérez begins his book Guía del buen comer español: inventario y loa de la
cocina clásica de España y sus regiones (1929) by stating that there does exist “una
cocina clásica española histórica, tradicional, enriquecida con la aportación de los
diversos modos regionales [a classic, historical and traditional Spanish cuisine, enriched
by many diverse regions]” (9). While the Spanish gastronome’s intention was to reshape
the argument regarding Spanish food, he gladly acknowledges the many influences that
contributed to the creation of his idea of a national cuisine. He lays out a “trayectoria de
los ejércitos invasores y colonizadores [trajectory of invading armies and colonizers]”
(13) comprised of Roman and Arab gastronomies. Pérez acknowledges a tradition that
includes all the many regional cuisines of Spain but he follows this statement with a
polemic comment: “Esta cocina nacional española ha sido desconocida y calumniada
[this Spanish national cuisine has been defamed and made unrecognizable]” (9).
All conquering civilizations brought along new foods, methods of production and
techniques for cooking. In the beginning, the peninsula was home to wild pigs, distant
relatives to the Iberian pigs we know today (Gázquez Ortiz 10). There were also wild
goats as well as deer (Almódovar, Hambre 23) and wild rabbits (which will be discussed
shortly). Similarly, there existed a seafood tradition that Almódovar describes as the
“‘cultura conchera,’ basada en una dieta básica de lapas, ostras, almejas, mejillones,
erizos y navajas [shell culture, based on a diet of limpets, oysters, clams, mussels, sea
urchins and razor clams]” (24). Grains such as wheat, rye and barley were cultivated

9
In addition to Pérez’s history, please see other works such as Martinez Llopis’ Historia de la gastronomía
española or F. Xavier Medina’s Food Culture in Spain for a brief historical introduction.

22
(Almódovar, Hambre 24). There were native fruits and vegetables, but those that speak
to us as being most Spanish, olives and garlic, did not exist naturally within the
peninsula. These natural products and this original foodscape are what can be considered
to be the one truly authentic Spanish national foodscape. These crops and animals
represent what had existed preternaturally by God’s grace or nature’s evolution. Then
came man.
New communities brought new foods to the peninsula. Certain foodstuffs did not
agree with the native climate and soil. Others flourished. The Romans conquered Spain
in 219 BC, defeating the Carthaginian army. From their name for the land, Hispania,
came our modern day nomenclature. This word Hispania, however, shares the same root
of the Phoenician and Hebrew word for cliff terrier which “was later incorrectly
translated by Luther in his Bible translation to the word rabbit” (Weisbroth 4).
Weisbroth, et al. also note that the latinized version Hispania of the original i-shephan-im
described what we know today as the rabbit and not the distant relative known as the cliff
terrier of Phoenician times (5). The rabbit, based on its ability to multiply rapidly and
adapt to new environments, became a great source of food, so much so that the early
Roman currency in Spain featured the rabbit (5-6). It is important to note, then, that
Spain’s very name is ingrained gastronomically as “land of the rabbit.”
Rome, having already defeated other major Mediterranean powers like Greece
and the Phoenicians, expanded its empire to include the entirety of the Mediterranean
Sea. Joining the already existing indigenous populations of Celtic peoples, the Romans
created a culture based on their own influences and the influences rooted in their
expansive empire. From Greece, they took the olive tree as well as garlic, whose oil and
flavors form the base of almost all Spanish dishes. Finding an agreeable climate on the
Iberian Peninsula, the olive tree took root. Even in the early twentieth century, Pérez
appreciates and recognizes the effects of globalization at an early point in human
civilization, stating that “en la fusión, en el progreso de estas cocinas puso España
elementos peculiares que fueron diferenciando sus modos de guisar [through fusion, in
the progress of these cuisines gave Spain particular elements that began to differentiate
its ways of cooking]” (14). Without these human movements, Spain would not have the
diverse tradition it enjoys today.

23
 Beginning in 711 AD, the Muslims took advantage of existing Roman
infrastructure and bettered it by introducing advanced agricultural methods that increased
production and made use of previously uncultivated arid lands. It is important to note
that for all their agricultural contributions, their aversion to pork products did not
eliminate the Iberian pig. For a nation with an Islamic background, pork is paradoxically
now one of its most renowned products. Instead, the Arabic tribes brought with them the
bittersweet flavor profiles marked by products like “el limón, la cidra o toronja y el
naranjo [lemon, grapefruit and the bitter orange]” (D. Pérez 16). Pérez notes that the
sweet orange, a product of China, was introduced via the Portuguese. In addition to
staple fruits and vegetables, the Muslims were responsible for bringing all types of spices
ranging from saffron, nutmeg, black pepper and sugar (D. Pérez 16). Again furthering
this notion of fusion, Pérez notes that with each expansion, the Arabic gastronomy “fué
mezclándose, compenetrándose, fusionándose con el modo hispano-romano [became
mixed, blending and fusing with the Roman way]” (18).
The discovery of the New World expanded Spanish and European cuisine alike by
introducing potatoes, tomatoes, varieties of peppers, paprika and chocolate to the
European palate. Conquistadors in the Peruvian Andes first found potatoes in 1532
(Linaje 37). In the 500 years since, the potato has ingrained itself so deeply in Spanish
cuisine that dishes utilizing potatoes are now thought of as being authentically Spanish.
The New World and its food forever shaped the history of Spain and Europe. In the case
of Spain, the potato becomes the base of the tortilla española and other well-known
dishes such as patatas bravas. Corn was one of the first crops brought back to Spain with
records showing cultivation as early as 1494 (Franconie 23). Tobacco became an
important staple. Peanuts and tropical fruits such as pineapple made their way into the
Old World (Nunn and Qian 163). Nunn and Qian explain that the influx of new foods
from the New World not only had gastronomic consequences for Spain. For them, “the
New World foods had an important effect on the evolution of local cuisines” (167). They
note that New World spices made their way into Oriental cooking with the chili flake
becoming an important staple spice (167). Similarly, flavor and spice profiles of what we
consider Indian cuisine today originated in what was mistakenly thought to be India.
Tomatoes imbued themselves deeply within local Italian cuisines (167). The New World

24
gastronomic novelties demonstrate the ability of food to travel great distances, adapt and
become part of a local, regional or national cuisine. Foods are rarely natural to a given
environment but still have the ability to ingrain themselves deeply within the gastronomic
culture of a place. As we have seen, the New World gave the Old World many of the
crops that we now associate as being nationally Italian, Spanish or Irish.
Linguistically, the new names of foods entering the Spanish foodscape and
gastronomic vocabulary serve as a “lexical food history” (Muhleisen 71). From studying
food etymology, we can derive from where and when foods come. Helene Franconie
notes that some words did not change drastically from their aboriginal names. Words
like papa from Quechuan, batata from Arawakan or mahís (maize) from Taino are direct
transcriptions into Spanish (Franconie 22). Franconie also notes that the Spanish
language conserved most of the Amerindian words, transcribing them into Castilian
Spanish (53-4). We must mention that ships originally travelled through Seville, Spain
before transit to the rest of Europe. This early Spanish monopoly of New World products
ensured linguistic diffusion into the Spanish vocabulary.
Some words, however, changed in meaning. In Italian, tomatoes were first
referenced as “pomi d’oro (golden apples)…suggesting that the first tomatoes in Europe
were yellow and not red” (Nunn and Qian 171). These linguistic cues also suggest to
what extent gastronomy was viewed culturally. In his analysis, Jay Jacobs finds that
Italian foods are often named for and originate from the peasant and working classes
while French names come from more economically well-situated classes (xii). These
linguistic records also demonstrate the transformation these crops have undertaken in the
years since their initial discovery. Lately, the trend of popularizing heirloom varieties of
fruits and vegetables has become popular in the United States and serves as visual
evidence for the linguistic study of food names, reminding us that certain foodstuffs like
the tomato have changed dramatically in their composition throughout the centuries.
Nonetheless, these words represent the cultures from whence they came and serve as
reminders of how food exemplifies globalization, colonization and travel.
Not only were the foods consumed changing rapidly, the ways in which food was
prepared and presented were as well. During the Medieval period, kitchens of the court
and of the clergy “eran estancias muy grandes…[con] techos altos [were large

25
rooms…with high ceilings]” (Gázquez Ortiz, Cocina 29-30). These were areas where all
cooking activities were undertaken, from the slaughtering and cleaning of the animals to
the preparation of foods. In contrast, the cooking culture of the peasant class was much
less refined and consisted simply of “una chimenea y una mesa con banquetas [a chimney
stove and a table with benches]” (Gázquez Ortiz, Cocina 31). Cooking utensils and
vessels were crude mixtures of ceramic, wood and metal. Cooking customs and eating
habits clearly delineated these two classes of people.
Those two distinct gastronomic groups, the court and the peasant class, solidified
during the Hapsburg dynasty beginning in the sixteenth century. We must remind
ourselves that there have always been high and low gastronomic cultures corresponding
most often to the ruling and peasant classes and that it is not until the modernizing
twentieth century that we see the blurring of this distinction and the arrival of mass
culture. Detailing high and low cuisines as well as high and low cultures, Jack Goody
explains that this idea is emblematic when there exists “a truly differentiated cuisine
marking a society that is stratified culturally as well as politically” (Cooking 98).
Although his study focuses on classical civilizations such as China, Rome, Greece, and
Egypt, his dichotomy can be applied to Spain while adding an economic component to
these stratifications. After the marriage of the Catholic Kings Ferdinand and Isabella in
1477, which joined the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile, Spain became more or less the
geographical entity that we know today. After the discovery of the New World and the
marriage of the Catholic Kings’ daughter Joanna to Phillip the Handsome of the
Hapsburgs, the Spanish empire grew to include the Kingdom of Naples as well as the
Hapsburg domains in Northern Europe. This would further diversify the gastronomic
culture. We must also consider that “cuisine stems from two sources: a popular one and
an erudite one” whereas throughout “the course of history there has been a
peasant…cuisine and a court cuisine” (Revel 53). This dichotomy plays an important
role in how gastronomy and national cuisines develop.
The Hapsburg dynasty eventually gave way to the Bourbon lineage and with it,
the influence of French cooking. Citing Stephen Mennell and Ken Albala, Lara
Anderson notes that it is during this Early Modern period that culinary nationalist
discourse and national cuisine consolidation begins to take place in earnest (18-19).

26
Anderson corroborates what both Mennell and Albala propose, affirming that the arrival
of cookbooks and the military excursions of many countries fomented national cuisine
sentiment. The Bourbons brought with them their already solidified reputation for
gastronomic dominance. Following the French trend of extravagance, “comer empieza a
ser un arte, una celebración de los sentidos, una demostración de estatus [eating became
an art, a celebration of the senses, a demonstration of status]” (Valles Rojo 19)10. Here,
the culinary arts begin to flourish for those who were able to enjoy the luxury of a full
meal. Carmen Sarasúa, in her examination of a nineteenth-century noble family’s food
receipts, finds that “meat was the most important food consumed by the Cervera
family…and together with white bread, the most obvious sign of status” (42). While
meat signified wealth, “the abundance of vegetables is an unexpected feature of a noble
family’s diet, given their traditional absence on the wealthiest tables” (Sarasúa 47-8).
In contrast, there still existed the vast majority, those people who “vivía en una
economía de subsistencia, el logro del condumio diario representaba la principal
actividad de su mísera vida [lived in a subsistence economy where finding a meal
represented the principal activity of their miserable life]” (Valles Rojo 23). Goody
reminds us that “the nature of cuisine is clearly related to the particular system of
producing and distributing food” (Cooking 98). We cannot ignore the technological and
agricultural systems that were in place during these centuries. Mass production as a
system was not yet in place. These two distinct groups, one represented by an extremely
small minority and the other the majority, would continue throughout the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries to have radically different food landscapes until the rise of the
middle class after the Industrial Revolution during the nineteenth century.
Although the Spanish expelled the French invaders during the early nineteenth
century, French gastronomic influence took hold during this century. Poorly received in
the rest of Europe, Spanish cuisine found itself becoming more and more afrancesada.
The rise of the middle class also secured the rise of the restaurant. As such, Martínez
Llopis notes that the role of the chef transitioned from serving a small elite class to now
servicing a much wider clientele (340). Nonetheless, French dominance continued and

10
This period begins French culinary dominance within the Peninsula. While other cultural manifestations
resisted or rebuffed French influence, the high class responded favorably to French cuisine and
differentiated itself further from the lower social and economic class.

27
Spain failed to consolidate a unified national style, instead imitating French cuisine and
adding a minor Spanish flair among the high classes while the low classes still ate
traditional dishes.
Spain’s attempts to modernize and the crushing repercussions of the Spanish Civil
War define early twentieth-century Spanish gastronomic history. The desastre of 1898
left Spain without any of its colonies save for North Africa and, as a consequence,
severed important trade routes and production areas for important crops such as Cuban
sugar. Furthermore, the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution as well as
subsequent twentieth-century modernization were developed slowly in Spain relative to
other European nations11.
Nonetheless, Martínez Llopis notes that during the early twentieth century “sigue
imperando la influencia de Francia [French influence continued]” (350). In the face of
gastronomic evolution, the food historian explains that “esta tendencia progresista estaba
casi ahogada por el peso de lo tradicional, de los prejuicios [this progressive tendency
was almost suffocated by the weight of tradition and prejudice]” (Martínez Llopis 353).
Adding to the age old tension between regional/national and between Spanish/French,
Spanish gastronomy also suffered an identity crisis rooted in the fight between tradition
and progress. As such, Martínez Llopis declares that “la cocina española durante este
período está completamente eclipsada por la francesa, los restaurantes anuncian en su
propaganda que disponen de cocinero francés [Spanish cuisine during this period was
completely eclipsed by France, restaurants announced in their marketing that they
employed a French chef]” (354).
In the face of modernization, World War I and later the Spanish Civil War
threatened any progress in global esteem that Spanish gastronomy had made. Martínez
Llopis reminds us that “toda guerra supone una alteración en las producciones
agrícolas…y una regresión de las técnicas de la cocina que tienden a simplificarse,
reduciéndose al mínimo necesario [every war supposes an adjustment in agricultural
production…and a regression to simplified techniques, reducing itself to a necessary
minimum]” (360). Nevertheless, Spanish cuisine of the inter-war period remained a

11
See Modernism and its Margins: Reinscribing Cultural Modernity From Spain and Latin America (1999)
by Anthony L. Geist and José B. Monleón.

28
“cocina sencilla y sustanciosa, buenos pucheros y sabrosos estofados de carne o caza, a
base de aceite de oliva [simple and substantive cuisine, good and tasty stews with a base
of olive oil]” (Martínez Llopis 366).12
The Civil War, however, reconfigured the Spanish foodscape. As in all total
wars, all aspects of civilian life are altered. In the case of Spain, the war destroyed
infrastructure, displaced people and a shift in economic production ensured hunger
throughout the country for many years (the post-war period will be discussed in detail in
Chapter Three, “Austerity, Autarky and Hunger in Postwar Spain, 1939-1955).
Nevertheless, Spain demonstrated great resolve in the years following the war and during
Francoism. As we will see in the following chapters, Spanish gastronomy has rebounded
and today’s globally renowned food culture is a testament to the nation’s history.
The Cookbook and Gastronomic Writing in Spain
Cooking is arguably one of the most oral traditions that we still have in today’s
contemporary society. Recipes are often passed down generation to generation through
collaborative cooking. As with eating, cooking is very much a communal activity.
Celebrations, milestones and holidays are enjoyed, marked and remembered through the
sharing of food as well as the sharing of cooking. Written cookbooks are presupposed by
this oral tradition. Appadurai notes that “the oral exchange of recipes is, from the
technical point of view, the elementary process that underlies the production of these
cookbooks” (“How” 292). Furthermore, gastronomic orality is an integral part of
creating and sustaining identity. As Bell and Valentine propose, “the passing of recipes
and particular cooking techniques from one generation to another…is one way in which
some households have traditionally reproduced their ‘identities’” (66). Nevertheless,
cooking has also enjoyed a long, documented history. Studying the print history of
cooking allows us to better understand how each recipe, collection and author perceive
gastronomy, and more specifically, a national cuisine. Through their inclusion and
exclusion of foods, methods and ideas, each work (explicitly and implicitly) contributes
to the consolidation of a national cuisine.
Cookbooks, cookery books, receipts, libros de recetas, recetarios, guides,
manuals and any other way of naming a book containing recipes, cooking advice and tips

12
It must be noted that Spain was neutral during World War I.

29
and other culinary related items were among the first books to be printed in Europe13. In
concurrence with most other printed materials of the time, cookbooks began as privileged
material, serving mainly the court, nobility and clergy (those who could read) and, more
specifically, those who could read and were charged with cooking duties. As the
vernacular languages gained prominence and popularity over Latin, so too spread the
ability and desire to read. The printing press and newly consolidated vernacular
languages created the foundation of the vast cookbook industry that continues in force
today.
Of the printed cookbook, Carol Gold reminds us that these editions “rarely
convey what people actually eat; recipes for common, everyday foods often do not appear
in cookbooks” (11). This question of an oral gastronomic culture continues even after the
advent of print culture. The analysis of gastronomic print culture will reveal a great
amount of information as to how individuals and societies view food but we must admit
that only studying the print culture will result in gaps. Furthermore, she notes that the
“change in cookbooks parallels changes that we know are taking place in the social and
political world” (C. Gold 12). This reinforces the idea that cookbooks and gastronomic
culture at large do not exist in a vacuum.
Spanish cookbook history can be traced back to two works: the anonymously
written Llibre de Sent Soví (1324) and Ruperto de Nola’s Llibre de Coch (1520). The
former dates back to the fourteenth century and while the cookbook’s biography remains
unknown, it is assumed that the author was a member of a religious order. Ruperto de
Nola, often called Maestre Nola, was chef to Alfonso V during his conquest of the Naples
kingdom (Pérez 20). As Pérez proposes, it was Nola who is responsible for bringing to
the Mediterranean world the Spanish flavor profile. This profile, defined by olive oil and
garlic, eventually became the standard flavor profile of both Italian and French Provencal
cooking. For that reason, Dionisio Pérez states unequivocally that the Spanish kitchen
was and still is “superior a la francesa, su discípula, copiadora e imitadora [superior to
French cuisine, its disciple and imitator]” (21). This correction, in many ways, is an
attempt to rectify the years of bad publicity Spanish cuisine had been subjected to at the

13
The word recipe derives from the original word for prescription. The collections in which recipes have
been presented have gone by many different names.

30
hands of their European neighbors. Never being European enough or perceived as being
too African, Spanish cuisine (without acknowledgment of its vital role in food diffusion)
was always at the periphery of modern European cuisine.
Cookbook history parallels literary history in many ways. During the Medieval
era, few were literate and those who belonged to the clergy or the aristocratic class. This
emphasizes the oral nature of cooking and recipe making. Most recipes were passed
down generation to generation. Written accounts of cooking methods and preparations
were not valued. As Goody notes, “until the advent of printing, the European literature
on cooking was essentially a literature for the court and for noble households” (“Menu”
87). This written culinary tradition, however, “exercises a constraining influence on the
actors involved in the preparation of a plate” (Goody, “Menu” 87). While the oral
tradition of cooking is inherently flawed and allows for greater democracy on the part of
the cook, written cookbooks assume a level of definitive structure and exactness. In this
way, Goody views the stratification between high and low cooking in part as a result of
the cookbook. Appadurai confirms this when he states that “cookbooks appear in literate
civilizations where the display of class hierarchies is essential to their maintenance”
(“How” 290). While high cooking (for the court and nobility) was constrained by recipes
and the written word, low cooking “relies less on precise quantities...tends to be less tied
to specific ingredients…[and] there is more flexibility with regard to procedure” (Goody,
“Menu” 87). Cookbooks then, in Goody’s estimation, can be seen as tools of social
climbing and transmitters of culture where one can learn how to cook and eat and thus
behave in a more refined manner. Cookbook production was aided by the advent of the
printing press, but literacy still remained low and those who could read and write did not
cook for themselves, but rather employed a cook who used their literacy to expand their
culinary prowess.
While the oral tradition served as the primary transmitter of culinary knowledge,
Roger Chartier explains that this knowledge did not exist before the printing press. For
gastronomic historians, this proves to be the turning point in culinary bibliographical
studies. Gastronomic writing and cookbooks begin to provide written accounts of foods
eaten, cooking methods and taste preferences. Chartier’s physical reality of the written
word also permits the existence of “discourses and narratives [that] allow people to

31
define, recognise, interpret, negotiate, assimilate, reject, delineate and exclude, and
hence, contribute to identifying themselves and others, in a constant dialectical process
between the self and the other” (Scholliers 7). Print permits, therefore, that food can be
conceived of as both verbal and nonverbal communication.
Furthermore, Chartier states that “any work inscribes within its forms and its
themes a relationship with the manner in which, in a given moment and place, modes of
exercising power, social configurations, or the structure of personality are organized”
(Order x). Cookbooks, like all written accounts, fit under this classification. Cookbooks
are snapshots of a given period. They demonstrate social, cultural and economic forces at
play. Chartier charges scholars with the task of “reconstruct[ing] the variations that
differentiate the…texts in their discursive and material forms” (Order 2). With
cookbooks, we must first reconstruct their historical contexts and then delve further,
reconciling historical and literary readings of each recipe.
Using the surviving books and manuscripts that are collected in the Biblioteca
Nacional Española in Madrid, one is able to analyze a corpus of cookbooks that provides
a good representation of works published during the last 500 years in Spain.14 Few
cookbooks were published in the years immediately following the invention of the
printing press. What complicates the culinary historian’s job is that early writings and
images are simply not in existence today, a problem that extended into the twentieth
century. Furthermore, early cookbooks only contain information about how certain
groups of people cooked and ate. As well, there are few first-hand accounts of daily
gastronomic culture. In this, we find problems in studying the cookbook. Cookbooks
and other gastronomic writings can only ever be a metaphor or representation. Recipes
are inherently flawed in that readers will never be able to taste, smell or touch a given
food or recipe as it is understood by the author. The reader can only interact with food
through recreating representations of the recipe or cookbook.

14
While acknowledging that this corpus is incomplete, the National Library’s collection
remains the most comprehensive database of cookbooks that are still in existence today.
The most accurate database can be found by searching “cocina-recetas” in the materia
subheading. María del Carmen Simon Palmer’s Bibliografía de la gastronomía y la
alimentación en España (2010) is also an invaluable bibliographic resource.
32
 María Paz Moreno’s monograph De la página al plato: El libro de cocina en
España (2012) separates cookbooks (in particular the Spanish cookbook) into five
categories. The first are those written for “cocineros profesionales de reconocido
prestigio [professional chefs]” (Paz Moreno 236). The second are those written for
“amas de casa o cocineros que recogen la cocina popular o doméstica [homemakers or
domestic cooks]” (Paz Moreno 236). The third type of cookbook is that written for
educational purposes while her fourth category included manuscripts written in earlier
centuries that were not made public until a later era. The fifth, her textos híbridos, are
those that combine gastronomic writings, literature and culture into one. Furthermore,
she delineates between recetarios puros and mixtos that represent cookbooks that are
either only comprised of recipes and those that include other types of narratives (Paz
Moreno 238). Paz Moreno’s categories help the reader to approach cookbooks of earlier
centuries and most of the twentieth century.
In the sixteenth century, given the lack of a cookbook market and literacy, only
three recipe collections were published, one being a Latin reproduction of the Roman
Apicius’ treatise on gastronomy from the first century AD. The seventeenth century
again saw only three works published, including a reprint and new edition of the famous
Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería by Francisco Martínez Montiño that
first appeared in 1611. Martínez Montiño was head chef in the royal court during the
early seventeenth century. An increase in production marked the eighteenth century,
when the number of cookbooks rose to nine. We also begin to see the new editions of
established cookbooks like the aforementioned Arte de cocina. Chartier warns, however,
that “literacy rates do not give an accurate measure of familiarity with the written word”
(Order 19). The strong oral tradition of food nonetheless continued after the invention of
the printing press. The increased written knowledge was consumed by illiterate people
through the introduction of this new knowledge into the collective oral tradition.
Nevertheless, as literacy rates increased so did cookbook production.
The rise of consumer culture and the increase in book publication in the
nineteenth century produced an exponential growth of cookbooks. 68 cookbooks were
published during this century including translations of French cookbooks and the
introduction of French cookbooks into the Spanish press. A cursory review of titles

33
suggests that cookbooks focused on a general instructional theme. Books were marketed
by emphasizing this instructional method using titles beginning with Manual, Guía or
Arte. There were outliers with books such as Cien recetas para preparar un plato en
pocos minutos (1876) by Mademoiselle Rose and La cuynera catalana… (1888 –
Anonymous) which were more narrowly-themed cookbooks. These recipe collections
are the forbearers of what we consider the modern cookbook, those dominated by
specialized themes and specific topics. It is important to note that the cookbook genre
was dominated by the male author until the twentieth century. Foreshadowing the
continual struggle that plagues the genre, a paradox exists wherein most cookbooks are
authored by males although most cooking and domestic duties are undertaken by women.
Similarly, while most home cooking duties befall females, the most famous chefs are
almost exclusively male.
Beginning with the nineteenth century, we must however begin to think of the
cookbook as a transmitter of national values and therefore, a national cuisine. In his
study of Latin American independence movements in the nineteenth century, Benedict
Anderson emphasizes the role of print culture in creating his imagined communities.
These communities of varied peoples were brought together by a commonality of custom
achieved through reading and being exposed to similar print cultures. Lara Anderson
builds on this idea by claiming that “culinary texts also contributed to nation-building in
this way…because they both created and presupposed an ‘imaginary community’ of
citizens with the same culinary values and tastes” (22). These culinary writers were and
are still “engaged in a very explicit attempt to fix, codify and describe the traditions of
nations and of regions by reference to practices of preparing and consuming food. Such
books of recipes seem to mount a claim that the choice, cooking and consumption of food
allow us to reconnect in a quite straightforward way with national and regional tradition”
(Floyd, “Simple” 127). The increased readership and production during the nineteenth
century saw nationalism enter into the culinary and gastronomic domains.
Confronting the various peripheral and autonomous cultures of Spain,
gastronomic writers began “finding ways to unite disparate foodscapes [as] an effective
method of nation-building” (L. Anderson 25). Furthermore, they had to combat the
incessant influence of French cooking. In the literary sphere, Anderson argues that for

34
Restoration writers their “nationalist agenda…meant that many of the descriptions of
eating and food favoured traditional Spanish dishes as hearty and unpretentious, in
contrast to what was seen as the artificial refinement of French food” (30). Realist and
Naturalist literary works such as Los Pazos de Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazán “often
privileged depictions of the everyday life of peasants and the working classes” (L.
Anderson 30). Anderson notes that while fictional depictions of food focus on the
traditional aspects of Spanish cuisine, nineteenth century cookbooks and gastronomes
also sought to capitalize on this trend.
Anderson proposes that culinary nationalism began with the publication of La
mesa moderna (1888) by Dr. Thebussem (the nom-de-plume of Mariano Pardo de
Figueroa). An epistolary argument between Dr. Thebussem and the fictional un cocinero
de su Majestad [Royal Chef] considering the state of Spanish cuisine “reveals a tension
between the need to assert indigenous Spanish culinary traditions and the imperative of
adapting to modern French culinary trends, which proves to be central…to their push to
nationalize Spanish cuisine” (L. Anderson 42). Their legacy, according to Anderson, lies
in their success in considering food to be a topic worthy of intellectual consideration (66).
To her, their nineteenth century vision of a Spanish national cuisine was comprised of
pluralized regional cuisines as well as a foodscape that glorified traditional cuisine
because it had no “indigenous haute cuisine” (68). To support this ideal of plurality,
Appadurai claims that in modern history “the cuisine that is emerging…is a national
cuisine in which regional cuisines play an important role, and the national cuisine does
not seek to hide its regional or ethnic roots” (“How” 290-1). Confirming Anderson’s
analysis, La mesa moderna indeed brought gastronomic debate to a high cultural and
intellectual sphere and provided the first reflection on how to define Spanish national
cuisine as an academic exercise.
In her article, “Mapping and Mocking: Spanish Cuisine and Ramón Gómez de la
Serna’s ‘El primer mapa gastronómico de España,’” Rebecca Ingram analyzes another
early representation of national cuisine. In her analysis of Ramón’s gastronomic map of
Spain, she notes that cartography functions similarly to narrative in proposing national
cuisine. While Gómez de la Serna’s map does not contribute to the pluralistic view of
cuisine seen in Lara Anderson’s monograph, what Ingram’s analysis does do is provide

35
more insight into how these subjective views of cuisine infiltrate the national collective.
Ingram reminds us that the modes of compilation of a map (or of a cookbook) “attest to
the fragility of any understanding of a map as an authoritative, objective document”
(“Mapping” 83). A cookbook or a map that claims to be a representation of the national
cuisine “is not a singular authority, but a synthesis of several possible sources, some of
them more subjective than others” (Ingram, “Mapping” 83). Ingram is quick to note as
well that an author’s and thus a text’s subjectivity “is due to the…decisions to include
things considered important and to leave out things deemed unimportant” (“Mapping”
83).
The argument that Ingram makes, and that Lara Anderson ascribes to as well, is
that each representation of Spanish national cuisine is inherently subjective. Ramón’s
intention with his map was to highlight and critique the arbitrary nature of collecting
information such as national traditions. While proposed as a nation-building action, the
drawing of a gastronomic map of national cuisine or writing a national cuisine guide or
cookbook are subjective to the author’s own tastes. Their actions reinforce the idea that
national cuisines only exist as subjective representations and cannot be objectively tested
or validated. Nonetheless, an author or a cartographer contributes to and further creates
the discourse of national cuisine by extolling their subjective views of what Spanish
cuisine truly is. With each recipe or food that is associated with a locale, region or
nation, the associations to the local, regional or national cuisine infiltrate and grow
deeper within the national collective.
As Ingram states in her article, the author or cartographer takes on an authoritative
role, thus making their ideas more real and less imaginary for the reader. This transition
from imaginary to real highlights how national cuisines come into existence. Although
national cuisines cannot objectively exist, subjective imaginaries are created through
textual contributions to the national cuisine discourse and via their authoritative pretense
enter into the national collective and become real.
Using a similar methodology seen in these previous works, the current project
will analyze and observe how authors contribute to the national cuisine discourse.
Examining their subjective tastes and ideas regarding what constitutes Spanish national
cuisine, this dissertation ascertains how national cuisine within Spain is represented.

36
Understanding how each author presents his or her own view of Spanish gastronomy and
cuisine allows us to understand how Spanish society at large understood and viewed the
national cuisine during a given time period. By examining the changing values
associated with cuisine in coordination with larger cultural and historical issues, this
project is able to present as well as give an explanation of why and how the discourse
regarding national cuisine has evolved over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
While Anderson’s study focuses more heavily on gastronomic writing that
confronts this idea explicitly, this dissertation will examine both the explicit and implicit
ways in which authors create their versions of a national cuisine. In order to understand
this discourse, we must study how each author presents their ideas. The current chapter
will be devoted, therefore, to exploring both Emilia Pardo Bazan’s and Carmen de
Burgos’ contributions to gastronomy. Each author promotes distinct versions of how
Spanish national cuisine should be defined. In the case of Dionisio Pérez’s book as well,
we will see how pre-Civil War gastronomic writers did not reach a consensus as to what
constituted Spanish national cuisine. These three works present three different and
distinct views of Spanish cuisine that are indicative of the confusion that dominated the
national cuisine discourse during the early twentieth century.
The first decade of the twentieth century continued to see a rise in the popularity
and publication of cookbooks. Eight were published but with only one female author
among them. The second decade saw more cookbooks published (thirteen), two by
women writers. During this time, the well-known and critically successful female
authors Carmen de Burgos and Emilia Pardo Bazán published multiple cookbooks. De
Burgos published three recipe collections: La cocina moderna (1906), ¿Quiere usted
comer bien? Manual práctico de cocina (1917), and Nueva cocina práctica (1925). Her
contemporary, Emilia Pardo Bazán, published two cookbooks, La cocina española
antigua (1913) and La cocina española moderna (1914).
For an in-depth analysis of these women authors’ gastronomic contributions,
Rebecca Ingram’s previously mentioned dissertation Spain on the Table: Cookbooks,
Women, and Modernization, 1905-1933 (2009) explores how the two female authors
assess and contribute to the idea of femininity through kitchen dialogue as well as create
ideas of what it means to be Spanish in the kitchen. Ingram contends that these writers

37
introduced ideals of Spanish cuisine in order “to promote a vision of Spain’s
modernization that corrects for the instabilities generated by those same modernization
processes” (272). Confronting Spain’s patriarchal system, these women write
“cookbooks as a way to make their readers participants in the[ir] goals” (Ingram 272) of
creating new womanhood in the face of modernity and making “things [women] do in
their home kitchens meaningful for the nation” (272).
As both Ingram and Anderson acknowledge, Pardo Bazán’s culinary treatises play
a role in both the feminine and nation-building discourse of the period. Pardo Bazán
begins her edition of modern Spanish cooking by lamenting that her contemporary
national cuisine “representa la adaptación de los guisos extranjeros a la mesa española
[represents the adaption of foreign dishes to the Spanish table]” (Moderna i). She
reiterates her goal from her Antigua edition by asserting that “la base de nuestra mesa
tiene siempre que ser nacional [the base of our table should always be national]”
(Moderna ii). Interestingly, she does offer a way to accommodate foreign tastes and
techniques by stating that “la mayoría de los platos extranjeros pueden hacerse á nuestro
modo [the majority of foreign dishes can be made using our mode of cooking]” (Moderna
ii).15 But what exactly does she mean when she refers to “our mode of cooking?” She
proposes a culinary philosophy that utilizes Spanish natural ingredients in ways that are
respectful of the regional traditions of Spain’s historical past.
Furthermore, she sets forth an idea that food and gastronomy are more than just
culture but also a national treasure. She describes the Spanish national cuisine by stating,
“hay platos de nuestra cocina nacional que no son menos curiosos ni menos históricos
que una medalla, un arma ó un sepulcro [there are dishes of our national cuisine that are
no less curious nor historical than a medal, firearm or tomb]” (Antigua iii). Supporting
this claim, Ingram describes that Pardo Bazán “asserts the centrality of cooking to the
national imagination and the canonical importance of her own volume” (“Popular” 265).
Well before most academic discourse began to value gastronomy, the author expressed a
comprehensive ideal of the cultural importance of food.
Foreign exposure was not the only threat to consolidating a national identity
through food. Oblivion represented the greatest threat and Pardo Bazán spoke often of

15
The use of accents are included in the original publication.

38
her goal to “salvar las antiguas recetas [save old recipes]” (Antigua iv). Aside from the
recipes, she mentions jamón and gazpacho as being the national treasures of Spain; foods
that, while originally regional, are now fully inculcated in the national cuisine. While not
explicitly stating so as fervently as we will see with Dionisio Pérez, she does appreciate
and value regional cooking in the creation of a national cuisine. As Anderson notes, she
refers often to her childhood home of Galicia and includes many recipes of Galician
origin (100). Pardo Bazán’s referencing of Galicia constitutes a contradiction of sorts
wherein she expresses her respect for her familial home but also declares the need for a
consolidated, Castilian view of national cuisine. Anderson, however, reminds the reader
that this should be expected as the author “was, first and foremost, a nationalist” (100).
Pardo Bazán herself alludes to this when reminding readers that her cookbooks utilize
“castellano castizo” (Antigua vii). This dialectal focus on the centralized region of
Madrid and its economic and political power reinforces her desire for a centralized,
national cuisine that accepts regional permeations. While she is a nationalist, it remains
unclear whether or not she desired a culinary hegemony rooted in Madrid’s cuisine. Her
regional inclinations and inclusions offer evidence to the contrary. Nonetheless, her
nationalist sentiments never manifested in creating a national cuisine in the vein of
France with a Madrid-as-metonym-for-the-nation paradigm that Anderson discusses in
relation to Paris and France.
For the Countess, the national argument is invariably supported by an attack on
foreign cuisine, most often French. The diatribes are relentless and could be read as
over-exaggerations in the face of her own national cuisine insecurity. Anderson sums up
Pardo Bazán’s attacks on France when she states that the author “was clearly tied up with
correcting the commonly held view of the era that Spain was a culinary wasteland
compared to France (Paris)” (104). Listing Spain’s superiority to France, she concludes
that “el arroz sabe á agua chirle. Nuestros embutidos son también muy superiores á los
extranjeros. La cocina española puede alabarse de sus sabores fuertes y claros [the rice
tastes flat. Our cured meats are superior to foreign meats. Spanish cuisine can brag
about its clear and strong flavors]” (Antigua v). She attacks what she considers to be the
French culinary invasion by stating that one should never use cow lard because “suele
estar rancia siempre [it is always rancid]” (Moderna vi) and instead of “la ‘mantequilla’”

39
(vii), “siempre, que es posible, se aconseja el aceite andaluz ó la manteca de cerdo
[always, when possible, use Andalusian olive oil or pig lard]” (vii). She demonstrates a
desire and pride in using Spanish products and in affirming her national cuisine,
incidentally creating a Spanish national cuisine that is inclusive of regional influences,
accepting that Andalusian olive oil is the preferred fat.
Additionally, she insults Madrid pastry chefs by stating that their cakes “con
manteca rancia se confeccionan [are baked with rancid lard]” (Moderna vii). While it
does not constitute an explicit de-centralization of the Spanish foodscape, it does imply
that foods may be fresher elsewhere. She does, however, lament the lack of attention
paid to foodstuffs within Spain. Speaking of meats, she states that “[l]as carnes, en
España, se cortan mal, y rara vez se obtiene el trozo conveniente [generally in Spain they
butcher meats poorly and you can rarely find what you are looking for]” (Moderna vi).
Despite her desire to create a new Spanish culinary nationalism, she acknowledges how
much Spain lags behind its neighbors to the north: “En el extranjero, sin duda, la tarea de
las amas de casa es mucho más fácil [In foreign countries, without a doubt, a
homemakers’ work is much easier]” (Moderna vi). Furthermore, she relents in her
critique of French cooking when describing certain dishes, like the Spanish omelette and
the French version. As Anderson explains, Pardo Bazán ultimately limited the
consumption of what she recognized as an iconic Spanish dish to the private sphere of the
family, treating the French version of the dish as appropriate for public display (118). In
spite of her zealous defense of Spanish cooking, she still holds that, in her time, French
cooking was much more acceptable in higher social circles.
Stylistically, her cookbooks fall into Paz Moreno’s category of those published
for a readership made up of primarily domestic wives. Pardo Bazán explicitly states that
this cookbook “no será útil á las personas que pueden pagar cocinero [is not useful for
people who can pay chefs],” (Moderna ii) but rather for those who “aspiran, sin embargo
á que cada plato presente aspecto agradable y coquetón [aspire, nevertheless, that each
plate be agreeable]” (ii). Aimed at the middle class, the Condesa weaves neither personal
testimony nor narrative into her recipes. Instead, she presents directions in a more
narrative way by staying away from cut and dry tables and formulas. She wavers
between precise and imprecise measurements, allowing and encouraging each woman the

40
freedom to write their own life into each dish. Furthermore, she varies between
command forms, both formal and informal, demonstrating respect while simultaneously
including a casual familiarity.
Contrasting her Antigua edition, the author aims to be much more conversational
in this edition, not emphasizing exact or precise measurements. Her intended audience is
different, however. Michelle Sharp noted in her presentation at the Kentucky Foreign
Language Conference in 2013 that Pardo Bazán closes her prologue by warning her
readers that “si quieren trabajar con sus propias delicadas manos en hacer un guiso,
procuren que la cebolla y el ajo los manipule la cocinera [if you want to work with your
own delicate hands, make sure that your cook deals with the onions and garlic]” (Antigua
viii). Echoing Sharp’s conclusions, the audience here is intended for a woman with the
means to employ a domestic helper and not for those women who will be cooking day-to-
day for her family. In the recipes here as well, she mixes formal and informal
commands. She does, however, include passive “se” verbs. These create an impersonal
feel for each recipe’s directions, avoiding a sense of community and familiarity between
reader and author.
Linguistically, Pardo Bazán continues her national cuisine-building exercise by
emphasizing the necessity of Spanish produce as well as the Spanish language. She
reminds her readers that “me limito á afirmar que el lenguaje de un libro de cocina
español debe ser castellano castizo…Líbrenos Dios de tal lengua franca...Hay que
defender el idoma nacional [I limit myself to affirm that the language of this Spanish
cookbook must be Castilian Spanish…Free us from the French language…We must
defend our national language” (Antigua vii). While writing through her recipes a new
idea of national cuisine, her linguistic use solidifies this national sentiment by reinforcing
the uniqueness of Spanish cooking. Rejecting French and Italian culinary terms denies
those nationalities a monopoly over the culinary arts in general and by incorporating
Spanish vocabulary, she aims to raise Spanish cooking to their level. One year later,
however, Pardo Bazán resigns herself to the fact that some culinary terms are too deeply
ingrained in the global cooking lexicon. She articulates that “al no encontrar modo de
expresar en castellano lo que todo el mundo dice en francés o en inglés, he debido
resignarme á emplear algunos vocablos de cocina ya corrientes [while not finding another

41
way of expressing in Spanish what everyone says in French or English, I have resigned
myself to employ some already common cooking phrases]” (Moderna iv).
As a counter to Pardo Bazán’s work, Carmen de Burgos’ La cocina moderna
continues and extends the feminist argument by stating that “la mujer puede ser
periodista, autor y hasta artista, sin olvidar por eso los pequeños detalles del hogar [a
woman can be a journalist, author and even an artist without forgetting those little details
of the home]” (5). De Burgos, while situating her cookbook and its work within the
feminine sphere, argues that the task of cooking and of gastronomy should not be thought
of as merely feminine but as a task that is of equal importance to other womanly
capabilities. Foreshadowing the importance of food, de Burgos states that she believes
that food carries a “gran papel social [great social role]” (5) and she finishes that sentence
repeating Brillat-Savarin’s maxim: “tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.”
Beginning her work, the author gives a brief history of food and cooking and ends
this section with a gastronomic analysis of Spain. While she details in multiple
paragraphs the accomplishments of other European countries as well as America in
creating educational culinary programs, she notes that Spain had recently joined this
trend and created programs aimed at enriching the culinary endeavors of the nation. De
Burgos discusses at length how to organize a kitchen and which ingredients are best for
certain foods. Where other cookbooks of the era ignore the educational aspects such as
kitchen planning and technique, de Burgos’ volume excels in providing valuable culinary
information for the most novice of cooks. She touches on every aspect of the kitchen and
dining room, describing how to butcher and clean animals, what type of flooring is best
and even an inventory of indispensable kitchen utensils, dishes and cookware. While not
included in this edition, de Burgos continued her educational inclinations in future
cookbooks including illustrations of cooking techniques and methods, some in color,
becoming one of the first cookbook authors to utilize such modern printing technology.
In terms of a national cuisine, de Burgos follows other culinary writers of the day
and names cocido español as “uno de los guisos más clásicos de España [one of the most
classic dishes of Spain]” (23). She does, however, break with other pluralists’ views of
Spanish national cuisine by stating that it is Castile, and Madrid specifically which offer
the best version of this most national dish. Similar to Pardo Bazán’s insistence on using

42
Spanish ingredients, de Burgos states that when cooking cocido español it is imperative
to use Castilian garbanzos. These garbanzos, “siempre preferidos, son de excelente
calidad y el agua [de Castilla] es buena para cocer los cereales [always preferred, are of
excellent quality and [Castilian] water is great for boiling beans and grains]” (24). While
acknowledging the regional contributions to Spanish cuisine, de Burgos appears to be
favoring a centralized version of cuisine with Madrid as the place that stands in for the
nation. She does, however, include the Catalan version of this dish (in much less detail)
in addition to other regional variations from Galicia and Andalusia. Interspersed
between these national and regional recipes are those for foreign variations. The French
and the Russian versions immediately follow the Castilian and Catalan recipes while the
author also includes the recipe for the Austrian version, perhaps as a legacy of the
Hapsburg dynasty.
In her introduction to sauces, however, she shies away from national dishes.
While she does include Sauce Espagnole in her discussion of the “Mother Sauces”16 (her
version includes Béchamel, vinaigrette and mayonnaise in comparison to the traditional
French Béchamel, Espagnole, Hollandaise, Tomato and Velouté version), she chooses to
use béchamel as the lead recipe in this section, relegating the national Espagnole (or the
French ideal of Spanish “mother sauce”) to the last spot reserved for her supposed
Spanish “mother sauces.” In all, de Burgos tends to offer a more globalized cuisine
rather than focusing exclusively on dishes of Spanish origin. To this extent, however, she
does not appear to favor French cooking exclusively, instead offering a smorgasbord of
recipes highlighting cuisine from across the globe.
Aside from her introduction, de Burgos is relatively straightforward in her
recipes, eschewing a narrative style. Her recipes are, however, narrative in presentation,
preferring to compile ingredients, techniques and amounts in paragraph form. She strays
from giving commands while offering her material using the impersonal “se” form and
occasionally including herself by utilizing the first –person plural-nosotros form.

16
The Mother Sauces are five sauces that comprise the base of French cooking. These are: Béchamel,
Espagnole, Hollandaise, Tomato and Velouté. This list itself is a variation set forth by Auguste Escoffier in
the twentieth century based on an original list proposed by Marie-Antoine Careme during the nineteenth
century.

43
 Acknowledging the diversity of Spanish cuisines and attempting to reconcile
those into a singular national cuisine, Dionisio Pérez’s previously mentioned Guía del
buen comer español: inventario y loa de la cocina clásica de España y sus regiones
(1929), is an unabashed advertisement for the acceptance and consolidation of a national
cuisine. Although not a cookbook, his treatise nonetheless addresses common dishes,
ingredients and techniques. His regional-centric national cuisine does not favor a
centralized culinary center such as French cuisine and its Paris “capital-as-metonym-for-
the-nation paradigm” (Anderson 33). Instead, he refutes Madrid’s power in determining
the culinary nation. Quoted in Plasencia, Peréz declares that “la cocina madrileña debiera
ser la cocina nacional; no es, sin embargo [Madrid cuisine should the the national cuisine;
It is not however” (Plasencia 9). Post-Thebussem, the pseudonym used by Pérez to align
himself with the previously mentioned Dr. Thebussem, softens his claim, however, by
suggesting that “la cocina madrileña puede ser considerada…como una síntesis de la
cocina nacional [Madrid cuisine can be considered…as a synthesis of the national
cuisine” (Plasencia 9) due to its centralized political and economic power as well as its
exposure to the many regional cuisines.
Written as a guide to promote Spanish cuisine for touristic purposes, Anderson
warns that his “culinary discourse was so strongly shaped by the interests of the state,”
(123) that we must be aware of the propagandist traps set forth by the “top-down
construction of national cuisines” (123). In addition to extolling the necessity of a
pluralist regional-based national cuisine, “Post-Thebussem frequently made a point of
explicitly mentioning the influences that different regional cuisines had on each other”
(Anderson 129). From his propagandistic perspective, the “recipe for a culinary
nationhood: national dishes were the ones that were made in the center from multiple
regional sources, brought back into the regions, and then had some local elements mixed
in to become provincially diversified” (Afinoguénova, “Organic” 35). Following Dr.
Thebussem and Post-Thebussem’s fight against French culinary hegemony, “in 1929, the
Patronage Board tried to create precedents for serving Spanish food in the hotels that it
managed” (Afinoguénova, “Organic” 36). Afinoguénova remarks, however, that the
experiment was not successful, citing that “professionally-made Spanish food was not
easy to come by” (“Organic” 38). Tourism will play an important role again during the

44
Francoist tourism boom of the 1960s. Although Pérez was equally as influenced by the
tourism board, his ideas and his importance remain, furthering Dr. Thebussem’s goal of a
renowned Spanish cuisine that accommodated regional cuisines and traditional dishes and
combined them into a national cuisine that could compete with European culinary powers
such as France.
In all, nine cookbooks were published during the 1920s and during the first half of
the 1930s, ten more books were published. There is, however, an abrupt gap beginning
in 1935 and coinciding with the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. During the
war years (1936-1939), the BNE has only one new book published during the war time
period. That book, La cocina casera (1939) by Doctora Fanny, is a seventh edition
reproduction of a successful series. The Civil War, as evidenced by other literary and
cultural productions, separates and shapes the cookbook landscape. Franco’s victory and
his subsequent control over media production will be discussed later in the next chapter.
Examining these three authors of the twentieth century, it is easy to confirm that
Spain’s culinary capital was not yet on a par with those of other European countries.
Although making strides, Spain, gastronomically speaking, still continued to be shrouded
in France’s ever-looming culinary shadow. Some authors, like Pérez, sought to combat
this idea outright and regain national autonomy in regards to cuisine. Others, like Pardo
Bazán, encouraged the idea of gastronomic autonomy while still admitting that French
influence was too ingrained to make extreme, radical changes regarding certain classes
(middle and upper) and certain techniques and ingredients. And still, there were those
like Carmen de Burgos who did not explicitly engage with these culinary nationalist ideas
at all. Through their explicit statements and their implicit ideas stemming from their
choice of recipes, the only consensus regarding the state of Spanish national cuisine was
that it was neither as advanced nor well known in comparison to other continental and
even North American cuisines.
Nevertheless, we see small indications of how these authors conceive of and
shape the concept of Spanish cuisine. All three state cocido español as a prime example
of a national dish. Even with that accolade, the three would most likely disagree as to
which version should stand as the national dish. The three authors separate into three
neat categories regarding regional influence with Carmen de Burgos favoring a Madrid-

45
centered national cuisine, Pardo Bazán acknowledging but not accepting regional
influence and Dionisio Pérez openly advocating a more pluralistic national cuisine.
Regardless of their dispositions, Spanish national cuisine, at this point, has to be
thought of as an interplay between centralized and regional ideas, ingredients and
methods. As evidenced by the three authors sampled above, the question of how to
define Spanish national cuisine received a variety of answers. In addition, the French
influence of the early twentieth century remained too ingrained throughout much of Spain
to conclusively define Spanish national cuisine from any definitive perspective. This
time period, however, signals a critical period in culinary nationalism. As we will see
throughout this project, French influence will continue to diminish while the active
creation of a uniquely Spanish national cuisine would begin.
The Next Course
Identifying the key argument of her monograph, Lara Anderson states that “the
heterogeneity of Spanish cuisine does not mean that textual attempts at the end of the
nineteenth century to construct a national cuisine for Spain were unsuccessful” (34-5).
While theorists and myself may negate the possibility of a true national cuisine ever
existing, this does not mean that attempts to define and representations of a national
cuisine do not exist. In the case of this project, an author’s attempt to created a concept
of a national cuisine must be studied concurrently with ideas that are implicitly stated in
the recipes of cookbooks and in the representation of food in film and literature. Every
gastronomic representation reveals how authors and the public perceive the idea of and
create a discourse of Spanish national cuisine. This dissertation’s goal is to uncover how
those authors imagined a national cuisine through their various cultural works and piece
together how those differing ideas evolved during the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries.
The following chapters are arranged chronologically. While not attempting to be
an exhaustive gastronomic history of Spain, each chapter will follow a similar thematic
presentation giving the reader a sense of Spanish cuisine and how it interacts historically,
socially and culturally. Each selection from cookbooks, popular culture and personal
testimony will serve to provide the reader with a representative gastronomic landscape of
each period. In each chapter, we will see how food is undeniably linked to and produced

46
by culture, which itself is shaped by a myriad of external and internal factors. Food is not
isolated in its existence, but rather reflects, incorporates and is produced by a wide
variety of factors that are always in flux.
In Chapter Two, we will debate the immediate effects of the postwar period.
Examining two documentaries, the prewar agriculture industry is seen as one yearning for
modernization while still glorifying tradition. The prewar state of agriculture compounds
the issues seen during and post-Civil War. Furthermore, two cookbooks, one published
during the war and the other after, will be analyzed in order to understand how the
discourse of hunger and scarcity influenced the idea of Spanish national cuisine. The
postwar period creates an environment in which gastronomy reverts to a simpler, more
rustic sensibility. In addition to these textual approaches, this second chapter also
examines the historical and economic consequences of Francoism and how these policies
would shape gastronomic discourse in the years to come.

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

47
 Chapter Three:
Austerity, Autarky and Hunger in Postwar Spain, 1939-1955
Una cucharada sopera de perejil y una hoja de apio (nada de tronco) sumamente
trinchada,
una pizquita, casi un nada de azafrán en polvo, o a falta de este, un cuarta de cucharada,
de las de café, de pimentón encarnado, una cucharada, de las de café, de bicarbonato
puro, seis cucharadas soperas de harina algo más que menos, la sal, la suficiente…
“Las Tortillas sin huevos de gallina, para los casos de necesidad”
A heaping tablespoon of parsley and one celery leaf (nothing from the stem) well
chopped,
a pinch, almost nothing from saffron powder, if not available, a quarter tablespoon
of red paprika, one tablespoon of pure baking soda, six overflowing tablespoons
of flour is enough, salt and that’s it.
“Spanish Omelette Without Eggs, In Cases of Necesity”
Ignacio Doménech, Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida)

Arguably the most important example of wartime gastronomy in Spain, Ignacio

Doménech’s Cocina de recursos [Resourceful Cooking] (1941) stands apart from other
postwar cookbooks for its direct confrontation with gastronomic scarcity resulting from
the Civil War. It is one of the few gastronomic works to be published immediately after
the war that was able to avoid the strict censorship of the Franco regime. It positioned
itself as a work of history, providing sharp social criticism and practical information
under the veneer of Francoist propaganda. It serves as a reminder of the difficulty in
securing the most basic needs during these tumultuous years in Spanish history. The
above recipe was for a batter with a consistency similar to the famed Spanish omelet.
While it may have tricked the palate and stomach into thinking it was a real tortilla, this
recipe exemplifies the difficulty accommodating taste and nutrition during times of food
insecurity.
Economically and gastronomically, the Spanish Civil War brought dramatic
changes to everyday life between 1936 and 1939. Exploring the economic consequences
of the Spanish Civil War, we see that “most of the industrial base and the financial

48
wealth” were located in Republican controlled areas (Martín-Aceña 144). The outbreak
of war immediately guaranteed food shortages throughout the duration of the fighting for
multiple reasons, but mostly due to the fact that “Spanish industry, armed forces, and
diplomacy were entirely unprepared for any kind of war” (Martín-Aceña 146). One can
argue with this assumption, noting that the Nationalist forces were prepared militarily but
neither military side nor the general public foresaw a war lasting three years. This
unpreparedness extended into the economic realm. Martín-Aceña describes a situation
where two governments – the Nationalist and Republican – existed simultaneously, both
with their own central banks and monetary systems (146). In order to fund the war, both
sides avoided raising capital through taxes or foreign debt, instead making “extensive use
of confiscation and expropriation of goods and properties” (Martín-Aceña 149).
While both sides used credit from foreign sources (Franco from Axis Allies and
Republicans from the Soviet Union), the domestic economy suffered under the heavy
weight of this crippling Civil War. With both sides transforming available industry for
war purposes, many factors combined to create consequences that affected the general
population. The first and most obvious was a shift in labor and production from
peacetime activities to total war production.17 This included a shift in manpower from
agricultural work to the front as well as other war-related industries. Martín-Aceña notes
that at the outset of the war the Republican controlled areas held a demographic
advantage with 60% of the population under their control. That number, however,
continued to dwindle until it reached a minority 49% in February of 1937, ceding the
demographic advantage to the Nationalist side where it would stay until the end of the
war (Martín Aceña, Economía 18). In the agricultural sector, Martínez Ruiz explains that
manpower “fue especialmente escasa en la agricultura republicana, debido a las masivas
y desordenadas incorporaciones al frente de los varones [was especially scarce in
Republican agriculture, due to the massive and disorganized incorporation of men to the
front]” (Martínez Ruiz 143). This problem was not unique to the Republicans, affecting
the Nationalist side as well. This exodus of labor to war-related activities compounded

17
Total war here is used to refer to the recalibration of labor to supply the war needs. Total war can also
refer to the Spanish Civil War as Ian Patterson describes as “the belief that the most effective way of
winning wars was by the obliteration, or the threat of obliteration, of the civilian population of the enemy’s
towns and cities by means of an annihilating attack from the air” (2).

49
an already dwindling population and manpower base and left fields unused and crops
unharvested.
Another factor contributing to food instability was the destruction of the Spanish
landscape. Infrastructure damage to supply lines in the form of railways, water supply
lines and to farmland inhibited Spanish agricultural sustainability during these three long
years. Spain was, as many war historians have asserted, the dress rehearsal for World
War II. Ian Patterson argues that the Spanish Civil War was the first “total war” of the
twentieth century, a war characterized by the usage of aerial bombing to devastate a
civilian populace (2). This was first and foremost seen at the bombing of Guernica at the
hands of the Nazi Condor Legion in April of 1937 (Patterson 2). However, in
comparison to the soon approaching World War II that would decimate much of Western
Europe, Spain suffered relatively minor losses to infrastructure.
Nevertheless, this damage was sufficient to impede agriculture during and after
the war. Compounding these war-related issues was the fact that Spain was not as
developed agriculturally at the outset of the war as other European nations. The
agricultural domain was not insulated against the shift to a total war economy.
Spanish agricultural problems extend further back into the twentieth century, beginning
with increased population growth and decreased modernization in comparison to other
European countries. Analyzing the urban growth in Barcelona during the last quarter of
the nineteenth century and the prewar twentieth century in relation to its effect on
agriculture, Nicolau-Nos and Pujol-Andreu note that the population of Barcelona grew
exponentially from a World War I total of 620,000 to a prewar total of 1,000,000
inhabitants (42). At the turn of the twentieth century, Spain’s population growth jumped
to an average annual growth rate of .79% in comparison to a rate of .43% during the
period that covered the last forty years of the previous century (Moreda 14). Moreda also
notes the lack of growth during the period traditionally associated with the global
Industrial Revolution. He states that in Spain the population growth during this period
cannot “be called revolutionary, since trends in vital statistics did not substantially
change until after 1900” (15). Moreda notes that Spain did not follow traditional
European demographic trends during the Industrial Revolution and throughout the
nineteenth century. The growth at the turn of the century led to strains on the agricultural

50
industry compounded by a lack of economic modernization. The population of Spain as
a whole grew from 18.6 million in 1900 to 23.6 million by 1936, according to censuses
performed by the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Estadística. While an increase of five
million may not appear to be a large one, one must consider that the increase accounts for
roughly one-third of the 1900 population. Spanish industry and agriculture had to
account for and keep producing enough for a 33% demographic increase.18
Gastronomically, Nicolau-Nos and Pujol-Andreu explain that animal protein
consumption remained low in Barcelona due to a lack of transportation options. They
explain that “railway connections were made between Barcelona and the Northern part of
the peninsula and inland regions” (Nicolau-Nos 44) only at the end of the nineteenth
century and this progress extended into the twentieth century as well. Antonio Gómez
Mendoza corroborates this claim, stating that typical economic growth patterns produce
economic productivity inceases as a result of increased diversification in modes of
transportation. During the nineteenth century, European countries were expanding their
transportation systems to include “sturdier roads…inland canals…steel rails…and
steampower” (Mendoza 90). He argues, however, that Spanish transportation systems
did not mimic these same modernizing changes. By the 1900s, however, “the integration
of the national market was linked to the development of the railroads. The railroads
ended the departmentalization of the Spanish economy, and as markets expanded,
economies of scale were achieved” (Mendoza 100). While overall modernization of the
transportation industry produced positive economic results for Spain, we must be
reminded that the majority of Spanish farmers were never able to achieve the economies
of scale needed to reap the benefits of the increased transportation network.
As a result of the lack of transportation modernization, the Barcelona diet was
heavy in fish and low in animal protein due to their proximity to the sea and their
regional agriculture that was so dependent on the fishing industry (Nicolau-Nos). They
comment, as well, that due to the lack of adequate transportation “feeding the city
depended, for most products, on imports from other Spanish regions or from abroad,
because the Catalan agrarian sector specialized in vineyards, olives, and fruit trees”

18
The Spanish INE (Instituto nacional de estadística) is responsible for all census and population figures
unless otherwise cited.

51
(Nicolau-Nos 42-3). Barcelona can hardly be considered a baseline in understanding the
nation as a whole but it does illustrate the regionality of Spanish agriculture at the turn of
the century and its difficulties in the face of urban population growth and modernization.
Even with the slow modernization of the transportation sector, Spanish agriculture
remained largely regional and local. Although “between 1900 and 1929 agricultural
output grew by a total of 65 per cent at an annual rate of 1.13 per cent…outstripping a
population increase of .77 per cent,” (Grugel 103), there was still not a systematized
national agricultural industry in Spain. During the first decades of the twentieth century,
the average farms were family-owned and “too small to adequately support a household,
and peasant families lived a precarious existence. Lacking economies of scale, greater
output and productivity were only possible through harder work” (104). The nature of
this hard work will be seen later in a discussion of 1930s agricultural documentaries by
the duo Carlos Velo and Fernando Mantilla.
The agricultural industry’s lack of modernization “was…one of the most salient
causes of the slowness with which the Spanish economy underwent its process of
modernization” (Tortella 43). Tortella acknowledges that the reasons contributing to the
lack of modernization were equal parts “physical and geographical as well as institutional
and political” (43). Mismanaged governmental policies and interventions as well as an
unwillingness and inability to change farming philosophies created a national agriculture
that always performed below European averages. Further contributing to the lack of
economic modernization was the physical size of the agricultural industry. Jean Grugel
and Tim Rees estimate that “by 1929 the proportion of the active population engaged in
agriculture had fallen to 45.5 per cent from 66 per cent in 1910” (104). While this
represents a drastic drop over a twenty year period, the agriculture industry still had the
highest percentage of workers in comparison to Spain’s other labor sectors.19 As stated
already, most farmers operated at almost subsistence levels. This meant that 45.5% of
the Spanish workforce was toiling for minimum economic gain and still struggling to
feed themselves before feeding the nation.

19
In 1929, workers in industrial jobs accounted for 26.5% of the labor force while service industry workers
accounted for 28% (Grugel 104).

52
 Some areas flourished as the Mediterranean coast experienced a “diversification
into high-value export crops such as wine, citrus fruits and nuts” (Grugel 104). Most
others however, including rural Andalusia, “produced one of the most deeply divided
agrarian societies in Europe” (Grugel 104) where laborers and sharecroppers were
consistently economically oppressed by a small ruling elite. Still, however, much more
needs to be said in regards to the larger (and rural) state of the Spanish agricultural
industry during the 1930s and at the outset of the Civil War. While many histories do
exist to inform us on the state of this industry, Carlos Velo and Fernando G. Mantilla
were two documentary filmmakers in the 1930s whose work tended to focus on
agriculture and the Spanish farmer. Their works provide intimate perspectives of Spanish
agriculture and those who labored in that sector. Velo is well known for his 1933 work
Almadrabas that examined the tuna fishing industry in Spain and perhaps best known for
his post-exile work in Mexico. The two works analyzed in this section, La ciudad y el
campo (1934) and Galicia (1936), both provide insight into the agriculture industry
during the time period, demonstrating the labor-intensive agricultural sector contrasted
against the increasing technological mechanizations of Madrid.
The silent 1934 documentary La ciudad y el campo announces in its opening
credits that the footage seen was part of a feature-length documentary of the same title by
editor Fernando G. Mantilla who would later collaborate with director Carlos Velo on
subsequent projects. The duo Velo-Mantilla was responsible for many documentary
films during the 1930s and are considered “os primeiros que crearon estilo en opinión
coincidente dos críticos e especialistas [the first to create a style that blended both critical
and expert opinion]” (Fernández 59). Unfortunately, however, Fernández notes that the
majority of their short documentary work has been “destruída ou ilocalizable [destroyed
or lost]” (60). The present short film originally registered at 35 minutes (Fernández 70).
La ciudad y el campo also marks the duo’s first collaborative short documentary
(Fernández 61). While the title credits cast doubt on the verifiable reasons for
production, the credits state that the larger project was “posiblemente realizado…para
propaganda agraria en la primera época de la Guerra Civil Española [possibly
undertaken…as agrarian propaganda during the first stage of the Spanish Civil War]”
(00:21). This, however, would contradict the 1934 production date attributed to this

53
documentary film and Fernández is quick to correct this stating the present title cards
were placed after production as a means of cataloguing the film (69). It is also important
to note that the production was aided by the Ministerio de Agricultura y Fomento
[Ministry of Agriculture] which could have led to this confusion. Fernández describes
that many of their films were subject to “graves manipulacións a posteriori [grave
manipulations a posteriori]” (60). The author intimates that the present version could be
the result of Republican propaganda due to their sponsorship of the production.
The surviving film shows the striking differences between rural and urban life
during the 1930s. Combined with what we will see later in Velo’s 1936 documentary
Galicia, the two documentaries provide visual evidence of the state of Spanish
agriculture during the 1930s at the outset of the Spanish Civil War with the latter forming
a subtle yet strong indictment of Fascism. The agricultural system depicted is
contradictory, simultaneously portraying and advocating for industrial progress while
also glorifying traditional farming methods to supply a country that was becoming
increasingly modern. In this documentary, we see a dual tension, between the rural and
the urban, and tradition and progress.
The film begins with a not-so-steady title card with illustrated letters and
corresponding drawings of La ciudad [The City] and El campo [The Country]. The city
is accompanied by a grouping of skyscrapers while the countryside is depicted through a
drawing of rolling fields. The title card slowly disappears as leaves are thrown on top of
the card, eventually covering the title entirely. The film cuts to the first shot, an aerial
panorama view of the Metropolis building in Madrid. The shot pans to the right, showing
the expansiveness of Madrid’s urban metropolis while also reminding the viewers of the
rural landscapes that lie beyond Madrid. The urban montage continues with shots of
busy boulevards and bird’s eye views of intersections, giving the spectator a
simultaneous feeling of the immensity and wonder of the urban and also the
insignificance of the individual within the urban landscape as they are relegated to small,
indistinguishable moving objects on the screen. The series of urban shots, however, do
not intend to belittle the spectator or critique the urban. Velo and Mantilla capture 1930s
Madrid. The shots do not show the grotesque underbelly of the city; instead, the film
displays the gorgeous architecture of the Gran Vía and a sense of amazement of the

54
modern wonders that make urban traffic possible, even including an image that captures
the regulating force of modern Madrid: the stoplight. The images and tone of the film,
however, come into conflict with what Velo has stated about the film. Quoted in
Fernández, the director explains that for them, Madrid was “unha cidade monstruosa na
que se perdían os labregos [a monstrous city in which the worker lost himself]” (71).
Nevertheless, the images in the surviving part of the film convey neither an
overwhelming nor suffocating view of the city.
A title card presents the transition to the rural section. Simple white letters state:
“La incubaduras gigantescas mecanismos funcionamiento. [The giant incubators
functioning mechanisms]” (2:10). The title card fades to reveal large incubators full of
chicken eggs waiting to hatch. A sophisticated metal and wood box works to keep
accurate and ideal temperatures for the incubating eggs, slowly rotating to show the
immensity of the operation. Innumerable eggs litter the holding containers.
In contrast to what we will see in Galicia, the agricultural operation undertaken
here is more akin to the modern progress of bustling Madrid. We see the marriage of
technology and modernization with agriculture, producing a supposed increase in
efficiency and production. The viewers witness industrial agriculture at its finest as we
transition to the next shot that displays the now hatched chicks. The hatchery is
comprised of wood and metals, powered by electricity and mechanization. This type of
agriculture relies on planned, scientific approaches. Progress and modernity enable a
new era of agriculture and Velo and Mantilla are advocating for the advancement of
agricultural technology to bring this sector in line with the modern Madrid. Another title
card states that the chicks are born “por millares y son embalados con delicadeza para su
envío [by the thousands and are packaged attentively for their shipment]” (5:36). This
part of the documentary details the entirety of the supply chain from production to
shipping to destination. It is one that is highly sophisticated and wherein data is collected
to register each chick based on his or her birth mother as well as tagging and marking
each individual chick. The process provides continuity from start to finish and
demonstrates to what extent technology and modernization can benefit one sector of the
larger agriculture industry. We would, however, be remiss not to mention the rural’s role
in this process. A title card narration states that “El pequeño gallinero campesino es la

55
clave de la producción nacional [The small peasant chicken coop is the key to national
production]” (7:38). The film ends with a montage in a nameless town like any other in
rural Spain of a farmer tending to his chickens and roosters.
Although Mantilla declared that the documentary was “sobre a historia dun ovo
de galiña nunha granxa colectiva [about the story of an egg in a collective farm]”
(Fernández 70), the documentary is an ode to the wonders of modernity, displaying
gorgeous shots spanning the beauty of urban Madrid while also glorifying the
advancements in technology that make the poultry industry an efficient contrast to
outdated agricultural techniques. The message is clear that an intricate relationship exists
between the urban and the rural in regards to agriculture and food supply. The directors,
however, bait and switch the audience to reveal that at the base of all of modernity’s
wonder is a lowly chicken farmer in rural Spain. As they state explicitly in the film, Velo
and Mantilla believe that the nation is indebted to the rural due to their agricultural
production. His importance, and the importance of the rural, is what make modernity
possible. He provides the rooster and the chicken and thus the eggs that spur
technological advancements in the poultry industry. In the face of all this progress, the
simple fact remains that Spain’s advancements, Spain’s growth and Spain’s food supply
still come from rural areas. The rural is equally, if not more, important than the urban.
As a companion of sorts to La ciudad y el campo, Velo-Mantilla’s 1936 short
documentary Galicia begins with a black and white shot of the titular regional coastline
with title credits reading its Roman name: Finis Terrae. Co-directed once again with
Fernando G. Mantilla, the documentary is a realistic portrait of provincial Galicia at the
outset of the Spanish Civil War. Like their first film, the present documentary only
represents what has been salvaged throughout the years. The original 1936 production
version has been lost (Fernández 88). The title credits roll over drawings of the Galician
people undertaking daily tasks before an iris wipe and an abrupt musical cut yield to a
picturesque shot of the Galician countryside. The silence of the frame is broken by an
almost inhuman wail resembling the wartime bombing raid sirens that larger cities such
as Madrid would only come to know too well in the subsequent three years. The sirens,
however, turn out to be primal yells as Velo overlaps these barbaric yawps with
continued images of the rocky outcroppings and terraced landscapes of Galicia. A

56
narrator tells the audience that Galicia is the “tierra occidental de Europa…país verde,
fecundo, de ríos silenciosos y colinas suaves. País de largos inviernos húmedos y grises,
de gentes que hablan una lengua poética y dulce [western land of Europe…a green
country, fertile, with silent rivers and suave mountains. A country with long gray and
humid winters, with people that speak a sweet and poetic language]” (1:23). The
narration describes Galicia as a modern-day Eden, tranquil and ideal in its natural beauty.
Partly due to Velo’s own Galician roots, the film strikes this tone as propaganda for
Galicia and its rural ideals and was celebrated in its time as one of the first documentaries
conveying the reality of the Galician lands and people (Fernández 71).
The narrator also declares to the audience that these images were taken “pocos
días antes del movimiento fascista que redujo en esclavitud a este pueblo laborioso y
humilde [only a few days before the Fascist movements enslaved this laborious and
humble village].” The intent is obvious listening to the loaded words used by the
narrator. This film is intended to be political propaganda for the Republican cause. Velo
was later exiled to Mexico after the end of the war and enjoyed a fruitful career as both a
professor and filmmaker in the Mexican capital (Fernández). Nevertheless, the initial
montage of image and sound provide a contrast of ideals. On one hand, the spectator
experiences the pacific nature and beauty of Galicia through images of undeveloped
landscapes and provincial life. On the other, there is the weight of the impending Civil
War and the difficulties it will bring. Velo strikes an ominous but clear tone stating that
Galicia and its people are no more than slaves to the Franco war machine. It is an
emotional appeal that stands in direct contrast to the imagined freedom that comes with
living at the edge of the world.
Similarly, Velo’s documentary signals that although this landscape is “una de las
regiones más fértiles de España pero su riqueza no beneficia los trabajadores que la
producen sino los grandes propietarios y a los caciques [one of the most fertile regions in
Spain but its richness does not benefit the farmers, instead only benefitting the companies
and large land owners]”. The Leftist tone of the documentary attacks the lack of
distribution of wealth and bemoans the fact that those working the lands are not those
receiving the monetary benefits. Once again, we see a similar theme in La ciudad y el
campo. Although in contrast to the images of modern technology in the previous

57
documentary, this current film again expounds that the rural landscapes of Spain are
equally as important as the modern urban centers. The common farmer is once again
thrust into the spotlight as not only the star of this film, but also situated as the star of
Spain and its agricultural production. We are reminded that without this class of worker,
the nation would be lost. Here, however, the symbiotic relationship seen in the first film
is described in more parasitic terms with the farmer receiving little to no benefit from
their hard work.
After this initial montage of beautiful and sweeping landscapes corresponding to
the omniscient narration, the documentary cuts to scenes of provincial Galicians engaged
in scenes of daily labor that all correspond to the cultivation of the land. In the
background, the audience hears folk songs while the images show outdated agricultural
methods. Stylistically, Fernández describes the film as following Soviet filmic
tendencies from the 1930s. He explains that the style of calligraphy and drawings used in
the title cards as well as the technical style of filming and farming recall Soviet
filmmakers such as Eisenstein (86). In one scene, men and women are shown in the
process of preparing the wheat crop in which the farmers use primitive wooden tools to
beat down what appears to be wheat. The scene focuses on an older man in rhythmic
automation performing the same movement over and over as the film cuts from the work
and instead shows the same man framing him from below as he takes as break and drinks
water out of an earthen ceramic bowl. The series of shots underscores the physicality of
such work.
From a contemporary perspective, it is striking to see filmic images of such labor
and its intensive nature. In another scene, we see a primitive ox driven plow made of
wood being led by one man as another plows the field. These two men are flanked by an
additional two women hoeing the earth and planting whatever crop has been designated
for this field in particular. The work is slow and imprecise. If, as the narration signals at
the beginning of the documentary, this is one of Spain’s most fertile lands, then it can be
assumed that Spanish agriculture is still very much rooted in historically provincial
means of cultivation. There is no mechanization. There are no modern iron or steel
tools. The workers are simply using centuries-old techniques with what appear to be
centuries-old tool designs. The main tool utilized to beat down the wheat is no more than

58
a long wooden pole with another shorter pole affixed in a freely rotating fashion. As
ingenious as the design is, the fact that four men and two women are needed to perform
this task highlights the lack of modernization and mechanization within Spanish
agriculture during the 1930s. As propaganda for the Republic, the film highlights this
and other agricultural regions’ importance to the war effort. Paradoxically, however, it
also portends the future problems that all of Spain will encounter as the war raged on.
Within months, the men who were once field hands would be leaving to join either one of
the other military side, leaving the agriculture sector strained.
The film continues to show sun-weathered and gaunt workers with faces as
furrowed as the land they tend. The narration reminds us that although the land is rich,
the people are not and never have been:
El pueblo trabajador ha sido siempre pobre. Abundan en proporción enorme los
pequeños propietarios, víctimas de la explotación y la usura. El esfuerzo de los
campesinos laboriosos favorece tan solo a una minoría de privilegiados, gente
improductiva que vive de trabajo ajeno. Las tierras templadas del interior
esmeradamente cultivadas permiten al maíz y entregar periódicamente valiosos
granos…El maíz después de secado al sol es conducido a los hórreos queda
almacenado durante el invierno convenientemente aireado y protegido para ser
utilizado cuando las necesidades del país lo exigen.
The working village has always been poor. The small farmers are abundant in
proportion and are the victims of exploitation and usury. The effort of the
laborious farmers favors only a minority of privileged peoples, unproductive, that
live off the work of another. The temperate lands, painstakingly cultivated, yield
corn and occasionally other valuable grains…Corn after drying in the sun is taken
to the granaries and kept during the winter, conveniently aerated and protected to
be used when the needs of the country demand it. (Galicia)
The closing statements are ominous and have a foreboding tone. Although filmed
before the events of July 17, 1936, the post-production narration alludes to the scarcity
that Spain would experience in the coming years. The nation would need the food
reserves held in granaries throughout Galicia and other regions. The granaries, however,

59
did not hold enough reserves and as the war dragged on, production could not match the
necessary demand.
In conclusion, the films of Velo and Mantilla demonstrate realistic portraits of
both urban and rural life during the 1930s. Furthermore, their insight into the Spanish
agricultural industry of the time period reveals an oxymoron: simultaneously striving for
modernity and technological advance while also glorifying the time-tested techniques of
centuries past. La ciudad y el campo demonstrates where Spanish agriculture could go
when modern technology is applied to the current system. The directors, however,
remind the audience at the end that the agriculture sector is still and will always be linked
to the common rural farmer.
Similarly, Galicia’s content echoes the previous film’s rural ideality. The second
film’s striking visuals, however, portray an agricultural system bereft of modernization,
instead relying on centuries-old techniques and methods that proved to be extremely
labor intensive and inefficient to serve spikes in demand. While the Republican
propagandistic tone of the film supports the idea that the common farmer is the backbone
of Spanish agriculture, today’s audience cannot help but notice the ineffectiveness of the
system. Combined with the redistribution of labor due to the outbreak of war, the
audience can visualize how the agriculture sector was woefully unprepared for the Civil
War and its consequential change in supply and demand.
While culinary theorists have long advocated a pluralistic view20 of regional and
national synthesis within Spain, the dominance of regional cuisine (and thus the
pluralistic national gastronomy perspective) can be traced to the regional-centric
agriculture industry in the 1930s that resulted from a lack of modernization and
transportation available within the country as evidenced in the two documentaries. The
reason that the national cuisine appears to be so region-centric is because the national
agriculture was based entirely on regional agricultures. The Spanish national agriculture
can be thought of as a conglomeration of different regional agricultures growing what
best suits their varied climates and conditions and subsequent domestic trade of these
products. As seen in the previous documentaries, agricultural production was dictated by

20
This definition comes from Lara Anderson and her definition of culinary nationalism in late nineteenth-
century Spain. See Ch. 1 for a more complete discussion.

60
ecological factors and intra-regional transportation was not heavily relied upon. The
technological marvels of twentieth-century transportation had yet to permeate the
regionality of Spanish cuisine and as such respective regional diets were heavy in foods
that were readily available and did not represent foods that were susceptible to spoilage
during long and cumbersome transit. In addition to its quality, this may explain the
ubiquity of jamón in Spain along with other cured meats, including dried fish. The salt-
cured possibilities for sausages, hams and salted cod ensured that it could be distributed
throughout the country without the risk of spoilage and lost profit.
Hunger, Scarcity and the War
The Spanish Civil War began on July 17, 1936 and the gastronomic repercussions
of this war were felt almost immediately. The Nationalists’ initial push across the
Peninsula left the Republican-protected areas isolated. As Miguel Ángel Almódovar
recounts, “la ‘zona republicana’ padeció hasta lo indecible los rigores de la desnutrición y
el espectro del hambre [the ‘Republican zone’ suffered unspeakably the rigors of
malnutrition and the ghost of hunger]” (Hambre 221). In August of 1936, the Republican
government issued a law prohibiting “toda elevación en los precios de venta de cualquier
clase de mercancía destinada a alimentación [the elevation of prices for any and all class
of food]” (Martínez Ruiz 149). By November 20, 1936 “entraron en vigor las tarjetas de
aprovisionamiento que concedían una ración diaria por persona de 100 gramos de lentejas
o judías…un cuarto de litro de leche, medio kilo de pan, 100 gramos de carne, 25 gramos
de tocino, medio kilo de fruta, 50 gramos de sopa y cuarto kilo de patata [ration cards
were widely used that dictated a daily ration per person of 100 grams of beans…one
fourth of a liter of milk, half a kilo of bread, 100 grams of meat, 25 grams of bacon, half a
kilo of fruit, 50 grams of soup and a fourth of a kilo of potatoes]” (Almódovar, Hambre
226). Moreover, every two days Spaniards were able to obtain two eggs and rations of
fish, sugar and rice (Almódovar, Hambre 226).
Nevertheless, the Republic controlled many of the agriculturally rich areas at the
beginning of the war. Maintaining control in “las tres zonas fabriles y mineras más
importantes, Cataluña, el País Vasco y Asturias, así como una parte nada desdeñable de
la agricultura, entre un tercio y la mitad [the three most important industrial and mining
areas, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Asturias, as well as between a third and half of

61
the agriculture]” (Martín Aceña, Economía 18), the Republic held an important industrial
and agricultural advantage. Although prices rose exponentially and rationing was
implemented by the Republic within four months of the coup d’etat, the Republic held an
agricultural advantage in cash crops with 90% of citrus production, 50% of olive oil
production, 80% of rice production and a majority of fruit and vegetable production
(Martín Aceña, Economía 18). What Martínez Ruiz reminds us is that those products
only represent those most profitable in exportation (Martínez Ruiz 111). In Republican
Spain, however, “escaseaban muchos de los alimentos básicos de subsistencia, los más
importantes para el consumo interno [there was a shortage of basic subsistance food,
those items most important for domestic consumption]” (Martínez Ruiz 111). While the
control of these industrial crops may have been seen as an initial advantage in terms of
earning income, it became clear as the war continued that exportation of agricultural
products was not possible at the same levels as before and food exportation was soon
made illegal by the Republic. Furthermore, the Republican government could not feed its
people with these types of products alone.
On the other side, the Nationalists held control of the basic subsistence crops like
cereals and grains, meat and dairy as well as beans, corn and potatoes. Of these products,
the Franco-led forces controlled more than 60% of the potato and wheat crop, half of the
corn production and 60% of legumes (Martínez Ruiz 111). As for meat and its associated
products, the Nationalists were in possession of more than 70% of all cow, ox, sheep and
milk production (Martínez Ruiz 111). All crop production was in flux as Martínez Ruiz
points out that the productions both rose and fell for subsistence and exportable crops.
Citing the production of olives and olive oil as a specific example, olives for
consumption (those consumed domestically) saw a rise in cultivation while olives for
exportation fell as the author concludes that this is an example of the shift in production
towards more domestic consumption rather than foreign export.
Martínez Ruiz sums up the principal preoccupation of both sides as being the
ability to “organizar la actividad productiva, asegurando un nivel de producción que
garantizase el abastecimiento interno e, incluso, permitiese la realización de
exportaciones [organize productive activity, assuring a level of production that
guaranteed domestic supply and that permitted the realization of exportation]” (Martínez

62
Ruiz 138). While the Republican areas took measures to ensure production in addition to
the implementation of rationing, the Nationalists pledged on October 1, 1936 a strong
stance to not overlook agricultural problems associated with the war, including “la no
interrupción de la vida agrícola en las provincias reconquistadas, la intensificación del
cultivo de las tierras baldías, la promoción del desarrollo ganadero, la repoblación
forestal y el fomento de las plantas industriales como el algodón, tabaco y lino [the non-
interruption of agriculture in conquered provinces, the intensification of cultivation of
unused land, the promotion of grain production, repopulation of forests and the planting
of industrial crops like cotton, tobacco and flax]” (Martínez Ruiz 144). This move was
not only practical in nature but also political, an attempt to prove Franco’s ability to feed
the nation. Similarly, their agricultural advantage gave the Nationalists a unique military
advantage by controlling the majority of subsistence crops. While both sides created
commissions to curtail agricultural shortages and the inflation of prices, Martínez Ruiz
de-emphasizes these commissions’ tangible wartime effects, stating that those that
succeeded in alleviating shortage and inflation were not initiated until after the war.
In Madrid, the scarcity was not only felt in the stomachs of its population but also
on store shelves. Almódovar describes a situation where “los productos desaparecían a
los minutos de ponerse a la venta…y llegaron las colas que formarían parte del paisaje
ciudadano durante todo el resto de la contienda [products disappeared within minutes of
sale…and the arrival of lines that were part of the urban landscape for the rest of the
war]” (Hambre 224). This kind of scarcity inevitably led to hoarding, black markets and
malnutrition. Black market prices soared; a pound of chocolate cost 123 pesetas and the
price of one egg rose to 1.25 pesetas. Del Cura’s and Huertas’ estimates use historical
data to contextualize the rise in price. While one egg on the black market cost 1.25
pesetas, in 1907 a dozen cost only 1.30 and in 1935 only 4.50/dozen. These authors
argue that the food crisis reached its peak in the latter half of 1938 when “el precio de los
alimentos básicos en el mercado negro alcanzó cifras desorbitadas [the price of the most
basic foods reached exorbitant levels on the black market]” (66). During this period, they
further estimate that a dozen eggs cost between 150-200 pesetas while a kilogram of
bread rose to 1.20 pesetas, just shy of a 100% increase, based on prewar pricing.

63
 Bread lines and ration cards as well as hunger and scarcity became the norm in all
of Spain but most heavily in Republican areas that were more densely populated than
those areas controlled by the Nationalist uprising. While more factors contributed to the
ultimate Republican loss, the agricultural struggle favored the Nationalist side. While
seemingly having the advantage at the beginning of the war by securing areas with high
population and cash crops, this became a hindrance when the war continued during three
long years. Those cash crops were not substantial enough to feed the large population
and troops. While also suffering from gastronomic and agricultural preoccupations, the
Nationalist subsistence crop advantage afforded more allocation of resources to other
aspects of the war. This agricultural advantage can be understood to be one of the many
factors contributing to the Nationalist victory. Overall, the Civil War produced food
insecurity at levels never seen before in Spain and ensured a long road to agricultural
recovery in the first years of Francoism.
Postwar rationing began in an official capacity on May 14, 1939, two months
after Franco’s victory, and ended June 15, 1952. The rationing cards were given to “cada
familia censada y estaban clasificadas en tres categorías – primera, segunda y tercera –
que se establecía en función del nivel social, del estado de salud y del tipo de trabajo del
cabeza de familia [each family and were classified by three categories – first, second and
third – that were established by social level, health and type of work by the head of the
family]” (del Cura 74). Del Cura and Huertas remind us, however, that these cards were
only valid for certain products at certain prices depending on supply and demand (74).
As a consequence, they describe the gastronomic situation of postwar Spain as a daily
struggle: “la comida para la mayoría de la población consistía en ‘engañar al estómago’
con hidratos de carbono y calorías a base de sopas, legumbres y tocino cocinados de
forma poco variada día tras día [food for most of the population consisted in ‘tricking the
stomach’ with carbohydrates and calories by way of soups, legumes and bacon, cooking
in the same way day after day]” (75).
Wartime Cookbook Production
As a result of war, the Spanish National Library’s cookbook database only
registers one cookbook published during the war years. While the BNE database is not
an accurate representation of all publications, it does underscore the impact that the Civil

64
War had on the production of gastronomic culture. Cookbooks were still produced,
nonetheless, by the Generalitat de Catalunya to increase awareness of scarcity and to
provide guides for its citizens. These do not appear in the BNE’s registry, but María Paz
Moreno points to cookbooks like Menús de guerra or El menjar en temps de guerra as
examples of this wartime preoccupation with cooking with few resources (Plato 28).
Considered a luxury item, the publishing of cookbooks and other gastronomic
writing suffered drastic declines in comparison to other cultural media. While across the
board literature and other cultural production was in decline, the film industry shifted its
production to include wartime propaganda projects. In comparison to the scarcity of
cookbook production, the film industry thrived, considering the circumstances. During
the war, both sides managed to produce over 500 films, ranging in length and purpose
(Crussels 124). The Republican combatants dominated the wartime film industry,
responsible for three-fifths of all films produced during those three years. Crussels
signals that this is due in large part to the pre-Civil War film hubs of Madrid and
Barcelona both remaining under Republican control at the outset of the war (123). Film’s
mass appeal and viewership as well as its propaganda power proved essential to both
causes and, as Crussels argues, resulted in its sustained production during the war. The
author resolves that both bands utilized film for two main reasons: “primero, defender la
legitimidad y legalidad de sus acciones por el bien de España; y segundo, la
descalificación del enemigo [first, defend the legitimacy and legality of their actions as
being for the good of Spain; and second, the disqualification of the enemy]” (125).
Contrasting gastronomic culture to film, it is easy to see why a largely solitary,
home-based culture did not thrive under war conditions. Economically, neither
consumers nor producers were willing to spend on cookbooks or food literature. It was
much more important to save money for actual food instead. The cookbooks analyzed in
this chapter, however, situate themselves as guidebooks that gave advice on how to do
more with less and create familiar dishes with substitute foodstuffs. Menús de guerra,
published by the Catalan regional government, represented a government project that
sought to alleviate the gastronomic consequences of the war by offering a free resource to
its citizens in order to combat scarcity. Doménech’s cookbook, however, stands out as

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the lone example of a cookbook actively confronting food scarcity after the Civil War.
Notably void of political propaganda, it serves only as a guide to make more with less.
Cooking up the Shortage
Ignacio Doménech was born in 1874 in Manresa, a town in Catalonia (Simón
Palmer, Doménech 4). During his training, he was able to cook under French greats such
as Pierre Lacam and Auguste Escoffier, the father of contemporary French cooking
(Simón Palmer, Doménech 6). María del Carmen Simón Palmer states that Doménech
first head chef job was in Madrid at the British Embassy (Doménech 6) and that he began
to publish the gastronomic magazine El gorro blanco [The White Hat] in 1906. In early
twentieth-century Spain, there is no other gastronomic figure that competes with the
knowledge and practice of Doménech. From cooking to writing numerous cookbooks
and editing a magazine, Doménech influenced Spanish cuisine more than any other
author of his generation.
His most important work is Cocina de recursos: Deseo mi cocina. First published
in 1941 (though written in 1938), Doménech’s book was able to supersede early
Francoist censors by using a “serie de ingeniosos recursos discursivos y de una compleja
retórica [series of ingenious discursive techniques and a complex rhetoric]” (Plato 35).
Citing the prologue by Yago César de Salvador, Paz Moreno explains that the subject
matter, an obvious reference to Spain’s hunger, is overshadowed by Doménech’s
willingness to extol the virtues of Franco’s victory. Such is the case in the following
summary of the work as “tan útil por su sencillez en el aprendizaje, mayormente en estos
momentos difíciles en que el español bien nacido ofrece gustoso sus sacrificios en aras de
la resurrección de la Gloriosa España Imperial [as useful for its simplicity of learning,
mainly in these difficult times and that well born Spaniard can offer happily his sacrifice
for the resurrection of the Glorious Imperial Spain]” (Plato 41).
Doménech’s respectful and elevated tone and inclusion of phrases and passages
like the above quote represent the sleight of hand used by the author in order to publish
his cookbook. The pretense of a historical study and its air of objectivity and authority
paradoxically secure the cookbook’s passage through the censors but simultaneously
provide the central irony and social critique of the book. Paz Moreno argues that for
Doménech’s readers, it is “evidente que Cocina de recursos no habla solo del pasado,

66
sino también del presente de la posguerra, en que la situación no había cambiado gran
cosa [evident that the cookbook is not speaking only about the past but of the present
postwar period as well, seeing as the situation has not changed greatly]” (Plato 40). The
gastronomic problems of 1938 were still the gastronomic problems of 1941 and the
general public likely understood this sly, historical metaphor to reemphasize the
difficulties felt by families during the postwar era. This purported aggrandizement of
Franco and his Nationalist cause may have saved this cookbook from certain censorship
but its content matter nonetheless constituted a reminder and strong critique of Spain’s
ever-present scarcity and hunger that stood in stark contrast to the glorious rebirth of
Franco’s vision of an imperial Spain.
The recipes in this cookbook continually reference the problems of scarcity and
hunger. As the previously mentioned “Las tortillas sin huevos de gallina…” illustrates,
many of these recipes combat food insecurity by replacing common items and ingredients
with alternate options. While attempting to create a flavor profile and consistency similar
to a traditional tortilla, Doménech’s recipe is nothing more than an omelet-flavored baked
good. The flour-based batter creates an illusion of similar consistency by frying up to
resemble a tortilla and the added spices and flavorings result in “un sabor mucho más
agradable que el huevo mismo [a much more agreeable flavor than the egg itself]” (88).
He also adds that this version of a Spanish classic is prepared at “un cuarenta por ciento
de economía [40% of the cost]” (89). The taste resemblance to an egg tortilla is
debatable and this option leaves much to be desired. Leaving aside questions of taste and
consistency, the exclusion of eggs leaves this tortilla version void of necessary nutrition.
With a flour base, this recipe’s nutritional profile would be more akin to that of bread.
The flour yields carbohydrate-based calories but the added spices bring little to the table.
Yes, this recipe would provide energy but gone are all the egg’s nutritional benefits such
as much needed protein and fat. This illustrates the dire nature of wartime and post-war
cuisine. Recipes and everyday cooking were much more focused on providing caloric
energy than with nutritional concerns. The lack of availability of a foodstuff such as the
egg, traditionally considered a cheap protein source, represents not only the consequences
of hunger but also the nutritional consequences as well.

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 The lack of quality and nutritious foods available gave rise to innumerable health
and psychological problems during the war and during the years following the war.
During wartime, Jésus M. Culebras finds that nutritional problems were the cause of
diseases such as pellagra, lathyrism and the previously unseen Vallecas syndrome.21 All
these resulted from vitamin deficiencies. Lathyrism, however, came from an excess of
one foodstuff: chickpeas or Garbanzo beans. As Culebras states, this disease only arose
when chickpea consumption “represent[ed] more than 30% of the daily calories
consumed for a prolonged period greater than two or three months” (712). Pelagra
resulted in a deficiency of B2 vitamins, “que en dietas normales se aporta principalmente
por los alimentos animales [that in normal diets are eaten via animal proteins]” (714).
These wartime diseases demonstrate the nutritional danger associated with food scarcity.
Both the exclusion and inclusion of abnormal amounts of certain foodstuffs brought on
equal amounts of nutritionally related diseases. Symptoms ranged from generalized
intestinal discomfort to muscular cramps to glossitis and in severe cases, partial paralysis
of the extremities. While this cookbook and Vila’s tome provided valuable and valiant
gastronomic advice during hard times, there were unintended nutritional consequences
associated with advocating substitute ingredients. By no means does this mean that
Doménech or Vila are to blame. Many of these diseases were unknown or never
previously observed because the gastronomic conditions were never in place during
peacetime.
From the beginning, Doménech clearly states his purpose: “El tema general de mi
obra…está repleto de enseñanzas evidentísimas que les ayudarán en esta época de
necesidad [The general theme of my book…is full of helpful lessons that will help you in
this time of need]” (45). He directs his cookbook to all those “que les gusta todo lo que
sea interesante en los casos de cocina y comedor [that like all that is interesting in the
kitchen and dining room]” (45) and states that the conditions that plagued Spain during
this period were “un tema absolutamente nuevo para todos aquellos que necesitan
orientaciones e inspiraciones de cocina práctica para poder comer y no malgastar el

21
The term “Vallecas syndrome” is derived from the Madrid neighborhood where it was first witnessed.
Culebras notes that the syndrome resulted from “vitamin B complex deficiency…[and] manifested by
muscle cramps and weakness” (713). Culebras found that the administration of calcium, phosphorous and
thiamine doses “achieved a considerable reduction in the frequency and severity of the cramps, or their
complete resolution” (713).

68
dinero de una manera inconsciente [an absolutely new theme for everyone who needs
direction and inspiration for cooking practically so that one may eat and not waste money
in an irresponsible way]” (45).

Figure 1: Cocina de recursos Cover

Source: Trea

69
 The reader’s first impression of this cookbook is the encolored illustration on the
front cover. The drawing presents a typical Western family, not necessarily Spanish.
The table is set with a white tablecloth that has a red-checkered pattern that creates a
border around the bottom of the cloth. The napkins are of a matching design. Bowls are
filled to the brim of a soup that is housed in a larger soup bowl located in the middle of
the table. A bottle of wine stands in the middle of two empty glasses and a bowl of salad
or fruit accompanies slices of baguette. The table does not signal any gastronomic
scarcity.
Mom, dad and son are seated to dinner with a curious cat lurking below in search
of crumbs and eyeing a dangling napkin. The son is playfully or annoyingly (perhaps
both) enthralled by the cat below. Mom is observing son and cat while tending to a
newly sliced piece of baguette. Her blond hair and soft features present an image of
homeliness, not overly beautiful but extremely well kempt in her soft yellow dress and
matching medium-heeled shoes. The father, however, is a perplexing image. His well-
groomed appearance matches that of his wife. His three-piece suit fits snugly while his
slicked-back dark hair yields a business-like air. His expression, however, does not
reveal happiness. His blank stare, fixated unintentionally on his bowl of soup is
highlighted by his dark, beady and emotionless eyes. One hand and an elbow supports
his head in a cocked position while the other aimlessly stirs his soup. It is as if he sees
the impending struggle, that his thoughts are elsewhere contemplating his own
gastronomic anxiety. While picturing the Spanish family as anything but perfect would
have alerted the Francoist censors, this subtle depiction of the father lost in thought
proves an effective foil to the seemingly carefree scene.
For Doménech, a haute cuisine chef and clearly middle to upper class, this
cookbook signals a departure from his previous works and his previous cooking style.
For one, he is directing his new gastronomic advice to a broad audience. While he does
not state this explicitly, Doménech’s book is clearly aimed at those who had followed his
culinary guidance in the past. Those middle class readers who were once preoccupied by
the etiquette of entertaining and dinners that included more French dishes than Spanish,
are exactly those who were in need of practical cooking and domestic advice in the face
of the war. Where once his readers were less inclined to save money or make the most

70
out of a whole chicken, these middle class readers now needed this advice more than
ever.
To this extent, Doménech continues his formal, hospitable tone throughout the
present collection. He usually addresses his readership directly by calling them his
“lectores amigos” or “queridos lectores,” phrases that convey a friendly, albeit respectful
relationship between reader and chef/author. His recipe instructions always reference the
ustedes-formal conjugation, never engaging his audience with the more familiar vosotros
form. He often, though not consistently, includes himself within the readership’s domain
by employing the nosotros, the third-person plural or “we” conjugation. Playing off his
introduction where he describes his own troubles during the war to find inspiration and
cook responsibly in his restaurant, he humanizes himself and the war and assures his
middle class readers that they are not alone in finding themselves combating new
circumstances. Most of his asides and narrative sections speak to his personal
difficulties. He mixes in many anecdotes and his tone is strikingly narrative in nature,
utilizing a didactic, historical approach that allows him to infuse normally dry and
straightforward recipes with contextual information and helpful tips.
Although subjected to early-Francoist censors, the recipe collection does not stray
from discussing the war and its effects, albeit from a detached historical perspective as
mentioned earlier. Food became “la obsesión de estos meses finales de 1938 [the
obsession of those final months of 1938]” (45). He states that “en las fábricas, talleres,
oficinas, en todas partes, todos los días, semanas y meses, pasan en los que no se suele
soñar más que con la comida [in the factories, workshops, offices, in all parts, every day,
every week, every month, no one dreams of anything but food]” (46). Regardless of its
historical tone and references, it is still worth noting that a work made it past the censors
with language that directly engages with the narrative of hunger during the war.
Although he originally cites 1938 as his reference, Doménech makes sly use of the
present tense in the previous sentence, signaling that this is not a historical hunger but a
contemporary one. He continues this idea of dreaming about food, discussing one of his
own dreams. Doménech describes his dream with story-like narration using illustrative
language and sensorial descriptions in an effort to relive his good days in bustling
kitchens and sprawling markets, everything that was missing from Spain during the last

71
months of 1938. This passage in particular, as well as most of his anecdotes and
narrative portions, exemplifies his mastery as a writer. He was at the same time a
didactic chef espousing helpful hints in sparse language while at other times quite literary
in his descriptions and use of the senses to describe the heat and smell of kitchens or
dishes. He ends his dream sequence, however, with a simple exclamation: “¡Nada! ¡Ha
sido una pesadilla! [Nothing! It was a nightmare!]” (46). And thus for him and his
readers, the glory days of packed markets overflowing with fresh and delicious foods
only live in the dreams of days past. Instead, 1938 and his contemporary Spain were
nothing more than a “cuestión de tíquets, carnets, cartas de trabajo [y] cartas de
racionamiento [question of tickets, ID cards, work cards and ration cards]” (48).
In addition to his famous tortilla sin huevos recipe, Doménech strove to recreate
familiar dishes and taste profiles while utilizing what was available during the war. His
recipes and advice continuously recall the need to ration and reinvent. Interestingly, his
first section does not refer to food itself, but to the cooking process. While it is obvious
that the Civil War created foodstuff shortages, what is less discussed is the shortage of
food-related items. Doménech brings to light the shortage of fuel needed for cooking,
specifically charcoal. His first chapter is entitled “Los combustibles” [combustible
fuels]. His first “recipe” sets the tone for the rethinking of old recipes and repurposing
lesser-used resources for his collection by introducing ways to create charcoal. Titled
“Transformación del papel viejo en balas de carbon [Transformation of old paper to
charcoal briquettes]” (51), the chef explains how to repurpose recycled paper by placing
ripped shreds into a water bath over the course of a few days until they form a paste.
From there, one would only need to form briquettes from this paste and set them aside to
dry. Once dried and lit, the recycled paper briquettes constitute a “combustible
magnífico [great fuel]” (52). Although trained as a haute cuisine chef, Doménech is able
to provide advice that is accessible and needed to all classes of people.
Moreover, Doménech does not shy away from reintroducing and reclaiming
recipes from the rural poor. These recipes have always been traditionally comprised of
minimal ingredients, utilizing an efficient cooking style and packing a caloric punch.
Most often associated with laborers, such dishes needed to fuel workers from first light to
the end of the day. One such section, “Sopas y potajes [Soups and Stews]” (53),

72
introduces the recipe for a dish named, “Sopa de pobres a la marsellsa [Marseille-style
Soup for the poor]” (55). In this time of scarcity, even the classically French-trained chef
forgoes his culinary complexity in favor of ease and availability. In the recipe for “Sopa
de pan a la catalana [Catalan Bread Soup]” (53), the chef informs us that his recipe is
based “en la cocina catalana de la gente del pueblo [on the Catalan cuisine of the poor]”
(53). While it is striking that a chef of such stature would advocate this type of food,
what is generally considered rural or peasant cuisine serves as an excellent example for
combating scarcity and culinary limitation. As stated earlier, this type of cuisine has been
fine-tuned through centuries of struggle to provide the most efficient dish, both
nutritionally and in a culinary sense. One must only adapt. In order to season such
dishes, Doménech laments the lack of saffron but suggests that a little pepper will do well
to replace the flavor.
Doménech, however, moves beyond simple peasant cuisine in his radical
approach to cooking during wartime conditions. He goes so far as to advocate for the use
of nontraditional vegetables that were previously served only “de forrage a las vacas [as
cow’s food]” (62). His advice, however, sounds more radical than what it actually is.
Eating cow’s food, for Doménech, consists of vegetables like carrots, turnips, beets,
parsnips and salsify (also known as the oyster plant), a carrot-like root vegetable. It must
be noted there there do exist forage varieties of vegetables for animal consumption but
based on the context, it appears more likely that Vila is referring to human varieties of
these foods that were not often included in the diet of that period.
The inclusion of these forage vegetables speaks to a larger and continued trend in
global cuisine as well as in Spanish national cuisine. Hearkening back to Dionisio
Pérez’s treatise on the state of Spanish national cuisine, these vegetables and Doménech’s
insistence on calling this wartime cuisine, peasant cuisine or la comida del pueblo,
doubles down on the insistence that Spanish national cuisine is rooted in a regional
milieu. Simple and delicious while exemplifying local agriculture, this type of modest
and unpretentious Spanish cuisine based on regionality began yet again to exert itself as
the dominant national cuisine. Whether out of necessity or by fad, food trends often
follow a bottom-up trajectory wherein haute cuisine reclaims and elevates the status of
foodstuffs and dishes that were often considered the opposite of cosmopolitan food.

73
Doménech’s acceptance of this type of cuisine reminds us that gastronomy is dependent
upon external events. The war shortages force Doménech to reevaluate his haute cuisine,
French-influenced approach to Spanish national cuisine by once again returning the
national cuisine to the people. The postwar period reaffirms Thebussem’s and Post-
Thebussem’s22 assertion that Spanish national cuisine is a conglomerate of regional
cuisines that have, for centuries, slowly expanded and shared ingredients as well as
cooking techniques. This plurality approach embraces regional and local agricultures but
also refuses the idea that each region is creating or propagating radically different
cuisines. The underlying theories of cuisine remain the same regardless of the
substitution of fish for chicken or rice for lentils. The cuisine that Spain developed
during the war and postwar periods as evidenced in these cookbooks is a cuisine that
advocates combinatory dishes including meats, starches and other vegetables cooked in
one vessel that glorifies local agriculture whether by necessity or by desire. As the two
culinary nationalist forefathers suggested, Spain, to this point, is still a national cuisine
dominated by the potaje or cocido.
Menús de guerra: Writing the War Experience
The cookbook Menús de Guerra [Menus of War] was written and published in
1938 as a “pequeño folletín bilingue (en catalán y castellano) de 13 páginas no
numeradas, sin fecha de edición [small bilingual serial (in Catalan and Spanish) of 13
non-numbered pages, without a publication date]” (Paz Moreno, Plato 28) intended for
use by Catalans struggling with the food insecurity during the war. As a part of the
Republican Catalan government’s efforts to assuage the difficulties facing their
population, the propaganda department partnered with Chef Joan Vila to produce this
helpful pamphlet. The edition consulted for this project is a facsimile in Catalan
reproduced by the Museu d'Història de Catalunya as part of their 2014 exposition “Menús
de guerra, Cocina de vanguardia y supervivencia.” The reprint includes a back cover
write-up of Vila proclaiming him “El Mestre Cuiner de la Generalitat/Master Chef of the
Generalitat” (15). In addition to this publication, the biography includes among his

22
Thebussem is the pen name of Mariano Pardo de Figueroa whose 1888 book La mesa moderna began the
theory of Spanish culinary nationalism as one comprised of multiple regional cuisines. His successor,
Dioniso Pérez, chose the pen name Post-Thebussem in honor of Figueroa in his 1929 Guiá del buen comer
español. See Chapter 1 for a more detailed description.

74
accomplishments working at the Grand Restaurant in France, stops in Paris and London
while finally returning home to San Sebastián, Madrid and ultimately back to Barcelona.

Figure 2: Menús de guerra Cover

Source: National Library of Catalonia

75
 Examining the cookbook, the front cover displays a color image (seen in figure
2). The dominant blue-green background reveals outlines of black and white that trace a
simple table setting of a plate, glass and bottle of wine. Emerging at the bottom and
commanding the reader’s attention is the title in a contrasting red ink. The bold, cursive
typeface and its white background pair well with the almost turquoise coloring of the
illustration. While it may have merely been an aesthetic preference, the emboldened red
immediately links the title’s subject matter to the bloodshed occurring in the cities and
countryside of Spain during the pamphlet’s publication.
Similarly, the visual motif of the front cover’s design utilizes illustrations that are
patterned on sketches, mixing fully formed objects such as the wine bottle with shaded
and contrasted sketching that yields an appearance of a plate, glass and wine decanter.
The roughed-in shadings and sketches reinforce this idea of shortage and scarcity. It
almost appears as if the place setting is being erased, disappearing from the table
mirroring the endangered and ever-diminishing food supply. The front cover displays a
place setting that signifies an opulence that was not afforded to many during the war. A
full bottle of wine accompanied by a glass decanter does not express ideas of frugality
and conservation. Other the other hand, however, the familiarity of this design as being
representative of the era would have lent to a sense of continuity, a form of escapism
from the brutal reality that this cookbook sought to combat. In either case, the cookbook
was published with the hope of easing the population’s discomfort brought on by war
shortage and scarcity. While the blood-red lettering and disappearing place setting may
have been a coincidence, today’s reader cannot ignore the symbolism of the front cover
and its direct allusion to the struggles for food items associated with the ongoing war.
Each page is littered with illustrations mimicking the style seen on the front cover.
The illustrations are mainly drawings, mixing completely drawn foodstuffs with outlines
and sketchings of other accompaniments. The cookbook consists of 12 small illustrations
over the course of the 14 pages that feature the recipe section of the facsimile. Utilizing
the same aesthetic throughout, the illustrations combine realistic depictions of foods with
cartoonish people and animals. These drawings, however, are only decorative as they do
not feature how-to illustrations or representations of how finished products should
appear. Similar to the recipes, the cookbook only includes three drawings of livestock

76
animals; two are depictions of a cow’s head and a pig while the third is a cartoon rabbit
chef trying his latest creation. The lack of animal depictions reiterates the idea of food
scarcity and suggests that cookbooks are indeed encapsulations of their cultural, social
and economic context.
In his introduction, Vila explains his thesis and summarizes his reason for writing
this cookbook in the heading to the brief introduction “Un bon menjar solament
consisteix en l’indispensable [A good meal only consists in the indispensable]” (2). This
one page introduction does not shy away from confronting the gastronomic repercussions
of the Civil War. Unlike Doménech’s later Cocina de recursos, Vila attacks the subject
matter from a present-day perspective without the risks associated with censorship. The
lack of censorship during the war allowed Vila to clearly state that “la guerra imposa
restricciones que cal acceptar com deure moral [war imposes restrictions that you must
accept as a moral duty]” (2). While we must analyze this work as an extension of the
propaganda presented by the Generalitat, Vila manages to avoid overt political discourse
by situating rationing and food insecurity as a moral obligation to humanity and to Spain,
regardless of political and military alignment. It could, however, be read as a moral
obligation in support of the Republican side.
Continuing his advice on wartime cooking and eating, the introduction states that
“ningú no demana que no es mengi el sufficient, perque el que importa es menjar del que
hi ha [no one demands that you don’t eat sufficiently, because the important thing is to
eat what there is]” (2). In the face of extreme shortages, it may seem useless that Vila is
suggesting to hungry people that they should not go hungry. Instead, Vila seems to be
shifting the focus from what is missing to what there is. If one focuses on meats, eggs
and other scarce foodstuffs, they may go hungry. Vila, however, is reaffirming that there
is a supply of food. It is just different from what came before and that the cook and eater
need to adapt to this new normal. He summarizes his position: “Solament es necessaria
una mica de comprensió i de gust per reduir a un mínim aquelles privacions [It is only
necessary to have a little understanding and taste to reduce this scarcity to a minimum]”
(2).
Furthermore, Vila situates the current predicament as a challenge to not only the
everyday person but also to the greatest chefs. He says that even “els grans mestres de la

77
cuina sempre ham parlat de la conveniencia d’aprendre a confeccionar menjars apetitosos
amb els elements cuinables més senzills [the great masters of the kitchen have always
talked about the benefit of learning to cook delicious meals with the most simple
elements]” (2). Elevating the plight of all Spaniards to one of high cuisine, Vila evens
the playing field amongst all cooks, amateur and professional. Readers find reassurance
in the fact that it is not only a minority that is suffering from the war, but everyone - even
the greatest chefs, Vila included - must reshape their cooking philosophy. Moreover, the
introduction invokes the soldiers fighting, explaining that those simple elements are those
that “per cert, si no abunden a la reraguarda, tampoc no escassegen [for certain, if they
are not in abundance in the rearguard, are neither in short supply]” (2). This recalls the
reasons for the shortage and new culinary philosophy but also appeals to the reader by
invoking this idea of moral obligation. By doing their part at home, they are in turn
helping the soldiers on the front lines. Towards the end of the introduction, Vila once
again invokes this motto and attributes it to the famed French gastronome Brillat-Savarin.
This gives hope to the public that even during periods of scarcity, one can still enjoy
good taste. Coco Chanel once mused that “some people think luxury is the opposite of
poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity.” Even in the face of poverty, one may
still have and exhibit good taste.
The collection includes 24 recipes. Perhaps indicative of the shortages and
scarcity of certain foodstuffs, the cookbook only includes five recipes based on meat or
fish with three recipes featuring seafood (a Catalan staple) and two recipes featuring beef
and pork, respectively. While a dearth of meat (beef, pork, chicken) recipes is not
surprising given the lack of meat products produced in Catalonia and the transportation
issues mentioned earlier in this chapter, the lack of seafood is startling for a province
whose diet was so deeply rooted in the fruits of the sea. Dried or fresh, the inclusion of
only three seafood dishes suggests a decline in the fishing industry that would affect the
inland cities and towns of Catalonia and across Spain more so than those coastal cities.
While coastal cities could still enjoy fishing for subsistence, the industrial fishing needed
to supply even Catalonia’s wartime population would have been affected by the
transitioning of manpower from fishing duties to war-related labor activities. We can

78
assume that the decline in fishing activities would be on par with other agricultural
industries discussed above.
The rest of the recipes are comprised of rice and vegetable dishes. Two recipes
feature eggs, another product that saw a steep decline in availability during the war.
Nonetheless, the egg was a valued source of protein and calories, and was included on
ration cards. Staying with the theme of cooking with minimal ingredients, eighteen out
of the twenty four recipes feature six ingredients or less. This count does not factor in
spices such as salt and pepper which are included at the end of each recipe for flavoring
and Vila does not include a specified amount for each.

Figure 3: Menús de guerra Recipe

Source: National Library of Catalonia

Stylistically, each recipe is simplified in its presentation. Each recipe only

consists of roughly a two inch by two-inch box in small font. Two recipes adorn each
page. The facsimile provides an accurate historical size to the pamphlet as it is set to
today’s standard eight and a half by eleven, but the miniscule size of each recipe suggests

79
that the pamphlet would have been small as well. To either the left or right, the title
stands in bold to the side of each recipe box. Above or below this box, the ingredients
list is opposite the title appearing as mirror images of the two recipes on each page. The
design and layout exemplify the simplified nature of the text. The illustrations are not
distracting nor are they functional. There are no added text boxes or paragraphs to clarify
recipes or techniques. The recipes are not divided into chapters or subheadings and they
do not appear to be arranged in any logical manner. Meat recipes are peppered among
seafood and vegetable recipes alike.
The recipes themselves are simple and easy to follow. Utilizing the passive “se,”
Vila eschews command forms that represent an authoritative control over each recipe.
The neutral passive “se” provides readers with clear and concise instructions without
creating an interpersonal tone. In contrast to using the “nosotros”/we form as a means to
create a sense of community, the passive “se” creates a distance between reader and
author that is neither cold nor inviting. This lack of collegiality and familiarity is
evidenced in the recipes themselves as there is no direct communication to the recipe
reader. Furthermore, there is no inclusion of any narrative within the recipes. The only
narrative writing comes in the form of subtle didactic instructions that clarify certain
gastronomic terms. In “Carxofes al forn [Artichokes in the oven]” (7), Vila uses a fairly
technical term, “es coronen [to crown]” the vegetable, instead of using a more simplified
word. He does, however, go on to clarify these by stating: “o sigui que es tallen les
puntes de les fulles, deixant les exteriors a un pla de tres or quatre centimeters [or let it be
that you cut the ends of the leaves, leaving an exterior of about three or four
centimeters]” (7). This is the extent to which Vila provides instructional information
within the recipe text. The recipes are singularly focused on providing the most accurate
cooking instructions in the least amount of words. The simplicity of the dishes is not
overshadowed by lengthy, loquacious recipes. The instructions are clear and concise but
also impersonal and lacking any accompanying narrative. With that being said, Vila
accomplishes his goal of creating a cookbook that exemplifies simplicity in all aspects.
From brevity of writing to minimal ingredients, Vila constructs a useful, straightforward
recipe collection that aims to provide even the most amateur of chefs with the basic
knowledge to prepare a simple yet satisfying meal.

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 In reading this cookbook and analyzing the unintentional national cuisine
consequences, we can see a clear correlation to the larger cultural context evidenced in
this recipe collection. Menús de guerra reinforces the idea that culinary culture does not
exist in a vacuum but rather is indicative of the larger political, economic and social
concerns of the era. This is not to say that culinary culture is a direct imitation of other
cultural productions, but it is fair to conclude that it takes direction from larger cultural
contexts and situations. The shortages that existed during the war are addressed directly
here in the cookbook. Direct conversations about food insecurity and ways to combat
this in everyday life stand in stark contrast to the postwar censorship of even cookbooks
during the Franco era. Menús de guerra is a prime example of how the larger
sociopolitical and economic context influences gastronomic culture. Moreover, this
cookbook demonstrates that the idea of national cuisine is a plastic one, ever molding to
account for changes in all political, social and economic aspects of a nation.
This cookbook does not explicitly analyze the national cuisine of Spain. In
contrast to the cookbooks and manifestos of culinary nationalists like Pardo Bazán or
Pérez, Vila’s cookbook provides the subtext to the actual state of national cuisine in
Spain. During the war, there was no conversation, explicit or implicit, about the effects
of French tradition or the ability to incorporate a plurality of regional cuisines into one
national cuisine. I would argue that the war provided the most opportune time to see
what Spanish national cuisine truly was. Following Vila’s charge, a good meal is best
when it is at its simplest. In the face of wartime scarcity, Spanish cooking regressed to its
most basic and most simple, to those dishes that most exemplify the Spanish tradition.
Reviewing Vila’s collection, recipes like “Espinacs al forn,” “Arrós amb verdures,” and
“Bacallá amb mongetes blanques” express the fact that Spanish national cuisine is rooted
in traditional ingredients, prepared in traditional ways.
While this Catalan recipe collection speaks more to Catalan regional cooking,
each region experienced a return to roots during the war where the cuisine was defined by
the most basic ingredients in the simplest preparation. As a consequence, the wartime
national cuisine did not resemble the French-influenced cuisine of prewar twentieth
century. This is not to say that Spanish national cuisine is defined neither by simplicity
nor by traditional food scarcity. What it does underscore, however, is the malleability of

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the concept of a national cuisine. Published in 1931, Dionisio Pérez’s Guía del buen
comer… warned of the effects of French influence on Spanish cuisine. Five short years
later, the country was engaged in Civil War and in 1937, Vila’s wartime culinary
manifesto makes no mention of French influence or the problematic inclusion of regional
cuisine into the national cuisine. The national cuisine is not stable; instead, it ebbs and
flows in conjunction with political, economic and sociocultural ideas. This cookbook and
the change effected by the Civil War is evidence that a preternatural national cuisine does
not exist. Instead, we must focus on conceptualizing national cuisines as an organic
process that continually evolves and flows between ideals of tradition and innovation
while often succumbing to external forces.
The Official View
“Los rojos mienten- Mienten al decir que en España hay hambre[The reds lie, lie
when they say that in Spain there is hunger]” states a nameless soldier in Guillermo del
Toro’s Spanish Civil War fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). This quote exemplifies
Franco’s and the official government’s position on hunger after the Civil War. Although
ration cards were in effect until 1953, there were no other direct or indirect
acknowledgements of the state of hunger within the nation. The Franco regime did,
however, enact certain food related decrees.
One such decree, number 290 on October 16, 1940, found in the Boletín Oficial
del Estado (Official State Bulletin) states that:
Las circunstancias actuales han impedido a la provincia de Almería exportar la
cosecha de uvas que constituye su principal fuente de riqueza. Y con objeto de
contribuir a que el consumo interior absorba dicho producto y evitar así la
angustiosa situación económica que en otro caso se originaría, Este ministerio ha
dispuesto: Que a partir de la publicación de este presente Orden…en todos los
Hoteles, restaurantes y establecimientos similares españoles y mientras dura la
temporada, sea obligatorio servir en el postre uvas de Almería por lo menos en
una comida cada día por la semana.
The current circumstances have impeded the province of Almería to export their
crop of grapes that constitute their principal source of income. And with the
objective of contributing to the interior consumption of this product and eliminate

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 the anguished economic situation that would arise, this ministry has arranged:
That from the publication of this current Order…in all the hotels, restaurants and
similar Spanish establishments and while the season lasts, it is obligatory to serve
for dessert grapes from Almería at least during one meal every day of the week.
(BOE #290)
This decree admits to agroeconomic distress and the need for an autarchic
agricultural system. This decree was again introduced in 1941 and was reintroduced each
year until 1944. This obligatory grape dessert exemplified the amount of state
intervention into agricultural and gastronomic policies during the first years of the Franco
regime. Immediately following the war, Franco implemented a policy of autarky in
Spain in order to rehabilitate the country from within. Closing itself economically to
trade and import/export opportunities, Franco sought to recreate Spain by putting
Spaniards to work to create a self-sufficient economy. In addition to self-isolationist
policies, the end of the Civil War coincided with the beginning of World War II. Even if
the government were open to importation, European trading partners were fully engaged
in their own forms of wartime rationing and production. Similarly, the post-World War
era found Spain shunned for its close ties to the fascist regimes of Germany and Italy. It
was not until the beginning of the Cold War that Spain once again regained its
international standing.
As Thomas Christensen describes, “[t]he Franco regime inherited an economy
where the agrarian sector was still very significant. More than half of the active
population was employed in agriculture and it produced almost a third of GDP output”
(33). The need to reenergize and reorganize the agrarian sector during the immediate
postwar became an important priority for the Franco regime. Although the Spanish Civil
War did not produce the widespread destruction of urban and rural areas alike in
comparison to World War II, Christensen explains that “it was a lengthy process to
recover pre-war peaks in economic activity. It took…until 1957 to pass for good the
agricultural output in 1934” (35). With autarchic policies in place, Spanish agriculture
did not return to prewar production levels for over eighteen years after the end of the war.
Taking into consideration the population growth over those eighteen years (even though
Spain did not experience the same baby boom as in the US), the slow redevelopment of

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the agricultural industry combined with diminished importation created a situation in
which many Spaniards went hungry, thus the moniker los años de hambre.
As Taboás, et al. have noted, Spanish agricultural autarky took the form of
“control of the production, distribution and commercialisation of agricultural inputs and
products” (3). While they describe that the majority of existing research focuses on
wheat and other grain production, the authors state that this case proves to be emblematic
of the agricultural policy and associated problems during autarchic rule. They surmise
that “[s]tate intervention in the wheat market led to a decrease in the surface cultivated
for that crop, reduced wheat production and the emergence of a vast black market” (3).
Christensen, however, refutes this claim as being an example of all agricultural
industries. He finds that olive production differed greatly as it did not depend on
fertilizers and plow animals which were two external factors that greatly inhibited grain
and cereal production. Nonetheless, they paint the agricultural reforms of early
Francoism as being counterproductive and inefficient in feeding the nation.
Early historical analysis, Christensen suggests, focused on blaming the agrarian
crisis “on a mixture of Civil War damages and adverse weather conditions” (42). The
author cites other findings and agrees that the immediate postwar decline in agriculture
can be attributed to labor shortages and crop and land destruction although these were
both “relatively modest” (42) in comparison to other global wars such as World War II.
Nonetheless, Christensen’s “principal argument is that the external constraints and not the
official prices paid to farmers primarily determined the post-war level of output in annual
crops” (251). Christensen summarizes that “[a]ll in all, the intervention that took place
was not always the best” (259) and that “it should be stressed that the production quotas,
rationing scheme and price regulation went hand in hand with widespread fraud,
corruption, tax evasion, degradation of the quality of the foodstuff, etc.” (259). Grugel
and Rees give a conciliatory opinion, stating that both internal and external forces
convened to create the agricultural sluggishness of early Francoism. In their summary of
Francoist autarchic agriculture, they claim that the most salient causes
were the results of its own interventions which misguidedly caused a retreat
towards traditional patterns of production rather than reinforcing change. Staples
such as wheat and olives were encouraged in order to favour the broadest masses

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 of rural producers who supported the regime. Along with difficulties of
exporting, this stifled the move towards the production of higher value crops such
as fruits and nuts where Spain had an international advantage. New machinery,
fertilisers and draught animals were all in very short supply due to the regime’s
import restrictions (109)
Overall, the gastronomic situation of early Francoism was dire. Agricultural
industry suffered under state intervention and autarchic policies stymied international
trade that could have benefitted Spain economically. It would take until the late 1950s
until agricultural productivity once again met pre-Civil War levels during which time,
hunger unfortunately became the norm.
“Nanas de la cebolla” [Onion Lullaby]
There are few literary works that focus on the incredible despair and pain suffered
by those experiencing the effects of the Civil War. As a rhetorical tool, “food, cooking
and eating…cease to be simply themes, but – when looked at critically – develop into
fully functional parts of the narrative which ‘help define’ the nature of ‘the writing’”
(Piatti-Farnell 4). Food is thus integral to the presentation of the narrative or poetics of a
work. In regards to Miguel Hernández’s seminal poem “Nanas de la cebolla [Onion
Lullaby]”, food gives life to the poem. Food yields the circumstances regarding the
inspiration behind the poem. Food is not only the dominant theme and symbol but also
functions as a means of introducing and discussing other relevant topics. Though food
and food-related topics appear to dominate the poem, their usage provides Hernández a
means to comment on the atrocities of war without ever confronting the war or the
political situation directly. Nonetheless, however, the food discourse within the poem
still carries a strong political and anti-war reading.
Miguel Hernández was born on March 28, 1910 in Orihuela in the province of
Alicante (López 158). As José Manuel López writes, food and agriculture are not only
central to this poem but also to the life of Hernández, whose father was a farmer and
shepherd and who himself had also spent most of his time working the land and raising
animals. Written from his jail cell during the Civil War, Concha Zardoya calls the poem
“Nanas de la cebolla” one of the most emotional poems in all of Spanish letters. López
dates the poem to the last months of 1938 and states that it was number 74 of 74 poems

85
found in a notebook of Hernández’s from jail (159). The work first appeared in the
poetry magazine Halcón in 1946 with a different title: “Nana a mi niño” (J. López 160).
Initially written after receiving a letter from his wife detailing her diet of bread and
onions, the poem is a heartbreaking lullaby and a testament to the hunger and scarcity
that existed during and after the Civil War. Written as a lullaby to his newborn son,
Hernández writes an imaginary response to his wife’s letter where their newborn son
contrasts the pain and hunger felt by Hernández’s wife. Already tortured by the death of
their first son, the fear and helplessness of hunger is seen as a threat to the newborn’s life.
Framed as a lullaby to his son, Hernández unwittingly taps into a larger emotional
context that allows the poem and his words to penetrate deeper within the reader’s
affectual response system. The lullaby, as Irene Gómez-Castellano suggests, is the best
form of poetry to deal with trauma because it is a “particular embodiment of memory that
has the ability to recall, revive, and sooth our historical aches, even though they do not
require historical accuracy or even history to survive and spread their message” (4).
Although dealing explicitly with the trauma of war and history, the poem never mentions
or references the war directly. What Hernández is transmitting, however, is his specific
emotional memory when receiving the letter from his wife. The collective nature of
memory adds to the poem’s effectiveness as not only Spanish readers but also a global
readership can relate to the parental pain felt by the poet. Gómez-Castellano asserts that
it is due to a lullaby’s affective quality that it is “able to carry subversion to its most
unsympathetic listeners, partly because they return us to our own infancy” (4). This
return to infancy combined with the parental instincts that are affectively recalled during
its reading create the context in which this poem and other lullabies are so effective.
Furthermore, in the context of the present poem, the lullaby “is a superb vehicle of denial
(because it induces sleep) but also of protest (because it voices terrors and fosters
communication that would otherwise be censored)” (Gómez-Castellano 6).
The present poem is featured in a posthumously released work, Cancionero y
romancero de ausencias, that features poems written during Hernández’s incarceration
and is thought of by many critics as his defining work. As a lullaby, his words and
phrasing are cultivated from deep emotions, transitioning from despair and hope. In the
poem, we see food, namely the image of the onion, as a type of “equivalencia semántica

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cebolla-hambre [semantic equivalent onion-hunger]” (J. López 161). This union of food
and hunger creates a metaphor wherein the onion now stands for his wife’s and
subsequently his infant son’s literal hunger. In general, however, Hernández uses the
onion as a symbol and metaphor to reference themes of hunger, loneliness, despair and
conflict. The onion, as a vegetable, has many layers. Hernández appreciates this and
throughout the poem peels back each layer of metaphor, revealing the many ways in
which the onion is used as a symbol.
As Luis Felipe Vivanco explains, Hernández’s initial treatment of the onion is an
“intento de convertir a la cebolla en pura metáfora y lograr así…la validez de mundo
poético [intent to convert the onion into purely a metaphor and achieve in this way…the
validity of the poetic world]” (140). Vivanco explains that the words used to describe the
onion (escarcha, cerrada, pobre, hielo negro [frost, closed, poor, black ice] all refer back
to the main theme of this poem: hunger. In the first stanza Hernández writes:
La cebolla es escarcha
cerrada y pobre:
escarcha de tus días
y de mis noches.
Hambre y cebolla:
hielo negro y escarcha
grande y redonda.

The onion is frosty

Closed and poor:
Frosty of your days
And of my nights.
Hunger and onion:
Black ice and frosty
Large and round.23
Hunger as a theme is plain and evidenced by Hernández’s own use of the word
hambre and he equates the two, hunger and onion, through his use of negative adjectives

23
All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.

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to describe both objects. By doing so, he turns the onion, a lowly vegetable of minimal
substance and nutrition, into a larger metaphor for hunger and the gastronomic
difficulties of war, as Vivanco suggests. This metaphor as the larger theme of the poem
allows Hernández to explore the use of the onion as a symbol within the war context.
The poet uses the onion and its symbolization of hunger as means to introduce the
conflict between the grim present and the yearning for a hopeful future, one of the
dominant themes in his collection of poems, Cancionero y romancero de ausencias. The
onion ceases to be a simple metaphor for hunger and takes on a larger role within the
overall context of the poem.
With that said, however, the onion as an example of food imagery and the theme
of hunger run rampant through this beautiful poem. The second stanza, however, focuses
on the personal consequences of his family’s food insecurity. In a rare confluence of
metaphorical and biological food imagery, Hernández demonstrates the sad reality of his
wife’s hunger. Personifying the onion through his wife’s and son’s hunger, the onion
becomes part of their bodies:
En la cuna del hambre
mi niño estaba.
Con sangre de cebolla
se amamantaba.
Pero tu sangre,
escarchada de azúcar,
cebolla y hambre.

In the cradle of hunger,

My son laid.
With blood of the onion
He was fed.
But it is your blood,
Frosted of sugar,
Onion and hunger.

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 The personification is not only effective in creating and extending the onion as a
symbol of hunger but also exemplifies the biological repercussions of his wife’s diet.
The onion maintains its metaphor for hunger but as a symbol, begins to mean much more.
The onion, in reference to the poet’s wife, symbolizes the link between biological
necessity and the corporality of food. Her blood, now tainted by frosty onion, takes on
those same characteristics. Through her, these same qualities, her hunger and her frosty
blood are passed along to the son. She and her son both become embodiments of the
onion and as a consequence, the embodiment of hunger. The Spanish verb amantar
means to breastfeed. Through that verb, we understand the gastronomic connection
between mother and son. Her letter that inspired this poem spoke of her hunger but both
Hernández and his wife knew that her individual hunger guaranteed the hunger of her
child as well. The body imagery that accompanies the use of food imagery gives the
onion, as a symbol, another layer of depth. The onion, which originally stands for
hunger, conversely also represents nutrition, albeit in the context of scarcity. The onion
is simultaneously the life-giving fruit and also a potential cause of death. Hernández
describes his son’s nurturing through this personification by underlining the connection
between his wife’s nutrition, and her breastfeeding of their son speaks not only to their
own personal experience but also to a much broader collective experience. He does not
point a finger or explicitly lay blame to anyone, but his dire descriptions embody the
fears felt by mothers and fathers around Spain, the fear of helplessness. The critique is
subtle but nonetheless understandable. The war produced the food shortage. The food
shortage causes a woman’s hunger. Her hunger does not allow her to feed her son. The
Civil War’s domino effect was only too real for many Spaniards and this poem
demonstrates the personal, human consequence of the war.
In one of the more despair filled stanzas, the poem reveals Hernández’s main
theme of the poem:
Tu risa me hace libre,
me pone alas.
Soledades me quita,
cárcel me arranca.
Boca que vuela,

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 corazón que en tus labios
relampaguea.

Es tu risa la espada
más victoriosa.
Vencedor de las flores
y las alondras.
Rival del sol.
Porvenir de mis huesos
y de mi amor.

Your smile sets me free,

It gives me wings.
It takes away my solitude,
Removes me from my prison.
Mouth that flies,
Heart that on your lips
Flashes like lightning.

It is your laughter,
The most victorious sword.
Victor of flowers
And of larks.
The sun’s rival,
The future of my bones
And of my love

His son represents the future and his laughter and liveliness is in contrast to his
wife’s suffering. As the symbol of a generation, Hernández’s infant son is
metaphorically and literally born of the war and raised and molded by war atrocities. Fed
through the onion-tinged breast milk of his mother, he knows nothing of satisfaction,

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only war’s unjust hunger. Hernández, however, does not focus on this sadness. He
instead focuses on the possibilities that await his newborn son and the hope he represents,
writing of the transformative power of laughter in the face of despair. He equates his
son’s laughter to a sword. Through this metaphor, the poet is able to subvert the
connotation of a weapon. The sword becomes a weapon of good eliminating evil from
the world. Bereft of political posturing, the poem critiques the war and its consequences
in general. Although affiliated with the Republican cause, Hernández knows only too
well the physical and emotional repercussions of war. It is the son’s smile and laughter
that become the ultimate weapons, the only means to defeat the solitude and pain of war.
His smile validates his mother’s and father’s suffering.
For Hernández, laughter “is the weapon of the poet. He confronts the seriousness
of reason with his laughter, with the clowns of his imagination” (Kluback 197). It is the
son’s laughter that inspires the words of Hernández’s poems and comforts the
incarcerated poet knowing that the only silver lining is that his son will grow up and live
and never know again these miserable living conditions. Kluback claims that laughter as
a symbol and rhetorical tool “is the source and instrument of man’s defiance of fate.
Laughter mocks every expression of resignation. It is a mastery of reality, even if its
endurance weakens, and death is victorious. The victory is mocked and the arbitrariness
of death has no glory” (197). His son’s laughter and the poet’s solace is the ultimate
critique against the Civil War. Even in his impending death, Hernández shows that what
endures is not the sadness or despair or hunger. These are only temporary conditions.
What is enduring is hope and love and these are embodied in the son. The child is the
future. His laughter, his unknowing liveliness is what will redeem not only Hernández
and console him in his last days, but the child, the new generation will redeem the
country in the future. There is consolation in knowing that, in the midst of so much
despair and pain, there is still hope and redemption and we find that in the words of this
lullaby. Hernández’s version is not written only for his son, but it is a lullaby for the
nation, an attempt to console and calm and reconcile the years of violence.
While Kluback describes the poem as a “sublime fantasy” (200), the fantastical
elements, the surrealism regarding the imagery and union of food and body only serve to
remind the reader of war’s human consequences. Contrasting the onion’s hunger and the

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infant’s hopeful smile, Hernández creates one of the most visceral and emotional poems
written during the Spanish Civil War. Utilizing food imagery, the poet not only describes
the threatening conditions of the war but also provides hope that through his wife’s diet
of pan y cebolla she is still able to feed her child and watch him grow. In this poem, food
is central to the message but is hardly the central figure. It is used as a metaphor and a
pretense to introduce and comment on much loftier themes such as the Civil War. The
onion as a symbol, like the vegetable, is comprised of many layers, each providing new
insight and meaning to the poem. As a whole it stands for the hunger and scarcity felt by
Spain during and after the Civil War but as we continue to peel we see that it also
represents the interconnectedness of the body and food. Although political, Hernández’s
critique never crossed party lines. Ultimately, “Nanas de la cebolla” is a lullaby to the
nation. Hernández reminds his readers that war causes everyone to suffer and that the
most important things in life are the little moments that embody humanity like the
laughter of a newborn baby.
The Next Course
There was no escape from hunger for Spain immediately following the Civil War.
Although infrastructure and agriculture remained in good standing compared to the
destruction of World War II, the policies enacted by early Francoism proved to be
counterproductive. Autarchic agriculture focused on self-sufficiency combined with
external factors such as the loss of trading partners due to the outbreak of World War II
and Spain’s poor standing after the Axis loss forced Spain into an agricultural downturn
that affected producers and consumers alike. The result was a period of hunger and
scarcity beginning in the late 1930s and ending in the early 1950s. Spain’s fascist ties to
Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany ensured that aid from European allies would not
arrive. Their exclusion from the Marshall Plan further created a culture of isolation. It
was not until the early 1950s that Spanish agriculture regained its prewar output and
began to emerge from these años de hambre.
All these factors combined to yield the worst gastronomic years in Spanish
history. Combined with the three years of war, Spain spent almost 20 years underfed.
Los años de hambre, as they would come to be known, were not discussed during the
Francoist era. While Cocina de recursos escaped censorship by providing a “historical”

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cookbook of the wartime era, Ignacio Doménech’s recipe collection stands as the
definitive example of Spain’s gastronomic preoccupations during early Francoism.
Combined with the wartime Menús de guerra, these cookbooks provide the only
published look inside the domestic sphere as it struggled with its most basic need. Under
heavy censorship, cookbook authors and other gastronomic writers could not directly
confront the level of hunger and agricultural dysfunction that plagued Spain. Similarly,
authors and literature were subject to the same scrutiny and the most accurate depictions
of food in society during the period come from contemporary writers and directors
seeking to reclaim the false history purported by Franco. Miguel Hernández’s poem
“Nanas de la cebolla” reminds every reader that what lies beyond the politics and
violence of war is the humanity of love found in the hope produced by a newborn’s
smile. The future generation is the weapon to combat violence, to eliminate its need. All
in all, the hunger years forced a return to tradition for Spanish national cuisine. Simple
dishes comprised of few ingredients were common. Meat and fish were supplemented by
more fruits and vegetables. There was never a discussion of eating locally or seasonally.
The fact was that there was no other option than to consume what the soil yielded, when
it yielded it. The national cuisine of the time was characterized by a gastronomy of
necessity. In the larger context, however, this return to the land began to consolidate in
the future the ideas of previous culinary nationalists like Dionisio Pérez who claimed that
the national cuisine was an amalgamation of its various regions. As we will see in the
next chapters, this intimate relationship with the land and its fresh produce provides the
impetus of national cuisine development and eventually the emergence of Spain’s first
modern haute cuisine.
The 1950s saw great economic and agricultural change for Spain. While not
inducted into the Marshall Plan, Spain’s signing of the Pact of Madrid (1953) with the
United States signaled an economic aperture to the international community24. As such,
“structural changes came about in the [agricultural] sector as the regime acknowledged
that agricultural autarky was unviable” (Toboán 7). Toboán notes that “[r]ural-urban

24
The 1953 Pact of Madrid linked the US as a “partner in the struggle against Communism” (Hauser 98)
with Spain. The United States received “four major airbases, a naval base and a 485-mile pipeline”
(Hauser 98). The agreement also signaled the influence of foreign capital and increased trade by Spain
with the European community and the United States.

93
migration…led to an increase in agricultural workers’ salaries” and the “[m]echanisation
of harvesting and threshing…led to a reduction in costs” (7). In combination with the
influx of international capital and liberalizing agroeconomic policies, real wages and
prices began to stabilize and allowed Spanish workers to emerge from los años de
hambre. The grimmest gastronomic period in contemporary Spanish history, however,
would yield an emerging market for gastronomic consumption. While the war and
postwar food insecurity created an unintentional national cuisine that was defined by a
return to basics and tradition, the years of late Francoism would be defined by increased
technological advances in the kitchen, a rethinking and reconsolidation of regional
cuisines within the national cuisine as well as the influence of foreign tourism. The
following chapter will examine the arrival of pressure cooker cookbooks, regional
cooking in national cookbooks as well as how tourism inadvertently created an ideal of
Spanishness for foreign and domestic palates alike.

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

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 Chapter Four:
Modernity in Spain: Gastronomic Technology and Tourism, 1955-1975
While the 1940s and the early 1950s were defined by scarcity and hunger in
Spain, the 1950s onward has often been described a period of metaphorical hunger for
modernization through technology and the consolidation of Spain’s global image in
relation to Europe. Aided by the Pact of Madrid in coordination with the United States
and the boom in European tourism, Spain entered into a new phase of modernity during
late Francoism. Spanish culinary endeavors followed suit. At home, everyday Spanish
gastronomy continued to develop concurrently with economic liberalization and the rise
of technology. Cooking techniques shifted from centuries-old methods to embracing
technology, most notably via the introduction of the pressure cooker, facilitating an ease
of use and efficiency never before seen in Spain. While still struggling to define itself
gastronomically, Spain experienced a tourism boom during the 1960s and 70s and was
forced to reevaluate from within how they wished to be perceived by Europe and the rest
of the world. Not unlike Dionisio Pérez’s culinary guide written to encourage tourism in
the 1930s, this period sees an institutionally coordinated consolidation of Spanish
culinary identity beginning with the works of the Francoist-sponsored Sección Femenina
and eventually into tourism guides directed largely toward German and British travelers.
The period leading to the death of Franco produces a Spanish national cuisine that is
defined by increasing modernity, inching ever more closely to the development of a
Spanish high cuisine. During this period it becomes apparent that Spanish national
cuisine is a plurality of regional cuisines mutually influenced by and developing a
national cuisine with its capital not in the traditional cultural center of Madrid or even in
Barcelona, but instead in the Basque capital of Bilbao. This decentralization of the
national cuisine signaled a future trend that culminated in the development of a haute
cuisine that is most active in rural foodscapes and not in traditional urban centers.
Official Regional Views
The Sección Femenina played an important role within the Francoist ideal for
Spain. The organization was “la única organización que se ocupó seriamente de la
promoción y formación de la mujer española [the only organization that seriously
advocated for the promotion and formation of the Spanish woman]” (Alegría 35). As

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part of their mission, they promoted “la obsesiva idea de unidad nacional [the obsessive
idea of national unity]” (Alegría 35). The organization was a strong and fierce proponent
of Francoism and its precursor, the Spanish Falange. As Inbal Ofer explains, the
organization was “founded in June 1934, existed for 43 years, attaining in its heyday (at
the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939) over half a million members. During the four
decades of its existence, the organization managed to seize authority over most of the
sectors and associations in Francoist Spain in which women operated” (1).
While acknowledging their full participation in Francoist oppression, Ofer claims
that its association with the Franco dictatorship has overshadowed the organizations’
successes. Although extreme-right in its political affiliation, “membership in the SF
constituted their first direct encounter with the world of politics” (28) for most women.
While committed to Francoist ideology, Ofer argues that the organization was equally
committed to the advancement of women within Spanish society and was responsible for
creating the first class of politically elite women in Spain. The organization’s mission
included advocating for “women’s legal, political and professional equality” (Ofer 13)
while also promoting educational and vocational training and placement in addition to
physical education and sporting endeavors.
Gastronomically, the Sección Femenina “blended both religious and political
ideologies to shape food ideology at the macro level for Spanish families through
communication of recipes and cooking instruction to women” (Dunnai 2). As Dunnai
notes, this organization valued both the urban and rural food cultures of Spain. They
“hoped to preserve the richness of rural Spanish cuisine while simultaneously educating
migrants in proper urban life” (Dunnai 7). Dunnai does state that “[r]egional cuisine
contributed to national cuisine to some extent, but not to the point that it challenged
Spanish nationalism” (8). While early cookbooks may have evidenced such a position,
the publication of Cocina regional española: Recetario (4th ed.) takes a cue from the
early culinary pluralists Dr. Thebussem and Post-Thebussem and demonstrates that the
Sección Femenina sought to fashion Spanish cuisine through a plurality view of both
urban and rural cuisines. They proposed that it was equally as important to urbanize and
modernize rural cuisine while also advocating that those urban centers maintain their
rural, provincial roots.

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 In accordance with traditional gender roles, Dunnai explains that Spanish women
were to “prepare all of the meals for the family and serve them lovingly and cheerfully
each day” (8) as a duty to family and country. While this gender disparity had been the
norm for centuries, it is worth noting again that most cookbooks and gastronomic
writings were aimed at women although professional chefs remained almost exclusively
male. The cookbooks published by this organization functioned both as culinary and
political propaganda. By offering certain recipes, the Sección Femenina sought to control
the discourse of Spanish national cuisine. As political propaganda, the organization
hoped that their advice “would reshape the Spanish individual, her home, and her patria
to the organization’s ideology” (Dunnai 14). Often overtly political, the cookbooks and
guidebooks also served the purpose of “teach[ing] illiterate women how to read, use the
metric system, or inform readers on important health and nutritional information”
(Dunnai 16).
The organization’s regional cookbook, Cocina regional española (1953),
represents their attempt to define what Spanish national cuisine truly was. In the face of
economic opportunity brought on by Civil War recovery and the Pact of Madrid (1953),
Spain was once again opening itself to foreign influences. While the postwar period
represented a return to Spanish-oriented cuisine and the decline of French influence,
economic prosperity once again threatened to diminish this renewed sense of Spanish
national cuisine. The cookbook “strove to protect Spanish heritage against the onslaught
of changes to the Spanish diet” (Dunnai 25). While promoting a Spanish national cuisine
that was rooted in its various regional gastronomies, Dunnai is correct in asserting that
“the organization carefully selected which components of Spanish culture it wanted to
showcase” (128).
It is important to mention that the ideal of Spanish national cuisine advocated by
the Sección Femenina is uniquely Spanish and excludes any recipes that had been
introduced or adapted by any foreign palate. It is a cookbook, with one specific, focused
theme, and not a general look at Spanish gastronomy. It does not provide an authoritative
definition of Spanish national cuisine. It does, however, further merge ideas that were
proposed by such culinary nationalists like Thebussem and Post-Thebussem as well as
Pardo Bazán with the Francoist official discourse. The publication of this regional

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cookbook allows for the existence of regional and provincial gastronomy within the
national canon. Furthermore, the inclusion of these ideas by the Sección femenina
guaranteed that future ideas, both official and unofficial, of Spanish national cuisine must
contemplate the role played by regional cuisines.
To be certain, Ana María Herrera,25 the author of Cocina regional española, was
very clear about her idea of what Spanish national cuisine was: “Hay una cocina nacional
que se remonta a la antigüedad y que está formada por los diferentes modos de aderezar,
guisar, conservar y endulzar los productos naturales de las distintas regiones de España
[There is a national cuisine that dates back to antiquity and is formed by the different
ways to season, cook, conserve and sweeten the natural products of the distinct regions of
Spain]” (5). Herrera states explicitly that the national cuisine is one that is, at the same
time, historic and formed by distinct regions, not of traditional centralized top-down
formation. We are to understand that it is a culmination of years of change and influence.
Her introduction reads much like that of Dionisio Pérez’s Guía del buen comer… in
which he recounts Spanish gastronomic history through each invasion from the Romans
to the New World. From the Romans, Spain received garlic and olive oil. She accredits
the Iberian pig to the invading Celtic peoples and from the Roman-Celtic fusion, “surgió
una forma distinta que tuvo un carácter especialmente español [rose a distinct form of
cooking that had a unique Spanish character” (5). It is noteworthy that Herrera claims the
Roman-Celtic fusion as the base of Spanish cooking. She relegates Arabic contributions,
of which she names saffron, nutmeg, black pepper, sugar cane, lemon and bitter orange
(5) to secondary importance. While saffron plays such an integral part of paella, this
notion that contributions from the Muslim tradition would constitute the base of Spanish
cooking proves to be too much for the ultra-Catholic Sección femenina.
In accordance with their mission, the introduction serves as a gastronomic history
lesson as part of an effort to propagandize the “official” view of Spanish cuisine. Much
like Pérez’s treatise, we must remind ourselves that these works are commissioned by
government organizations and present ideas that are in accordance with clearly-
articulated political ideologies. Nevertheless, they provide us with clues as to how the

25
Herrera was a culinary teacher who received a degree from the Academia de Gastrónomos de Madrid
and who often worked with the Sección Femenina.

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general public perceived Spanish cuisine. Herrera’s history notes that the Spanish
cookbook began with the Libre de Coch (1467), an idea that is widely accepted. Of the
New World, she admits that “tan importantes son estos nuevos elementos traídos por los
descubridores…que la cocina actual está cimentada en algunos de ellos [so important
were those new elements brought by the discoverers…that today’s cuisine is cemented by
them]” (6). She again promotes this idea that a national cuisine is the product of many
influences and is continually developing. As for Spain’s role in Europe, she again
harkens back to the ideas of Post-Thebussem and states that the French omelet and sauce
“ali-oli” are Spanish inventions, continually trying to resist Europe’s general disdain for
Spanish cooking. Nevertheless, she concludes her idea of what Spanish national cuisine
is by declaring: “En una rápida ojeada a las distintas regiones que componen España, se
puede observar cómo la situación y las costumbres de cada una han creado una cocina
con características diferentes [In a quick review of the distinct regions that comprise
Spain, you can observe how the situation of customs of each one has created one cuisine
with different characteristics]” (9, emphasis is mine). E pluribus unum or “one from
many” appears to be Herrera’s motto for Spanish national cuisine.
As many have before her, Herrera agrees that “el cocido es un plato clásico
nacional porque se hace en todas las regiones [the cocido is a classic national dish
because it is made in all regions]” (9). When conceiving of national dishes, Herrera
proposes a unifying criterion. A national dish must be one that is made, although with
variations, in all regions. The second would be the use of garlic as it is “común a toda
cocina española [common to all Spanish cooking]” (10). While her version of Spanish
national cuisine is one that is explicitly regionally influenced, neither national dishes nor
their criteria are expounded upon.
In her introduction, the author includes brief descriptions of each regional cuisine.
Of Madrid, she states that “se hace y come de todo, pero su cocina típica es sencilla [they
make and eat everything but the typical cuisine is simple]” (10). In direct contrast to
Castilian-centric ideas of national cuisine, Herrera describes the capital with culinary
disdain. Her stance is a decentralization of the national cuisine, moving its power away
from the economic, political and cultural power into the hands of regional players.
Equally, she casts a shadow over Andalusian fare by stating that it is influenced greatly

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by the Arab tradition (9). Is she codifying this cuisine as less Spanish or even as the
Other? She speaks nothing but praise for Catalan and Basque cooking. Catalan cuisine is
“en constante progreso;…para ellos, cocina propia equivale a producción y riqueza [in
constant progress;…for them, their cooking is equal to production and riches” (10). She
continues stating that “[e]l reportorio clásico de la cocina vascongada es de lo más
sabroso y variado. Este pueblo, muy aficionado al buen comer, no puede menos de tener
una cocina fuerte y abundante. Los platos más populares de esta región han pasado a
pertenecer a la cocina nacional [the classic repertoire de Basque cooking is the most
delicious and varied. This province, very much in line with good eating, can have
nothing less than a strong and abundant cuisine. The most popular dishes of this region
have come to belong to the national cuisine]” (10). Moreover, in his book Guía
gastronómica de España [Gastronomic Guide of Spain], Luis Antonio de Vega confirms
and extends this idea of Basque dominance. His 1957 edition goes even further,
declaring unequivocally that “la capital de la España gastronómica es Bilbao [the
gastronomic capital of Spain is Bilbao] (10). The 1950s marks the completion of the
Spanish gastronomic shift outward, focusing on the peripheral regions as the centerpieces
and defining features of Spanish gastronomy.
The appropriation of regional dishes by the national cuisine stands as a full
acknowledgement that Spanish national cuisine is created directly from regional
influence. Galician cuisine receives equal praise, with Herrera claiming that “la cocina
gallega es tan variada y rica que, como la cocina catalana, tiene tradición propia y son
variadísimas sus especialidades [Galician cuisine is so varied and rich that, like Catalan
cuisine, it has its own tradition and many specialties]” (10). While other countries’
national cuisines can be defined by Lara Anderson’s concept of capital as metonym for
the nation sensibility, we see the reverse dominating Spanish cuisine. The centralized
national cuisine is one that is defined by an outside-in movement, one that places highest
regard for the periphery and not the capital. In Herrera’s mind, the driving forces of
Spanish national cuisine are Basque, Catalan and Galician cuisines, not Madrileña.
Foreshadowing what we will see in future chapters, this decentralization of Spanish
national cuisine can be attributed to what Herrera labels as Catalan cuisine’s “constante
progreso y perfeccionamiento [constant progression and perfection]” (239).

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 Herrera’s praise for regional cooking does not, however, curtail reductive and
stereotypical thinking of regional cuisines and dishes. As we move from the introduction
to each region’s prescribed section, we see cover pages that are adorned by each regions’
most “famous” dish. Each metonym represents the region’s culinary fare and philosophy.
For Andalusia, we have gazpacho. Asturias is defined by fabada (a bean stew) while
paella is an obvious substitute for Valencia. While the cocido madrileño serves as
metonym for the capital, Herrera laments that with its status as government hub “la
cocina madrileña debiera ser…cocina nacional [Madrid cuisine should be…the national
cuisine]” (161) but its dishes are too limited and simple to be bestowed this honor.
Francoist policies may have limited regional powers but the Sección Femenina
“decided that recipes were an acceptable form of cultural expression of regionalism, but
regional language was not” (Dunnai 129). Although this cookbook was only published in
castellano (Castilian Spanish) and not in Catalan or Basque, Herrera did include names of
dishes like marmite-kua (a fish stew composed of tuna, potatoes, tomatoes and onions)
that have an obvious linguistic link to regional cultures. This dish, however, more than
likely is one of those Basque dishes that have elevated themselves to a national level, thus
explaining the use of euskera. To call it by any other name would have been too
conspicuous since the name of that dish had long imbued itself into the Castilian
language. The push towards regional plurality is only one of many changes that beset
Spanish gastronomy during this time period. Increased technology in the kitchen, such as
the pressure cooker, would consolidate the image of national cuisine while also
introducing ideas of efficiency and modernity that had been lacking in traditional Spanish
cuisine.
Under Pressure
As Roca-Poliméni, et al. discuss in their article, “pressure cookers are used to
reduce cooking time required…thanks to high temperature steam due to pressure
increase” (393). As one can deduce from the name of the appliance, the given contents
are cooked via pressure which is a byproduct of the heating process. They state that “at
baseline” the pressure cooker “contains water, food products and cool air” (393). Water
is used as a generic term here. Cooking with any liquid will suffice. During the heating
process, “pressure grows due to the rise in temperature and water vapourization” (393).

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The steam byproduct is released through the valve and the “internal gas becomes
enriched with water vapour which condenses on the surface of the food products” (Roca
393). Finally, all of the pressure is released from the cooker after the heating process is
finished and the contents return to normal atmospheric pressure. The cooking of foods,
however, is not due to the increase of liquid temperature within the pressure cooker. The
authors note that convective heat transfer is not very efficient within the pressure cooker
and that “[c]ondensation was the principal pathway of heat transfer to food” (Roca 403).
The process of condensation after pressure is released and the transfer of heat between
condensing liquid and solid food products cooks the solid food products in a much more
time efficient manner than other cooking methods. Furthermore, the retention of the
water vapor ensures that the food products retain moisture throughout the cooking
process.
Spanish cookbook author Ana María Herrera concludes that “los alimentos
preparados en la olla o cacerola a presión conservan muchos más su sabor ya que parte de
éste se perdía por la evaporación, y sus propiedades nutrivas se aprovechan casi por
completo [the foods prepared in the pressure cooker conserve more of their flavor due in
part to the lack of evaporation and its nutritional elements are enjoyed almost
completely]” (7). Without evaporation, the foods are continually enriched by this process
of vaporization and subsequent condensation that provides a more concentrated flavor.
As for the nutritional claims, the pressure cooker’s benefits were well known
during the period. A 1949 issue of The British Medical Journal touts the benefits of this
cooking method, for example. The journal cites a “Professor J. Yudkin, who in
preliminary experiments has found smaller losses of vitamins B and C in pressure
cooking than in cooking in an ordinary sauce pan” (582). Following the logic of the
Roca-Poliméni, et al. findings, vitamin loss was minimal due to the continual process of
vaporization-condensation. As opposed to cooking methods where evaporation occurs,
the pressure cooker’s retention of vapor better preserves the vitamins that are
concentrated in foods.
Pressure Cooker History
The British Medical Journal took a stand on pressure cookers in the previously
mentioned 1949 article stating that the apparatus is “no novelty, having been available in

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various forms for the last 20 years, it has recently attracted attention as a solution to
certain domestic difficulties caused by changed social and economic conditions” (582).
In truth, the history of the pressure cooker dates back more than four centuries.
According to food scientist and historian Harold McGee, the first pressure cooker was
designed in France by Denys Papin in 1681 (McGee). As McGee explains in his Harvard
lecture, the pressure cooker originated out of early scientific research regarding “the
relationship between pressure, temperature and volume” (McGee 16:00). McGee
continues to describe that the pressure cooker originated from research undertaken at the
Royal Society of London with Papin working under famed British scientist Robert Boyle.
McGee describes the members of the Royal Society experimenting with foods in Papin’s
“digester” during dinner parties and concludes that this is a prime example of a “new
experience of food made possible by scientific understanding” (17:44).
The first pressure cooker was patented in the United States in 1902 (Alegría 149).
Historian Francisco Abad Alegría notes that the first usage of the term pressure cooker
and thus, olla a presión dates to 1910 and the mass commercialization of early pressure
cookers in the Anglophone world, most notably that of the brand Kook-Kwick (151).
While most of these early versions of the pressure cooker were industrial or restaurant-
quality in nature, 1938 brings the first purely domestic commercial product into the
marketplace (Alegría 152). Alegría does indicate, however, that the popularity and
increasing expansion of the pressure cooker into the American domestic market was
halted, or at least slowed extensively, by the lead up to and the onset of World War II
(152). Nevertheless, demand returned after the end of the war and the domestic demand
and popularity experienced in America will eventually foreshadow the impending
pressure cooker boom within Spain.
While the union of food and science dates back centuries, the pressure cooker
marks one of the first mainstream commodities that sought to increase efficiency within
the Spanish gastrosphere. While its success in the 1950s will eventually foreshadow
Spanish culinary innovation of the late 1990s and 2000s with the advent and proliferation
of the so-called molecular gastronomy movement, the popularization of the pressure
cooker during Francoism comes at a time of policy change in Spain. With Spaniards
more fully entering into the globalizing marketplace, the pressure cooker serves as a

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marker of culinary modernity and of a traditional national cuisine embracing technology
in an effort to adapt and progress.
In Spain
The precursor to the modern Spanish pressure cooker was patented in 1919.
According to the Boletín Oficial de la Propiedad Industrial number 798 released on the
16th of November, patent number 71.143 was granted to José Alix Martínez. Martínez, a
resident of Zaragoza, was given a patent covering 20 years for his invention of “Una olla
para toda clase de guisos, que se denominará ‘Olla Exprés’/A pot for all class of stews,
that will be named ‘Olla Exprés’” (BOPI 12). The release further states that the patent
was presented on the 18th of October and guarantees Martínez protection for similar
inventions of any size or design. This initial patent and design, however, were ceded to
Don Camilo Bellvis Calatayud in 1925 and the olla de Bellvis was born (154).
According to Alegría, this original Spanish design “se comercializó en todo el
mundo (ventas y patentes en 32 países), llegó a totalizar casi tres millones de
unidades…y desapareció del mercado a principios de la década de los ochenta [was
commercialized throughout the world (sold and patented in 32 countries), produced
almost three million units…and disappeared from the market at the beginning of the
1980s]” (154). In addition to this founding supplier, Alegría estimates that in Spain there
were no less than 14 companies that produced their own lines of pressure cookers during
the 1950s and 1960s and over 12 companies that began producing beginning in the 1970s
and continuing into the 1990s (213). Until the 1950s, the only producer of the pressure
cooker was Bellvis’ company. Needless to say, the 1950s and 1960s represent a veritable
boom in the production and use of pressure cookers as evidenced in the economic market
as well as the cookbook market.
Alegría explains that while the pressure cooker “resulta una novedad en los años
sesenta del siglo XX…ya estaba en plena difusión desde la segunda década del siglo
[became a novelty in the 1960s…it was already well known since the second decade of
the twentieth century]” (145). Regardless of its penetration within the gastronomic
culture at home or in professional kitchens, the rise of pressure cooker-themed cookbooks
coincides with Alegría’s 1960s novelty claim. Regardless of their use during the first

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half of the twentieth century, the 1960s proves to be the cultural turning point for this and
other kitchen technologies to take root and enter the social sphere.
Although available since the 1920s within Spain, Alegría is quick to add that the
early apparatuses were nothing like those that became available during the 1960s. The
early pressure cookers “eran grandes recipientes…construidas en acero o aluminio y
cerradas mediante abrazaderas y tuercas o mediante pasadores abatibles y provistas de un
manómetro que indicaba la presión alcanzada en el interior del recipiente en ebullición
[were large containers…constructed of steel or aluminum and sealed by clamps and
screws or by collapsible fasteners complete with a manometer that indicated the pressure
within the pressure cooker]” (Alegría 148).
Moreover, the pressure cooker represented the new Spanish economic outlook.
As Tatjana Pavlovic notes that in the early 1950s “autarkic Spain abandoned its outdated
and sluggish economic model developed mostly as a response to Spain’s international
isolation following the Spanish Civil War” (1). The Pact of Madrid helped ease Spain
back into the general international community. Searching for a new political and
economic model, “the government needed to reframe its political tactics, visible in a
revision of nationalist rhetoric that now defined ‘progress’ as a technocratic mutation of
the prevailing ideology” (1).
This reframing of the official discourse away from traditional centralized
nationalist views perhaps contributed to the decentralization of the Spanish foodscape.
While the regional pluralist view had long been advocated, the shift from autarky to
technocratic principles gave credence to the Sección Femenina and other official
gastronomic fronts to declare Spanish national cuisine as being first and foremost a
regional-based cuisine. Furthermore, Pavlovic notes that the official rhetoric mimicked
this change, featuring the “language of efficiency, rational thinking and a belief in high
living standards (1). Linking directly to the gastronomic sphere, the change evidenced a
“shift from post-war insistence on moderation, restrictions, hoarding or rationing to the
wave of new commodities” (Pavlovic 2). While Pavlovic’s book The Mobile Nation
focuses on the growing industries of television, film and automobiles during this so-
called hinge decade of the 1950s, her analysis describes accurately the same changes
occurring in the gastronomic and domestic domains.

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 Advocating the same progress and change in beliefs, the pressure cooker and its
associated qualities and rhetoric exemplify the easing of autarkic policies in favor of
those promoting efficiency through technology. As Suzanne Dunnai claims, the
Recetario para olla a presión y batidora eléctrica “demonstrates the Sección Femenina’s
desire to educate women in modern technologies that would aid in their domestic duties
and alleviate some of the burden of raising a family and maintaining a household” (25).
The author Ana María Herrera confirms this when she states that “los tres puntos
esenciales de la Economía Doméstica son el ahorro de trabajo, de tiempo y de dinero [the
three essential keys of domestic economy are the savings of work, time and money] (Olla
7). Espousing the new streamlined rhetoric of post-Autarky technocratic economics,
Herrera’s introduction reads like a Francoist propaganda text for women and the domestic
sphere. Adopting a general Francoist slant, the text provides helpful advice regardless of
political affiliation. She states that the new technology is to be used to “modernizar y
simplificar el trabajo de la cocina [modernize and simplify work in the kitchen] (Olla 7).
This technological gastronomy is a major turning point in Spanish cuisine. Embracing
new techniques and technologies, the pressure cooker foreshadows the rise of molecular
gastronomy and haute cuisine which we will see later in Chapter Six.
The benefits of the pressure cooker were exactly those ideals that new Francoist
Spain wanted to convey: efficiency, quality and a higher standard of living. Extolling
these benefits to her readers, Herrera focuses on those values that would benefit amas de
casa [housewives] most: “hace la comida en poco tiempo, hay un considerable ahorro de
combustible…los alimentos preparados...conservan mucho más su sabor…y sus
propiedades nutrivas se aprovechan casi por completo [it makes food in less time, there is
a considerable savings of fuel…the foods converve their flavor better…and the
nutritional properties are enjoyed almost entirely]” (Olla 7). To this extent, the medically
trained Alegría concludes from his modern scientific perspective that the pressure cooker
does indeed produce measurable savings in energy and nutrition (147) but also that the
pressure cooker presents a more efficient culinary method that “produce intercambios
profundos de sabores entre los distintos componentes de la preparación y además
transformaciones químicas recombinantes de los alimentos [produces profound taste
marrying between distinct components during preparation as well as chemically

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combining transformations of the foods” (147-48). Herrera advocates aspects of
technological progress that raise the standard of living economically and personally, and
that this technologically-rooted cooking become the new normal.
Attempting to assuage the hesitant masses, Herrera bridges the gap between the
traditional and technological, claiming that “en el cocido, plato nacional, es quizá donde
más se conoce el empleo de este utensilio [in cocido, the national dish, is where you may
best know the employment of this apparatus] (Olla 7). She manages to create a perfect
synthesis between the traditional national cuisine and the new face of the modernizing
nation. The pressure cooker embodies this new trend of technological and economic
progress without losing traditional tastes. Herrera argues that the pressure cooker is both
a symbol of tradition and of progress. Cooking in new ways does not necessarily change
what is cooked. The Spanish national cuisine largely stays intact but the methods to
reach the same dishes and flavors are altered slightly, more efficiently. While certain
dishes are incapable of being reproduced in the pressure cooker, the ubiquitous national
and regional stews are, as Herrera states, perfect candidates for this modern technology.
Espousing the same benefits, Isabel Mola’s 1957 Cocinando con la olla a presión
[Cooking with the Pressure Cooker] strikes a similar tone as Herrera’s cookbook. In her
introduction, she exacts a similar argument four years earlier than that of Herrera. While
not given the same political spotlight as that of the Sección Femenina’s editions, Mola’s
recipe collection enjoyed similar success and received multiple print runs (with the
edition reviewed here being a second edition print).
Evolving out of the años de hambre, it is no surprise that Mola’s main argument
is economic. She states immediately that the main reason to use this new invention is
that it produces “tan notable ahorro de combustible, por tanto, de dinero [such notable
savings of energy, as a result, of money]” (7). It is important to observe each author’s
insistence in noting the savings of energy associated with cooking. While the cookbooks
of the immediate postwar period focused on savings derived from food choice and
making more of the resources available, the pressure cooker cookbooks’ discourse
reveals a transition beyond the postwar period. While economically Spain is improving
and agriculture has rebounded, families and housewives are still preoccupied with the
rationing mentality. While the technocratic argument positions the pressure cooker as a

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new commodity that represents technological invention as creating a better standard of
living and thus rejecting the scarcity mentality in favor of abundance, it is obvious from
Mola’s and Herrera’s arguments that the typical family is still concentrating on saving as
much as possible, wherever possible.
Further signaling the preoccupation with savings, Mola’s cookbook comes with
“un calendario-minuta hecho con platos del índice que facilitan la tarea cotidiana [a
calendar comprised of dishes from the index that facilitate everyday chores]” (12). This
rhetoric further exemplifies the shift from a rationing mode into one that focuses more on
the daily savings of time and money as well as advocating commodities that serve to ease
labor-intensive processes. In her menu for Spring, the first recipe that appears is none
other than the cocido a la madrileña (15). Ignoring the dish’s long-standing associations
with the national, cocido is one dish that exemplifies the new technocratic rhetoric.
While original recipes require the dish to stew and marry flavors over an extended period
of time, the pressure cooker cuts time to service exponentially. This time savings allows
for women to focus on other work. Furthermore, the reduced cooking time serves to
confirm the statements held by both authors that the pressure cooker will produce
immediate monetary savings by shortening cooking time. The fuel used by the pressure
cooker is in direct proportion to cooking time, both representing fractions of time and
fuel used in previous cooking methods.
Further representing the transition between postwar and economic liberation,
Cocinando… includes a section dedicated to Despojos, or products that are generally
thought of as waste. More accepted in Europe than in America, cooking with offal
(commonly known as organ meats or variety meats) is in fact quite common. While often
thought of in terms of pâté produced from liver or kidney, Mola’s recipe collection goes
further. Including recipes for cooking liver and kidney, Mola also highlights recipes used
to cook tongue, lips and snout, feet and even brains. The inclusion of this section still
illustrates the need to make the most of what is available. The pressure cooker,
subsequently, creates an ideal situation for cooking these and other lesser cuts of meat.
In addition to rapid cooking and ease of use, the pressure cooker is also known for
producing tender meats. These varieties of meats that are generally less expensive and
tougher prove to be perfect candidates for pressure cooking.

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 Thematically, Mola’s cookbook presents a fairly traditional view of Spanish
cooking. Beginning with her inclusion of cocido (in all its regional forms) as the de facto
Spanish dish, her menus present a highly Spanish-oriented cuisine that is representative
of all regions. She includes such dishes as bacalao (cod) in many regional varieties,
paella valenciana (Valencian Paella), pisto manchego (a vegetable dish often served with
a fried or poached egg), gazpacho and espinacas a la crema (creamed spinach). The
foreign dishes that she chooses to include are ones that do not stray far from Spanish
tastes. Italian and French Provençal and Mediterranean dishes are highlighted as well as
dishes from former Spanish colonies such as arroz cubano (Cuban rice) or ropa vieja
(literally “old clothes,” a Caribbean dish). Harkening back to Pardo Bazán, Mola makes
a similar implicit claim that Spanish cuisine is not a haute cuisine. Overwhelmingly
Spanish-oriented in the daily menu section, the Menus para fiestas (Menus for Holidays)
shows much more of a predilection for foreign dishes such as ensalada rusa (Russian
Salad), langosta a la americana (Lobster a la American) or pollo al Oporto (Chicken a la
Oporto). The idea still persists during this time period that Spanish cuisine is not yet
elegant enough to include on such festive holidays. In order to celebrate or impress, one
needs to refer back to the French-influenced dishes of the prewar period.
Stylistically, however, the two recipe collections follow a much more
straightforward approach than their historical antecedents like Pardo Bazán and de
Burgos. Gone are the long narrative sections that eloquently expound each author’s
culinary philosophy. Instead, Herrera’s Recetario does not include much narrative aside
from its historical introduction. There is not a foreword passage written directly to
readers, explaining what to expect or how to treat the information included. Each chapter
does begin with a brief introduction of the given regional cuisine including facts about its
most famous dish, cooking methods and agricultural products. Establishing a structure
that will be seen in other cookbooks produced by the Sección femenina, each recipe is
introduced by its title with ingredientes y cantidades [ingredients and amounts] directly
underneath. The recipe then lists each ingredient and amount required and is then
followed by the prompt: Modo de hacerlo [Method]. The directions, in paragraph form,
are then elucidated.

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 Mola’s volume follows a similar style in the presentation of her recipes.
Eschewing the formal presentation of titles and headings, Mola instead plainly offers the
dish’s name in bold letters followed by cooking time and a similar ingredients/amounts
table ending with her narrative description. Her directions vary slightly offering
suggestions with a mix of verbs in the infinitive, se impersonal and formal commands.
She shies away from creating a mini-community with her readers by not offering a more
familiar tone. Regardless, her directions do not read as being authoritative or cold, only
impersonal and removed.

Figure 4: Cocinando con la olla a presión Cover

Source: Jorge Tarazona
She is writing for a female readership as exemplified by the depiction of a
beautiful blonde woman dressed in a proper yet stylish blue and white stripped smock
dress, cinched at the waist to accentuate her natural curves. Her red lipstick and dark

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eyeliner suggest elegance and stand in stark contrast to the overly cartoonish male chef
and his pear body shape that appear on the back cover. The tall, slender woman serves as
an ideal that women would gladly choose to emulate. Long before cookbooks that were
focused on eating and cooking for a certain body image, this edition utilizes similar
marketing techniques to attract female consumers. The illustrations throughout the book
depict comical situations between a brother and sister that are common to all families:
kids playing with pets, brothers tricking sisters, general horseplay. The book, however,
does include a uniquely Spanish image of the young boy practicing to be a bullfighter.

Figure 5: Recetario para olla a presión y batidora eléctrica Cover

Source: Santillana
Stylistically, Herrera continues the previously established style of the Sección
femenina cookbooks. Cover illustrations feature a picnic blanket pattern overlaid with
drawings of a pressure cooker and electric blender. The introduction precedes the recipe
sections, extolling the new ideals of the Francoist female. Each subsection is adorned

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with a drawing of an elegant woman preparing meals. These women wear modest yet
fashionable dresses, fully made-up with impeccable hair, jewelry and even high heels on
occasion. Men do, however, factor into this cookbook. They are pictured hunting birds
with their loyal canine companion. Gender roles and expectations are clearly defined
through these depictions of the ideal Spanish household. Perhaps the edition is
suggesting that women now have no excuse to be impeccably put together since they
have more time due to cooking with the pressure cooker. While the cookbook is a major
step forward in modernizing Spanish cuisine, the gender politics remain the same.
Recipe sections are arranged thematically based on food categories. Each recipe
follows the now universal pattern of the title followed by the words ingredientes y
cantidades [ingredients and amounts] accompanied by the list of ingredients. The next
heading is Modo de hacerlo [Method], followed by instructions. While variations were
present in earlier cookbooks published by the organization, the methods are now
presented exclusively using the se impersonal verb form and include much more detail of
instruction. The directions are much more narrative, but they do not include anything
outside of cooking instructions. There are neither anecdotes, advice nor any general
thoughts on womanhood in Spain. Any narrative qualities are relegated to the
introduction section only. The narrative directions in Recetario often include
clarifications and historical connections but are mainly straightforward and void of
personal anecdotes. The directions are noted by the exclusive use of the impersonal “se.”
There is no use of a conversational we-form or command forms. This does provide a
much more business, textbook-like tone, removing much of the personal connection that
dominated the recipe collections published by Pardo Bazán, de Burgos or Doménech, for
example. These authors sought to connect personally to each reader, forming a
connection to provide a certain level of comfort and intimacy.

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 Figure 6: Recetario para olla... Recipe
Source: Santillana

Instead, the present collection reads like a manual or educational text. There is no
general culinary or home economics theory included. Herrera does, however, include
some ideas for substitution, offering alternate ingredients and cooking methods. The
directions are straightforward but we do see an increase in what we consider normal cues
today. Herrera is sure to provide cues such as “when golden” to give more clarification

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to her readers. This style is noteworthy in the works published by the Sección Femenina.
This inclusion of such cues presupposes an audience with minimal cooking knowledge.
As an instructional volume, each cookbook needs to provide accurate directions so that
each amateur cook can reproduce with ease and accuracy each recipe. This replication
stands as a tenet of the organization’s mission. As stated earlier, the recipe books were
just another example of espousing political ideology. The replication and eventual
habitualization of these behaviors and associated ideologies served to create and
disseminate an ideal for how women were to behave in Franco’s Spain. As Dunnai
asserts, these cookbooks were manuals to mold the perfect woman.
Cocina regional española proves to be a critical turning point in how authors
conceived of Spanish cuisine in Franco’s Spain. While Franco’s oppression of peripheral
cultures and languages would have suggested a centralization of Spanish cuisine, the
domestic arm of his regime, the Sección Femenina, sought to reconcile regional cuisines
and appropriate them as a national cuisine. Continuing anti-French sentiment that existed
before the Civil War, Herrera again argues that true Spanish cuisine only includes those
recipes of Spanish tradition, not from modern European influence. The technocratic shift
in political ideology directly influenced and created the consumer culture of
technological commodities such as the pressure cooker. The pressure cooker cookbooks
formed part of a shift in ideology that produced a new rhetoric of modernity and
efficiency in the kitchen, and within the gastronomic sphere this modernization did not
produce sweeping changes in how authors perceived Spanish national cuisine. While
approaches and methods to cooking change to reflect the new technocratic thinking, the
dishes and foods that constitute the national cuisine do not vary significantly. While it is
safe to say that the present model of plurality has solidified by the 1950s-1970s, Spanish
economic liberalization and an increased focus on institutionalized tourism would both
challenge this idea of purely Spanish cuisine. The influx of foreign influences and tastes
would fuse with Spanish traditions to create new ideas of national cuisine. Nevertheless,
Spain would continue to espouse this regional-centric cuisine in the face of invading
tourist and foreign influences.
Tourism Boom

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 In his seminal study on tourism, Dean MacCannell writes that at some level each
tourist desires to reach “a more profound appreciation of society and culture” (10). The
tourist experience is different for each individual and each individual inhabits and
understands the tourist space in different ways. Tourism, however, creates what
MacCannell refers to as “staged authenticity.”26 Invoking Goffman’s front and back
stage distinctions, MacCannell alludes to the spectacle of tourism as a giant performance
where both actors and spectators play an active role. In his view of tourism, both the
tourist and the native are equally responsible for creating this performance.
While attempts to modernize Spain through tourism can be traced back to the
reigns of Alfonso XIII and of dictator Primo de Rivera (Pack 10), the Spanish tourism
boom of the 1960s and 1970s brought Spain to a global audience. Met with reticence
from certain factions within the government, Pack notes that Franco’s early use of
tourism during the Civil War provided a good prediction for tourism later in Spain. For
Pack:
[F]oreign tourism would become a direct agent of socioeconomic change,
particularly in more remote areas of Spain’s southeastern and southern
Mediterranean littorals. The new industry offered myriad opportunities for
entrepreneurship on every scale. Massive investment – public, private, national,
and foreign – stimulated the dramatic transformations of hundreds of coastal
municipalities. (10)
Following the technocratic economic liberalization as evidenced by Pavlovic,
Spanish tourism brought, as Pack alludes, a complete transformation of the
socioeconomic sectors of Spain. Justin Crumbaugh, in his book Destination Dictatorship
(2009), affirms the tourist boom’s power in shaping the overall political narrative,
arguing that “the tourist boom came to bear on the local contours of governing in Spain
by figuring prominently in dominant narratives about the country’s process of
modernization” (2). Nevertheless, Spain’s transition to tourism was not easy. Spain
faced many struggles as being a place “where foreign travelers until recently had been
highly conspicuous novelties, where urban infrastructures were unprepared to

26
MacCannell’s ‘staged authenticity’ refers to the idea that national, regional or local culture is produced
for a tourist audience in an effort to portray authenticity. Here, however, the authenticity produced for
tourists is one that is shaped to appeal to what the tourist wants instead of what is actually there.

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accommodate three-fold population jumps in the summer months, and where national and
European identities frequently were at odds” (9). Furthermore, Spain had to combat the
general preconceptions held by Europe and American tourists of the time.
As Pavlovic describes, “Spain had already been well ingrained into the European
imagination as its ‘oriental’ counterpart” (144). Pack echoes similar sentiments, arguing
that tourism “presented Spaniards the opportunity to expand the scope of their interaction
with the outside world, stimulate commerce, and dispel the Black Legend with a
combination of modern facilities and ageless charm” (191). Paralleling the influence of
technology in gastronomy, the new Spain of tourism wanted to capitalize on its tradition
but also modernize in order to seek a more efficient and better way of life.
At home, however, “regime propagandists celebrated with self-congratulatory
epithets like the ‘Spanish miracle’ and the ‘development years,’ the tourist boom became
a central theme in Spain’s own commercial entertainment, news media, and political
rhetoric, as public discourse was increasingly saturated” (Crumbaugh 2). The tourism
narrative not only needed to sell to foreign visitors but also the domestic populace. As
Crumbaugh suggests, the Franco regime’s propagandistic approach to tourism was
equally aimed at its own citizens so that “tourism came to act as an allegory of the larger
changes of the 1960s, offering provisional cohesion and coherence to disparate, even
contradictory, ideas about economic growth, and reconfiguring the relationship between
the Franco regime and the Spanish populace” (2). The narrative of tourism became
synonymous with economic stability and growth and Crumbaugh asserts that the Franco
regime used this narrative and period to reassert its own dominance, “facilitating the
normalization of diplomatic relations with Western liberal democracies, but also
affording the regime a previously unthinkable level of political stability at home” (4).
Gastronomically, this meant making reforms to the restaurant and service sectors.
Pack notes that as early as 1939, the early predecessor to the Ministry of Tourism, the
Directorate General of Tourism [DGT], attempted to standardize Spanish cuisine. They
advocated dishes such as “paella, cocido madrileño, tortilla a la española and many other
renowned Spanish dishes [that] are served abroad with great success” (cited in Pack 35).
Similarly, the organization urged chefs and restaurants to avoid dishes with “excessively
strange characteristics or strong dressings unknown outside of Spain” (cited in Pack 35).

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Thus, the tourist gastronomic paradox appears. This phenomenon describes the tastes of
tourists in foreign settings. While abroad, tourists seek foods that are both exotic and
familiar. The DGT understood this taste preference, seeking to dissuade the use of dishes
and foods that would extend too far into the realm of exoticism.
Eating Spain
Fully within the throes of a tourism boom, the Spanish government published
many guides and pamphlets that sought to ease travelers’ concerns and facilitate travel
within the country. Incorporating historical facts with modern day tips, the guides were
akin to the cookbooks published by the Sección Femenina; they both engaged an
educated reader with the end goal of influencing thought and perception. In the case of
the tourist pamphlets, the government’s propaganda specialists took this opportunity to
dispel rumors and influence how foreigners perceived of Spain and its people. Written
and published in 1965 by the Subsecretaria de Turismo and overseen by a company
named Máximo, the 70+ page booklet offers a historical and economic overview of Spain
while presenting common and necessary tourist needs such as explanations regarding
lodging, transportation, customs, activities and of course, food. Titled, Spain for You, the
guide is printed in English and written in British English to appease one of their largest
tourist bases.

Figure 7: Spain for You Cover

Source: Spanish BOE

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 Sprinkled with particularly awkward phrasing, the guide is written in
grammatically-correct English with the addition of idiomatic phrases that translate poorly
from the original Spanish. The prologue invites the “tourist” to this “bull-hide of a
country” (5) and assures them that “Spain is Different.” The guide is quick to advise us,
however, that Spaniards “differentiate between ‘tourist’ and ‘traveller’” (5). For them, a
tourist is “normally a gentleman, or a lady, who gives more than he or she receives” but
that go through their vacation “untouched…by pleasure or pain” (5). The traveler,
however, “is a different kettle of fish” (5). He is one who “brings eyes as well as a
camera; he has questions to ask as well as a guide-book to brandish; he has human
curiosity as well as a zest for museums; he longs for shade after the sun” (5). In the end,
the traveler is one who “automatically becomes a friend” because “Spain is a pretty warm
and hospitable sort of place” (5). It appears that Spain is almost challenging its visitors to
be more than simple observers, to become entrenched in local culture and lose oneself in
an exotic land.
The pamphlet is, however, quick to tell its reader what it is not. It is not “a
profound study of [Spain’s] past and present…and avoids minute disquisitions on our
country’s historical or modern character” (6). The guide does refer you to the
comprehensive tourist guide complete with historical and modern disquisitions titled
Spain that may be purchased for 100 pesetas. This supposed watered-down version of
the comprehensive guide does inform its readers as to what the “Spaniard’s Spain” (49)
really is. Just like the Cocina regional cookbook, the guide presents a softening approach
to the harsh legislation that was implemented at the outset of Francoism. As Pack
suggests, one of the main tenets of Spanish tourism was “combating ‘anti-Spanish’
opinion…[this] meant eliminating signs of Spanish backwardness and incivility” (57). In
the section labeled "Unity and diversity,” the guide admits that “Catalán, Basque and
Gallego are spoken in their respective regions” (50). “Geography poor” (50) recounts the
difficulty of working the Spanish soil with lands “cut up as it is by high mountain ranges,
and with two-thirds of the country receiving less rainfall than the farmers need” (51).
The guide is not shy about confirming perceptions of lack of modernization and
development. Equally, it is quick to offer solutions and tout Francoist policies. Always
citing the time frame of 25 years (1965 represents 25 years of full Francoism), the

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pamphlet states that over “a million and a quarter acres of land have been brought under
irrigation” (51) and that increased industrialization has raised electricity consumption
from “3,100 million kilowatt-hours in 1939” to “25,750 million in 1963” (51). Pack
describes this marketing technique as a way for the “official discourse…to link tourism
with modernization and international peace” (139). The Spaniard’s Spain was one that
acknowledged its shortcomings while being proud of the progress that was ongoing and
the industrialization that had occurred since Franco took power.
Geographically poor and presumably economically poor, the Spanish exchange
rate at the time of publication equaled 1 US dollar for 60 Spanish pesetas. At this rate,
tourists would enjoy a cup of coffee for around 12 cents and a bottle of sherry would set
you back slightly less than one dollar. A “splendid” meal would cost around $2 while a
luxury meal only cost $10.
In comparison to their geographical deficiencies, in this text Spaniards are
considered to be “[h]istory rich” (51). A brief overview of history cites influences and
invasions from “Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Visigoths and Muslims”
(51) in a who’s who listing of powerful ancient civilizations. The lesson highlights the
Catholic Kings and Columbus as shaping not only Spain but Europe and the world.
While providing accurate descriptions throughout, the guide presents twentieth-century
Spanish politics in a thoroughly propagandistic manner. Citing the Disaster of 1898, the
pamphlet claims that the resulting turmoil produced a nation “filled with hatreds, and
those hatreds provided a fruitful field of action for two ideas and political groups which
ended up by dominating the rest – Anarchism and Communism. And this was the
outcome of a policy full of liberal phrases!” (53). Undoubtedly, Franco is portrayed as
the savior of the nation and the Spanish empire and reminds the reader that the Catholic
Church named this war a “Crusade” (54). This crusade produced “a traditional, Catholic,
social and representative Monarchy” with the “Headship of State…occupied by the
winner of the war and the maker of the peace, General Franco” (55).
The guide is clearly propagandistic, creating a text that baits readers with useful
and helpful accuracies and then switching course to provide a view of Spain that is
deeply in tune with Francoism. This subjective view, nonetheless, is effective in creating
new perceptions of an old Spain. Offering this information to a new generation that is

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not as familiar with the Civil War, the guide intends to reverse the effects of the Black
Legend and portray Spain as a politically and economically modern nation, hospitable to
new ideas and peoples. In regards to food, this presents yet another “official” view that
presents a consolidated version of how readers should conceive of a Spanish national
cuisine. Crumbaugh, however, asserts that Franco’s “power exercised through the
spectacle of tourism…was constructive rather than repressive” (20). In this way, we can
understand the coordinated propagandistic effort by the Franco regime to sell Spain, and
in this case sell Spanish food, as an attempt to consolidate both how the foreign and
domestic communities conceived of the idea of Spanish national cuisine.
While the other examples we have examined thus far represent modes of thinking
that were written for Spaniards by Spaniards, this guide constitutes a shift in this model.
Written for foreigners by Spaniards, we must also take into account how foreign
perception shapes a national cuisine. Although still written by Spaniards, the supposedly
official, objective ideal of Spanish national cuisine will eventually influence both
foreigners as well as Spaniards. By creating an ideal for the foreign tourist, the native
Spaniards must adapt their culinary offerings to conform to what one expects, not to what
necessarily is the native ideal of national cuisine. For Spaniards, tourism does not exist
naturally, but instead via a “representation, something they read about in newspapers and
magazines, see at the movies” (23) or eat in tourist-aimed restaurants. Crumbaugh
continues to describe that “[i]n order to corroborate, authenticate, and individualize the
story, making it one’s own,” (23) a first-hand account is not necessary but only a
“symbolic supplement” (23) is needed. This again affirms that the tourist gastronomic
experience not only alters how the foreign audience views Spanish national cuisine but
also forces Spaniards themselves to conform to the tourist representation of their own
national cuisine.
With tourism, we observe a culinary paradox where tourists seek out both exotic,
authentically local foods while also requiring a sense of comfort. This often results in the
promotion of a national cuisine that is a watered-down formula of native fare that appeals
to tourist consumers by offering tastes that are simultaneously familiar and exotic. In the
case of Spain, the Black Legend had long portrayed the nation as Europe’s Other, a
remnant of Arab conquest that shared more in common with Africa than with Europe.

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Spanish cuisine, however portrayed by the Black Legend,27 does not vary greatly from
traditional Continental fare. Those tourists familiar with other Mediterranean diets such
as Provencal or Italian would find similarities with minor exoticism. Dominated by
heavy flavors of olive oil, garlic and saffron, the Spanish flavor palate would have been
accessible to most European tourists. Conversely, however, the native national cuisine
must adapt to this tourist version by eliminating certain dishes that would prove to be too
authentic to be appealing to tourist sensibilities. Therefore, the new national cuisine is
one that must take into account both tourist and native desires.
In presenting their official view of Spanish national cuisine, the Tourism Ministry
confirms trends from the other cookbooks analyzing a decentralized model of Spanish
cuisine. Highlighting regional cuisines such as Basque, Galician and Catalonian, this
guidebook echoes the sentiments elucidated by Ana María Herrera and the Sección
femenina. Spanish cuisine is not a Castilian cuisine: it prides itself on being comprised of
diverse regions. This perspective allows for a national cuisine that is comprised of all the
geographical and agricultural varieties that Spain offers.
The guidebook separates the section “The Pleasures of the Table” (43) into
subsections, highlighting each geographic region and its associated provincial cuisines.
Beginning with Cantabrian cuisine, the guide’s first stop is the Basque Country. Of its
cuisine, it states that “the food is strong and there’s plenty of it. The Basques boast, and
with reason, of their admirable and varied menu” (43). It should come as no surprise that
the Basque Country is highlighted first. The guide, however, continues its style of
awkward, ambiguous phrasing. To describe a cuisine as “strong” would confuse
American English readers but the translation difficulties are easily recognized to
understand a delicious cuisine. The second half of that sentence, “there’s plenty of it,”
yet again provides a moment of vagueness. Is the guide making a subtle statement to
correct the idea that Spaniards still go hungry? Or is the guide referring to the variety of
foods available, from seafood to meats to scrumptious vegetables? Regardless of intent,
the guidebook does, perhaps unintentionally, contribute to this discourse of hunger and
malnutrition in Spain. By the 1960s, Spain was developing economically and was clear

27
The pamphlet directly questions the Black Legend, claiming that it “once worried Spaniards quite a lot”
but now Spanish history and tradition are “driven on by a creative force against which the remains of a
‘black legend’…shatter” (52).

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of the “years of hunger.” Nevertheless, this could be yet another example of the official
Francoist discourse attempting to correct the erroneous Black Legend lies that were being
spread by government dissenters, both foreign and domestic.
The guide continues to highlight a few classic regional dishes. For the Basque
Country, we see the perpetuation of Bacalao a la vizcaína/Cod a la Basque as the de
facto regional dish while another angulas/baby eels is introduced and has since followed
a bottom-up trajectory. Today it is a dish most commonly associated with finer dining
and represents another haute cuisine appropriation of a provincial dish that was most
commonly associated with the working class.
The Cantabrian coast and, in particular, Santander are where “you’ll find
excellent cheese and exquisite sardines” (43). Tortilla a la montañesa, the “regional
omelette” (43) is found here as well. Asturias is yet again defined by fabada, the “beans
and black pudding stew” (43) while also callos/tripe is suggested, only “if you like that”
(43). Galician cuisine is signified through its seafood. Foods such as lobster, scallops,
spider crab, clams are offered to the reader. Still, however, the classic regional dish is
noted as being the pote gallego/”hotpot” (43), another stew-like dish that is comprised of
regional ingredients similar to the fabada or cocido.
The Mediterranean Coast cuisine is composed of both Valencian and Catalonian
cuisines. Yet again foreshadowing, the guide exclaims that “[i]n Catalonia, you can
sample one of the most interesting cuisines in all Spain” (45). For Valencia, we see the
introduction of paella as the go-to “Spanish” dish. The guide describes it as a “great big
dish of seafood in saffron-tinted rice…the most famous recipe of the whole Spanish
Mediterranean coast, and one of this country’s main tourist draws” (45). Here, we can
see the shift of paella as a local, “authentic” dish to paella existing within the tourist
foreign sphere. Invoking the tourist paradox, paella becomes a dish that signifies
authenticity and exoticism without moving beyond familiarity. The promotion and
situation of this dish not as a traditional, local dish but a tourist draw by the official
governmental discourse creates this dominant trend of paella as a dish for tourists. It is
easy to see why paella has become so pervasively known as a Spanish national dish.
In spite of their insistence on relegating Castilian and Madrid cuisine to a second
tier, the official Francoist publications always seem to make an excuse for its capital

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city’s lack of good cuisine. At the beginning, the guide notes quickly (and under the
Cantabrian cuisine heading) that “in Madrid…you can try absolutely any of the country’s
delicacies, and foreign ones as well” (43). Later, they state that “Galicia, as much as
even Madrid is the place for seafood” (43). While insisting that Spain’s culinary heart
lies in the periphery, the guides and cookbooks still attempt to make Madrid sound
appealing. Being the capital and a major tourist center, it should be no surprise that the
guide appeals to more cosmopolitan descriptors when advertising the array of foods
available in Madrid. Equally, to classify Madrid, a landlocked city, as a major seafood
hub seems gratuitous. Transportation lines were well in place by the mid-1960s but why
equate an inland city with the coast? When promoting Madrid’s own region, the
Castilian cuisine sections do not specify Madrid by name, but instead only offer two
dishes, the ubiquitous cocido a la madrileña/”chick-pea and blood sausage, ham, etc.
stew” (45) and callos a la madrileña/tripe a la Madrid. They further highlight the
cuisines of Segovia and Sépulveda, paying special attention to the Spanish ham and other
assorted sausages and pork products.
Andalusian cuisine presents the “one thing you absolutely must try –gazpacho”
(46). It is described as a “cold, spicy soup using raw tomatoes, peppers, etc., and it
comes as good in the roughest tavern as in the smoothest restaurant” (46). Up to this
point, there had not been a discussion of a dichotomy between low and high cuisines.
The most classic Spanish dishes, and thus those that represent Spanish national cuisine,
are those that come from humble origins. The development of a haute cuisine culture in
the 1980s will stratify and actively engage this dichotomy but during the 1960s Spanish
national cuisine was dominated by provincial dishes eaten by all classes.
Finally, the guide’s gastronomic section ends with the famed tortilla española.
For the Ministry of Tourism, this dish is “as sturdily part of the Spanish way of life as
bullfighting” (46). Aside from the consistent suggestion of the cocido as the national
dish, this is the first proposal of tortilla española as occupying the title of a national dish.
The guide assures the reader that “it is something you can and will want to do for
yourself when you get back home” (46-7).
From the Tourism Ministry’s discussion of Spanish gastronomy, we observe a
continuance of the outside-in trend of perceiving the heart of Spanish cuisine. The

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regional cuisines are the most important and their influence is exerted on other provinces.
Furthermore, the guide suggests more national dishes than the cocido that had been for so
long isolated as a classic national dish. Paella, and above all, the tortilla española now
occupy this position. Moreover, the gastronomic Spain of the tourism boom is one that is
open to new influence and tastes. Attempting to modernize and internationalize by
promoting tourism, Spanish cuisine begins to look beyond its borders for inspiration and
appetite. As the Spain for You guide attests, Spain is no longer a place for only Spanish
provincial food as “in Madrid and other cities you can absolutely try…foreign [dishes] as
well” (43). This alignment to a more cosmopolitan gastroview will solidify after
Franco’s death and give birth to a uniquely high cuisine never before seen in Spain.
Nevertheless, the tourism age in Spain created a consolidation of national dishes that
were promoted in an effort to market Spain as an exotic but never backward locale.
Furthermore, the migrations of Spaniards to other parts of Europe created a mirrored
effect, consolidating their conceptions of what Spanish national cuisine truly was.
The tourism boom, however, does create a shift from a native, domestic
perspective of national cuisine to one that is first and foremost conformed to foreign
tastes. While in previous chapters we have debated what authentic truly means,
authenticity in tourism becomes “a staged performance, a game, even a hoax, the
truthfulness of which is irrelevant to its value” (Crumbaugh 83). Crumbaugh claims that
the notion of authenticity slowly erodes and is removed further away from previous
modes of cultural tradition, finding itself defined with less meaning and less reference to
the aforementioned traditional models of Spanish-ness wherein the “new model of
national identity is in fact predicated on the patent inauthenticity of traditional cultural
models” (83-4). If in fact this is true, the propagandistic push and consolidation of
Spanish gastronomy by the Franco regime forced what we have seen prior as being
defined as a national dish or a component of the national cuisine into a void. While
Crumbaugh states that this crisis of authenticity is really a noncrisis, this underscores the
affirmation that the previous models of national cuisine have been subsumed by the
tourist boom forcing Spaniards to adapt to this new model in an effort to become
economically developed. While maintaining certain dishes and ideas from the previous
models of national cuisine discussed in earlier chapters, the tourism boom essentially

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reimagined and consolidated Spanish national cuisine into a packaged consumer good
marketed both to the tourist and Spaniard alike.
The Next Course
Late Francoism served as an important transition for Spain and its economic and
social development. Tourism opened Spain to new ideas and large capital investments.
For the first time since the Civil War, the Spanish economy began to grow sustainably at
substantial rates. Francoism’s technocratic shift brought new commodities and
technologies into the kitchen and the Spanish foodscape. The pressure cooker serves as
the ideal example of Spain’s push towards modernization, highlighting the discourse of
efficiency and modernity that sought to bring about changes in the standard of living for
every Spaniard. The technology changed the culinary methods of Spain, offering a way
to cook dishes faster, cheaper and more nutritiously. In the decades following the years
of hunger, the pressure cooker stands as a foil to the malnutrition, scarcity and rationing
that marked the post-war years, symbolizing a new beginning and progress.
In the wake of this culinary technological boom as well as the tourism boom,
Spanish national cuisine cemented itself as a cuisine built from many provincial and
regional cuisines that fuse into one larger, national variety. Cocido still reigns as the de
facto national dish while other stalwarts like tortilla española, gazpacho and paella are
elevated to national status due to these dishes being marketed to tourists as essential
Spanish dishes. Above all, the cookbooks of this era paint Spanish national cuisine as not
only comprised of and resulting from the periphery but as being dominated by it. The
Basque and Catalan regions are seen as the most traditional and innovative, consistently
providing the most refined dishes from the best local products. This move away from
Madrid further highlights the capital’s lack of gastronomic clout with Bilbao now seen as
the de facto culinary capital of Spain. This decentralization will continue following
Franco’s death with the evolution of a new Spanish haute cuisine.
In the next chapter, we will explore the social ramifications of Francisco Franco’s
death in 1975. His death signaled a transition to political democracy and social freedoms
that were not afforded to Spaniards during his reign. As a consequence, the late 1970s
saw a mini-boom of sexually-themed cookbooks, a theme left wholly unexplained prior
to Franco’s death due in large part to censorship. These cookbooks, however, are not as

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radical as their subject matter suggests. Keeping with tradition, this subgenre follows a
traditional structure while providing a bridge as we move toward a globalized cuisine.

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

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 Chapter Five:
Eros in the Kitchen: Sexual Culinary Liberation in Post-Franco Spain, 1975-1980
Food and sex have maintained an intricate relationship throughout human history.
Both are essential components of the human condition. They are both biologically
necessary for personal and collective survival while also being an activity that is
undertaken for pleasure. Often, pleasure and biology coincide but more than often not,
both activities are engaged in from a purely pleasurable standpoint. Examining two
erotic cookbooks, we can understand how food corresponds to the larger social and
cultural change of a post-Franco society. Forms of liberation from the economic and
social policies of Francoism, these cookbooks encapsulate the Spanish outlook following
the Caudillo’s death. Spaniards were finally afforded social liberties. The 1970s brought
a stable economic climate and growing wealth. With that, Spaniards were able to leave
the hunger years behind and a new generation established a new relationship to food.
Food was once again plentiful and enjoyable. Evidenced by this new subgenre of
cookbooks, Spaniards were finally allowed to explore new food options and enjoy a level
of economic comfort that allowed food to be consumed on more than a subsistence basis.
More so, however, the rise of sexually-themed cookbooks signals a shifting of prevailing
thought. Gender and sexual roles and norms were in a state of flux and redefinition. A
look at these cookbooks not only illuminates a new, as yet unseen facet of national
cuisine but also serves as a social treatise that seeks to define sexuality and gender in
post-Franco society. Practically devoid of nationalist rhetoric, these sexual cookbooks
replicate the idea of a nationless society in the wake of Franco’s death. Linking old
Spain with the new, the transitional period of these cookbooks elucidates not only
changing ideas about sexuality but also changing culinary and gastronomic influence
from a nationally focused cuisine to an international one. This period bridges the gap
between traditional Spanish cuisine and the elaboration of an internationally influenced
Spanish haute cuisine.
Consuming Sex
As one of the authors of the two sexual cookbooks analyzed in this chapter
explains, in order to live one “tiene dos recursos fundamentales: comer y amar [has two
fundamental recourses: to eat and to have sex]” (de la Mata 57). The union between sex

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and food is an inevitable one. As both are biologically necessary to survive, the
presentation of sexually-themed cookbooks comes as no surprise. This union, however,
suggests that these cookbooks have more to offer than simply foods to be consumed for
sexual reasons. The relationship between these two necessities goes much further.
Sexual cookbooks (those relating to aphrodisiacs or sexual themed) were not
common during Francoism. The subject matter made them easy targets for censors,
regardless of their agenda. Referring to the BNE’s database of cookbooks, the first
sexually themed cookbooks appeared after Franco’s death with the two editions that are
analyzed here, first published in 1978 and 1979. Perhaps the earliest example of this
subgenre is a translated Italian cookbook entitled La cocina exótica, insólita, erótica
[Exotic, Erotic and Unusual Cuisine] printed first in Spain in 1970 and dating its original
publication to 1965. As a reproduction of an Italian cookbook, we will not consider its
contents for the purpose of this study but it is worth mentioning as a precursor to the
boom of sexually-oriented cookbooks that appeared towards the end of and after the
Franco era.
The two titles of the analyzed works leave nothing to the imagination. Juan
Lizar’s Afrodisíacos y estimulantes eróticos/Aphrodisiacs and Erotic Stimulants and
Héctor de la Mata’s Guía de la dieta y el sexo: Qué y cómo comer para estar en forma y
disfrutar intensamente del amor/Guide to Diet and Sex: What and How to Eat to Be in
Shape and Enjoy Love Intensely display their intentions clearly through their titles. These
recipes will be for foods to stir the loins and guides to enjoy better sex via the
consumption of food. While at first glance these titles may yield ideas of sexual
perversions or how-to guides for conquering women, their subject matter is surprisingly
tame. Both recipe collections employ an impersonal and scientific tone. Each author
often cites scientific studies undertaken in countries around the world and each book is
littered with scientific names and phrases referring to plants, animals, physical conditions
and syndromes. While their titles might be construed to be provocative, their content
matter is soon revealed to include no gratuitous or provocative sexually-charged advice.
These are not Don Juan’s guide to cooking nor treatises on partaking in sex for sex’s
sake.

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 Their covers, however, mislead the readers into expecting a provocative work.
Lizar’s Afrodisíacos offers its title in 1970s-style bubble lettering, bright pink and orange
contrasted with black font shadowing. The title’s colors are presented against a natural
green background. A flower occupies the lower three quarters with a photo growing
from the flower’s stigma. A woman, whose race and ethnicity are shrouded by the
shadowed nature of her face, stares directly into the reader’s line of sight. Her tongue
extends ever so slightly beyond an open mouth and full lips reveal faint outlines of teeth.
Her tongue extends far enough to escape the shadow and emerges pink; yielding a clear
sexual provocation. The implications of the title and cover art are provocative and
fetishistic, almost certainly guaranteeing a second look.

Figure 8: Afrodisiácos y estimulantes eróticos Cover

Source: Tropos

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 Similarly, de la Mata’s Guía serves to shock and provoke discussion with a
cartoon drawing of a couple in a four post bed adorning its cover. The couple, a dark
haired male and redheaded female, gaze curiously into each other’s eyes while a
smorgasbord of foods lay before them on a tray. The woman’s breasts and cleavage are
exposed. Her nipples, however, are expertly hidden through the ideal placement of a
wine glass and a serving vessel’s handle. This cookbook is more graphic with
illustrations marking each new chapter and section. Each, however, is decidedly sexual,
depicting obvious phallic images created through the precise placement of kitchen or
food items. The illustrations also portray similar cartoons to the cover, revealing half-
naked men and women (often in bed together) and even go as far as exposing a woman’s
backside in one cartoon and in another, her bare breasts. Even though the illustrations are
only cartoon drawings, the inclusion of nudity and sexually explicit positions marks a
stark contrast to the sexual chastity of Francoism. The implication is yet again, and
perhaps more so with this cover, that a familiarization with this cookbook will yield
sexual encounters. Both collections, however, disappoint by providing texts that are
decidedly non-gratuitous in their conversation about sex and more scientific than sexual.

Figure 9: Guía de la dieta y el sexo Cover

Source: Altalena

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Sex Cookbooks: A New Genre?
These cookbooks, while novel in their thematic approach, do not reinvent the
Spanish cookbook tradition as we have seen thus far. Their presentation is very much in
line with what we have seen thus far throughout this project. They are accompanied by a
narrative introduction that seeks to educate the readers in the thematic approach.
Although the subject matter is definitely new to the Spanish cookbook canon, the
approach does not stray from tradition and these sexually themed cookbooks can only be
considered part of the overall cookbook genre. Surprisingly bland and promoting a moral
approach to sex and sexual wellbeing through food, their organization and recipes are
relatively traditional. They do, however, serve as a bridge between exclusively Spanish
recipe offerings and a cuisine that is obviously influenced by an ever-globalizing world.
The inclusion of recipes from other countries and the willingness to adapt traditional
Spanish tastes to new ingredients suggests a shift in how we perceive what we consider to
be Spanish national cuisine. Furthermore, the lack of national interest and the transitional
nature of the cookbooks also suggest that the lack of national identity within each
cookbook mimics the internal national identity struggle that confronted Spain in the wake
of Franco’s death. Unsure of who they were as a country after forty years of dictatorship,
the Transition to democracy represented a transitional period in defining not only national
character but also social and political perspective. In comparison to the recipes featured
during the years of autarky, these current selections offer a gastronomic outlook that
incorporates traditional and local Spanish ingredients with other global influences in a
way that does not advocate a clear ideal of national cuisine. The death of Franco and the
subsequent political turmoil exhibited that socially and gastronomically national identity
no longer represented a cohesive ideal. Without the Francoist line from above, Spanish
society was in a period of recalibration, seeking new forms of self-expression.
Moreover, the communion of food and sex highlights the ever-changing social
milieu in regards to gender and sexual identity and more specifically, the movement
towards equality. Their obvious ground-breaking subject aside, the content reveals a
preoccupation with sex that signalsa kind of progress in a society that was once
dominated so heavily by a sexually oppressive dictatorship. As Rafael Torres observes,
“el amor fue perseguido en tiempos de Franco como ninguna otra cosa [love was

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persecuted in Franco’s era more than any other thing]” (13). His reign saw a return to
traditional Catholic definitions of love and sex. Torres notes that after the Nationalist
victory, Franco enacted legislation that “se abolió el divorcio, la educación mixta, [y] el
matrimonio civil [abolished divorce, co-gender education and civil marriages]” (14).
These strict religiously influenced laws were imposed on a nation that had previously
undergone a social liberalization during the Second Republic’s reign.
As Torres explains, the ultra-conservative legislation was constantly at odds with
the everyday Spaniard, especially the man who “siempre anduvo con hambre, pero
durante el franquismo, más [always driven by (sexual) hunger and during Francoism,
even more]” (60). Torres creates an interesting extended metaphor throughout his study,
equating the sexual frustration on behalf of Spaniards to the años de hambre. These
literal and metaphoric hungers went hand in hand, never reaching points of satiation.
While the 1950s signaled the end of the physical hunger years, the sexual hunger would
persist. Torres, however, provides yet another example of how intricately food and sex
are related, both are biologically necessary for the survival of humankind as well as
enriching personally, regardless of their moral associations.
During Francoism, genders were split into two distinct categories with men
occupying roles of “el amo, el dueño, no había más colores en la sociedad que los del
machismo, el patriarcado y el paternalismo [the master, the lord, there were not anything
else in Franco’s society except machoism, patriarchy and paternalism]” (59) while
women were separated into two classes: “las mujeres de uno; la madre, la esposa, la hija,
son unas santas, y como tales, intocables [women of one class; the mother, the wife, the
daughter, saints and being saints, untouchable]” (60) and “las otras, pues no consta que
sean tan santas, serán objeto de acoso y seducción [the others, well it did not matter if
they were saints, they were objects of harassment and seduction]” (60). Women were to
uphold the most chaste and most Spanish of feminine qualities, above all “la sumisión, la
inanidad, la obedencia, la pasividad, la entrega permanente, el silencio [submission,
inanity, obedience, passivity, complete dedication and silence]” (Torres 75). The
conservative right was not the only political group that espoused ideals of gender
discrepancy. Kornetis notes that “it was considered natural that the girlfriend of an

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imprisoned Communist would remain virtuous and faithful by force, even if her partner
would not get out of jail for decades” (183).
These ideals were manifested not only through educational and religious policies
but also through the mass media. In their study of censorship and translation,
Purificación Mesguer and Ana Rojo write that the theme of sex fell under two categories
used by the censors: opposition to the regime as well as public morality (541). While
only analyzing novels, their findings reveal that sexuality was often removed entirely
from translated works. Their study confirms that sexually themed cookbooks would
never have won approval from the censors. But this strict Franco censorship began to
ease during the late 1960s.
Corresponding to the rise in tourism, the old censorship governing body was
replaced by the Ministerio de Información y Turismo [Ministry of Information and
Tourism] led by Manuel Fraga Iribarne who “allowed for the creation of cultural politics,
which would improve the bad image that the arbitrary censorship had given the regime”
(Kornetis 178). The influx of tourists and their novels, music and ideas led to a general
easing of the strict censorship policies of early Francoism. The new policies produced “a
gradual mimesis of foreign youth cultures” (Kornetis 179) that primed the soon-to-be
coming of age youth generation for change in social politics. This culture, the Yé-Yé, was
akin to “Beatlemania” throughout the rest of the world was Kornetis lists the television as
a major cause of the diffusion of this subculture. He cites that the number of televisions
in Spain grew from only 250,000 sets in 1960 to over six million by the end of the decade
(179). The television allowed for mass penetration of new cultural models that had
previously been censored to the point where even a “less inhibited attitude towards
nudity” (Kornetis 180) was socially normalized.
These new cookbooks, however, sought to abjure the old “Normas de Decencia
Cristiana que imponían a la mujer la longitud de las faldas, de las mangas y de su
pensamiento [Christian Decency Norms that imposed upon women the length of their
skirts, of their sleeves and of their thoughts” (Torres 75-6) as well as their sexual and
culinary proclivities in favor of a more Westernized social outlook. The death of Franco
brought on “la nueva moral sexual [que] invitaba…al consumo inmediato, no al ahorro ni
a la provisión…al juntarse el hambre con las ganas de comer [new sexual moral [that]

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invited immediate consumption, no savings or supply…in order to bring together hunger
and the desire to eat]” (Torres 196). It is telling that Torres, and so many others, use
gastronomic vocabulary in an effort to describe sexuality.
The movement toward gender equality was not a product of the 1978 Constitution
or of Franco’s death. Instead, as Roberta Johnson suggests, the movement began in
earnest during the last years of the Franco regime during the early 1970s with those first
actors characterized as “double militants who belonged either to the underground
Communist or Socialist parties” (617). The fight for gender equality, in their eyes, was
both a social and political cause. Those early groups found victory in the 1978
Constitution, where Johnson explains that explicit gender equality clauses were written in
Article 14 as well as marriage equality clauses in Articles 32 and 39 (611).
The changing social climate forced the cookbook and gastronomic culture to
adapt as well. Although her article references film and masculinity, Isabel Estrada’s
ideas are equally valid in analyzing the shifting values espoused by these new cookbooks.
Although until now most cookbooks had been targeted toward a female audience, the
combination of a male-target audience and sexual nature of the cookbooks to be analyzed
are representative of similar themes seen in films of the period. Estrada argues that the
cultural texts of the Transition featured masculine characters “explor[ing] the problems of
both masculine identity after the death of the patriarch and masculine responsibility in the
transition to democracy” (265). What Estrada signals is exactly what these cookbooks
advocate: a reevaluation of the gender norms within a liberated Spain. The transition to
democracy, according to Estrada, is a metaphor for the transitional phase of gender and
sexual equality. The prevailing male archetype transitions from a “strong patriarchal
figure” to his “invalid and vulnerable male offspring” (Estrada 266). The new male was
forced to confront and reconcile Spanish patriarchal tradition with enlightened new
gender norms. What we will see in these cookbooks is an attempt to transition the male
archetype from a traditional Don Juan-type figure by using that allure of seduction as a
marketing ploy in favor of a more enlightened view of sexuality and gender, offering men
a guide to transition from patriarchal Francoist values to post-Franco sexual equality.
To achieve this, food superficially appears to be a less direct tool to effectuate
change. That, however, is misleading, as Elspeth Probyn suggests that it is “through food

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[that] we may begin to formulate an ethics of living” (224). This idea can be used to
argue that the confluence of food and sex and sexual cookbooks are more than just guides
to healthy eating and wellbeing. They are, in essence, guides to healthy and ethical
living. Food attitudes, when connected to sex, thus have the ability to permeate our
moral and ethical compass, changing the way we conceive of sexual and gender
questions. Probyn summarizes her position by explaining that “food offers a way of
returning to questions about pleasure within restraint, sympathy understood as a means of
respecting the situatedness of identity. It also returns our attention to the forces that
regulate our everyday lives” (224). These ideas of restraint and reconfiguration of
everyday living are exactly what these Spanish cookbooks espouse. Regardless of intent,
the authors have written a cookbook that forces everyone, men in particular, to reconsider
their views on lifestyle as they pertain to healthy eating and healthy sexuality.
Eating for Healthy Mind, Body and Soul
The two cookbooks featured in this section strike a balance between the old and
the new guards that Torres describes. The culinary authors situate themselves clearly
within the newly liberated and sexually active populace, but they promote and advocate
an approach to sex that is decidedly responsible and caring. Héctor de la Mata’s Guía de
la dieta y el sexo: Qué y cómo comer para estar en forma y disfrutar intensamente del
amor [Guide to Diet and Sex: What and How to Eat To Be in Shape and Enjoy Love
Instensely] was first published in 1979. The edition analyzed in this project is a second
edition printed in 1981. Given the second printing, we can assume that it was successful
enough to warrant more than one print run.
Aside from the provocative front cover which in addition to its suggestive
cartoons boasts that the work “incluye 114 recetas de cocina erótica [includes 114 recipes
of erotic cooking],” the back cover states explicitly the guide’s mission: “Este libro se
propone que tú ames más y mejor teniendo servida la mejor mesa amorosa que pueda
pensarse [This book proposes that you love more and better having served the best loving
table that you could think of].” De la Mata here provides a strict linking of sex and food.
He equates the quality of food eaten and served to the quality of sex had. The author,
however, as the back cover informs the reader, is a pseudonym but the reader is assured
of his credentials as he has “dedicado años de su vida a la preparación, estudio y

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redacción de este texto [dedicated years of his life to the preparation, study and editing of
this text].” The reader understands that the author fancies himself a modern day Don
Juan boasting of travels and that this book was researched with “la colaboración de sus
más cariñosas amigas y el auxilio de su gabinete de sexometría [the collaboration of his
most caring girlfriends and the help of their research work in sexometry].” Striking a
playful tone, the back cover biography promises a recipe book for the old guard of
Spanish men. These men were those dominant, macho men in relationships that
perpetuated the Francoist style of matrimony and gender inequality. Regardless of the
sexual politics, the frank and open discussion marks a turn, not only gastronomically but
socially, in how sex was perceived and confronted. In contrast to the Catholic sexual
purity and conservatism that dominated Francoism, this discourse is one that is openly
sexual, insinuating multiple partners though still proposing a strictly heterosexual view of
sex.
The opening section, a foreword of sorts entitled “Adivinanza [Riddle]” proposes
a seemingly simple question: “¿Qué significa, sexualmente, el miedo y el pánico?
[Sexually, what does fear and panic mean?” (de la Mata 1). The author responds that
fear is felt by those “que por primera vez no pueden hacerlo por segunda vez [who after
the first time cannot do it a second time] (1) while panic is felt by those “que por segunda
vez no pueden hacerlo por primera vez [who after the second time cannot do it the first
time]” (1). In a convoluted way, de la Mata is attacking the sexually paradoxical thinking
of Francoism while advocating for sexual liberty that allows consenting adults to remove
the stigma of sex and extend their sexual boundaries by experiencing things that once
caused panic and fear. He continues this idea in the following section, “Grave
advertencia al lector [Serious Warning to the Reader]” (3), by dedicating this book to
three types of readers: those who feel fear, those who feel panic and those who don’t
know fear or panic but who want to improve their lovemaking abilities (3). In short, the
book is written for all adults in the general Spanish population. De la Mata’s focus,
however, remains the promotion of sexual liberation.
In the face of sexual liberation, this recipe collection does not accurately market
itself. Although espousing sexual confidence and alluding to trysts with multiple
partners, the author does not frame this guide as a how-to for men to pick up women or

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vice versa. Clearly aimed towards the male population although accessible to women as
well, the main crux of de la Mata’s argument is this: “Simplemente, sostenemos que
comer bien ayuda eficazmente a amar muy bien y que algunas comidas son más
estimulantes que otras para el amor [Simply, we sustain that eating well efficiently helps
to love well and that some foods are more stimulating than others for love]” (3).
While in Spanish as in English the word ‘love’ has connotations of sex and deeper
emotion, this cookbook is simply not advocating a sex for sex’s sake guide to cooking
and eating. Instead, it is a guide to wellbeing that uses sex as a foot-in-the-door
technique to discuss deeper issues of personal connection and love. De la Mata explains
that “el hombre y la mujer higiénicos, que se sienten bien con su cuerpo y su mente, son
más bellos y más atractivos que los demás [the hygienic man and woman, that feel
confident with their body and mind, are more beautiful and more attractive than the rest]”
(3). The author continues to state that these same types of men and women are “más
eficaces amantes que los desdichados de la mente, cuya personalidad no está en plena
disposición de amar y ser amada [better lovers than those mentally unhappy whose
personality is not open to loving and being loved]” (4).
Again, the author highlights and advocates qualities that sexual relationships
benefit from without advocating the act of sex. Finally, he defines his view of cocina
erótica [erotic cuisine] as “una forma de vida que, a partir de la mesa correcta, permita la
felicidad y abra el camino a la dicha sexual [a way of living that, given the correct food,
allows happiness and opens the path to sexual happiness]” (4). Erotic cuisine is then less
about the act of sex and more about cooking and eating to enrich one’s body, mind and
soul. It uses food to promote healthy eating habits that seek to make followers feel better
physically and mentally. Once a person has achieved an adequate balance in life, then
they can enjoy a better sex life, one that is not only enriching pleasurably but also
biologically and emotionally. Although presented around the idea of cooking and eating
in order to have better sex, the guide’s approach serves more as a means of correcting
erroneous beliefs and guilt by eliminating the stigma surrounding sex. In response to
forty years of sexual oppression, it is only normal that misinformation remains. In
addition, as Torres reminds us, sexual liberation brought about risky sexual habits. De la
Mata, however, strikes a middle ground, advocating simultaneously for a frank

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reevaluation of sexual politics while also promoting a sense of sexual and personal
responsibility.
Similarly, Juan Lizar’s Afrodisíacos y estimulantes eróticos published in 1978
strikes a tone that while superficially appears to be very sexual is in fact very scientific.
Lizar, like de la Mata, argues that gastronomy is directly related to overall wellbeing and
as a consequence, sexual wellbeing. While framed from the perspective of exploring
aphrodisiacs, Lizar’s cookbook touches on similar themes of physical and emotional
health achieved through eating certain foods. His does not, however, actively confront
ideas of sexual liberation.
Though his discussion focuses on aphrodisiacs, Lizar is quick to assure readers
that in regards to their sexual health “su normal ejercicio es la clave de una existencia
equilibrada [your normal exercise is the key to a healthy equilibrium]” (5). Lizar furthers
this idea by stating that “lo más sencillo consiste en observar las reglas de la higiene
mental y física, elementales en una sociedad evolucionada pero difíciles en la época
actual [the simplest practice consists in observing the rules of mental and physical
hygiene, elemental in an evolved society but difficult in the current era]” (35). Again, we
see that this sexual discourse is not aimed at curing sexual ailments or creating a better
sex life through explicit discussion of sexual acts or methods. Instead, both authors
choose to better sex lives by first bettering the overall health of an individual. Moreover,
Lizar makes an interesting point that the notion of taking care of one’s body is elemental
to an evolved society. His admission that this is difficult in the current era is not an
indictment of post-Franco Spain but more an indictment of an increasingly sedentary
lifestyle that continues to be a contemporary issue.
Noting the vagueness of the definition of an aphrodisiac [“algo que tiene la
propiedad de excitar los placeres del amor [something that has the ability to excite the
pleasures of love]” (5)], Lizar separates aphrodisiacs into two categories: products and
methods. Of the products, Lizar describes aphrodisiacs that “están destinados a
proporcionar medios físicos para satisfacer un deseo [are destined to provide physical
means in order to satisfy desire]” (5). As for aphrodisiac methods, these include actions
that “deben reanimar la libido, remediar su insuficiencia o curar perversiones que

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impiden la potencialidad [should reanimate the libido, remedy its insufficiency or cure
perversions that impede sexual potency]” (5).
For Lizar, aphrodisiacs must be conceived of as either foods or activities.
Following his distinction, foods or aphrodisiac products only serve as short term fixes in
regards to sexual potency. On the other hand, aphrodisiac methods are those that seek to
remedy the body’s inability to perform sexually. Falling in line with what de la Mata
promotes, the simplest and most effective of all aphrodisiacs is taking care of one’s body,
mind and soul. Here we are able to understand the unique relationship that food and sex
play within body politics.
Sexual Politics
In one of the few times that the author directly confronts the act of sex, de la Mata
describes it in a purely scientific rationale: “el acto sexual es la unión del órgano
masculino y el femenino en un suceso fisiológico algo complicado, llamado ‘coito’ [the
act of sex is the union of the masculine and feminine sex organs in a somewhat
complicated physiological event, named ‘coitus’]” (20). Bereft of sexuality, the scientific
tone reads more as an educational text. In this way, the cookbook continues to educate
and reverse past notions of sexuality. This new sexuality does not remain in the shadows
like Francoist views of sex. De la Mata continues, questioning the vagueness of this
simplistic scientific definition of sex. He ponders as to whether penetration is needed in
order for an act to be considered sex and concludes that while the majority of the public
believes that penetration equals sex, this definition “puede ser también una explicación
machista [may well be a chauvinistic explication]” (20).
The self-help, guide-like nature of these cookbooks and their decidedly scientific
tone should not be seen as unique to the cookbook genre. In fact, Kornetis describes that
in the wake of the sexual revolution in Spain, the younger generation “still experienced
considerable difficulties when it came to sexual initiation” (180). He cites self-help
books, “namely manuals on sexual roles and techniques” as literature and information
that “proved to be a popular vehicle for bridging that gap” (180) between the sexually
oppressed and the sexually liberated. These cookbooks can be seen as an extension of
this philosophy, attempting to bridge the gap between Francoist and post-Franco sexual
culture by providing both scientifically and socially accurate information. Where these

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cookbooks break from this tradition is in the way they do not reflect the majority of
manuals produced during the period that were often “written by men and reflected a
man’s fantasy of how his wife or lover should behave and perform sexually” (Kornetis
180). Apart from a few missteps, notably a recipe for what is considered today to be the
“date-rape drug” that will be discussed shortly, the cookbooks evade an overly macho
tone in favor of one that does propose gender equality.
Similarly toned, Lizar questions the role that the old guard plays in the post-
Franco period. He continues his focus on overall wellbeing by stating that the most
important aspect of one’s sexuality should be to “cultivar el espíritu para…liberarse de
los complejos [to cultivate the spirit in order…to liberate yourself from psychological
complexes]” (35). The author takes a new, more spiritual approach to sexuality that is
not rooted in religion or social doctrine. His mention of psychological complexes is a
charge to Spaniards to move past Francoist oppression and create a new sense of
sexuality. This new sexuality is defined by creating a new “equilibrio estable con la
pareja, merced a la abolición de todos los tabúes de la sexualidad (con lo que
desaparecerán muchas discrepancias). Evitar a la vez el autoritarismo y la sumisión
buscando la perfecta adaptación en el medio social y el familiar [stable equilibrium with
your partner, by abolishing all sexual taboos (with which will disappear many
discrepancies). Eliminate at the same time authoritarianism and submission searching for
the perfect adaptation in the social and family environment]” (35). He advocates a
sexuality that promotes equality within a relationship. Furthermore, he directly rejects
the idea that one partner is dominant and the other submissive in a relationship,
eliminating traditional gender roles. Moreover, the acceptance of sexual taboo (to which
the author is conspicuously silent) should, in time, remove all gender biases that exist.
Although progressive, he does not discuss or detail which taboos should now be allowed.
Conspicuously, homosexuality is a taboo that is missing. In addition, he does not
explicitly discuss which discrepancies need to be eliminated. He implies sexual and
gender equality without stating as much explicitly.
Contrasting directly the old and new definitions of sex and sexual opportunities,
de la Mata’s cookbook is less of a cookbook and more of an educational text in sexual
liberation. Akin to the educational mission of the Sección Femenina’s cookbooks, this

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guide serves to equal the sexual playing field and create a more progressive, yet still
responsible perspective of sex within Spain. Marketed for men, the guide seeks to
illuminate the Spanish man in the ways of sexual liberation and sexual equality. The
guide, however, does direct comments to women, with de la Mata following his
discussion of what constitutes a sexual act with a call to women: “señoras, para vosotras
también es el asunto. De modo que a cocinar y a imaginar” [ladies, this is a matter for
you as well. In cooking and imagining]” (21). Although de la Mata does make these
passing comments directed towards women, the target audience remains masculine. The
author dismisses the old definition of sex as purely relying on penile/vaginal penetration
and presents a fairly progressive (in the Spanish context) view of sex that involves a
much broader definition. While the author fails to explicitly define all that this new
definition can encompass, his questioning of the old definition puts in doubt the former
social system that regarded men as the dominant sexual gender. While giving sexual
agency to women ever so slightly, the author’s main focus is to correct the Spanish
machista view of gender dichotomy. By broadening the definition of sex to include more
than simple penetration and appealing to women to create an active role in this sexual
discussion, the cookbook becomes a subversive text offering men a guide for how to
conduct themselves in an era of sexual liberation. The author is simultaneously
encouraging men to feed their sexual desires but cautioning them to do so in a
responsible way, rejecting the gender dichotomies associated with traditional Spanish
chauvinistic thinking.
This is not to say that the contemporary reader would not find reason to question
the sexual politics of this cookbook. Although the author is presenting a progressive
vision of sex in the newly liberated Spain, there is still a need to critique his views.
Discussing what he calls one of the most classic aphrodisiac recipes, the author presents a
drink that is comprised of “unos cristales de cantaridina, mezclados con cloroformo y
disueltos en coñac [a few crystals of cantharidin, mixed with chloroform and dissolved in
cognac]” (21). A Merriam-Webster dictionary definition redirects to Cantharis which is
defined as “a preparation of dried beetles (as Spanish flies) used in medicine as a
counterirritant and formerly as an aphrodisiac.” It also gives its chemical composition as
being C10H12O4. While this recipe may in fact produce an aphrodisiac effect, a

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contemporary reader may scoff as the use of this chemical compound in coordination
with chloroform and alcohol reads as a homemade recipe for GHB, or the “date-rape
drug.” Instead of achieving a completed progressive view of sexual politics, the
cookbook represents the transition between the old and new guard, advocating for more
sexual liberation and more gender equality while still retaining certain outdated views.
Furthering the gender argument, de la Mata contends that certain attitudes and
sexual behaviors are so outside the realm that they constitute sexual deviancies and
disorders. In describing El pistolero del Oeste (The Gunslinger of the West), de la Mata
contends that this is a man who is not interested in the pre- or post-lovemaking activities
and rarely “hace el amor dos veces con la misma mujer [makes love to the same woman
twice]” (79) while preferring easy women, often prostitutes (79). The critique that de la
Mata levies, however, is undeniably against this type of man. He states that this type of
man “tiene una imagen muy borrosa de la compañera erótica. Para él, la mujer es algo
que rodea a la vagina. A una vagina cualquiera. No se preocupa por saber si la otra goza
o no. Necesita un auxilio para depositar el resultado de su calentura [has a skewed image
of an erotic partner. For him, a woman is something that surrounds a vagina. Any
vagina. He is not preoccupied with her pleasure. He only needs an outlet to deposit the
results of his arousal]” (79). De la Mata continues this argument, describing another
archetype, the Supermacho. Simply put, the supermacho is a man with “capacidad sexual
reducida, menor que la normal [reduced sexual capacity, less than what is normal]” (80).
As a result, this type of man sleeps with women and curates a specific image in order to
validate himself (80).
Clearly, this guide and its author criticize the role of the man during Francoism
and seek to reconcile this position with one that is more in line with gender equality seen
in other European nations. De la Mata seeks to find a middle ground where men can still
express their sexuality, yet in a way that is respectful of women. By no means is the
author suggesting that the Spanish man should be any less sexual; they only need to
refine their sexuality to reflect the changing social and cultural milieu of post-Francoism.
His caricaturization of the Spanish man is an obvious indictment of the backward sexual
politics propagated by the old regime and their belief that men were to be superior and
dominate their female companions. While de la Mata does address these gender issues

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through the masculine lens, his lack of discussion of female politics is striking. Aside
from the passing comments mentioned earlier that seek to include women as a target
audience as well, there is no discussion of a woman’s role in the newly liberated sexual
Spain. His critiques of the archetypal men implicitly read that women are worthy of
more than just sex and that men must respect and treat women as sexual equals, but there
is no explicit discussion of the changing role of women in regards to sex. Again, the
author presents a move in the right direction but does not provide any perspective of the
Spanish woman’s liberation. He does charge them with having an imagination regarding
sexual cuisine, but he does not give women any agency in regards to their own sex life.
Men should not think of women as purely sexual objects and they should provide a
sexual experience that is aware of and in tune with the needs of their partner but de la
Mata falls short in advocating for women to become agents of their own sexual
experience. His version of sexual politics does not permit women to be sexual initiators
nor does it, in earnest, address the fact that women are just as sexual as men.
Furthermore, de la Mata only addresses sexual relationships between a man and a
woman. During Francoism, homosexuality was not permitted by law. Compounded by
the Catholic tradition that obviously restricts the definition of what is acceptable sexually,
de la Mata only mentions homosexuality during this same section that outlines and
criticizes the sexual archetypes that he feels are outdated or need to be changed. For the
author, the loca frustrada is a “homosexual latente [latent homosexual]” (81) who is not
interested in women sexually “aunque se ocupa ansiosamente de ellas. Le interesan los
hombres, aunque no se ocupe en absoluto de ellos [although he is anxiously preoccupied
by them. He is interested in men but he does not occupy himself with men exclusively]”
(81). De la Mata takes an ambiguous stance on homosexuality. He uses the feminine
form loca frustrada which makes one believe he is discussing feminine homosexuality
and later refers to the archetype using ella, the she form. In the end, however, he gives
the description given above in which the archetype appears to be a homosexual man.
This term is used to describe homosexuals at large and specifically demonstrates how de
la Mata presents a non-progressive view on homosexuality; one in which relationships
between the same sex are still viewed with disdain. It is unclear whether or not the
author views homosexuality as a sexual perversion or disorder by including them in his

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criticism section or if he is suggesting that homosexual latency is something to be
criticized and he in fact is in favor of homosexuality being liberated as well.
Furthermore, if the author is using the feminine form to refer to male homosexuals, he is
codifying them via a female gender and thus perpetuating the myth that male
homosexuals cannot be masculine and must be feminine in nature.
In the end, de la Mata’s stance on gender and sexual politics demonstrates that the
Spanish Transition was an extremely convoluted and difficult period. The transition from
the sexual oppression of Francoism and sexual liberation of democracy presented
opportunities for authors (even cookbook authors) to rectify sexual misconceptions and
advocate their own perspective of sexual politics in a liberated era. As we can see from
de la Mata’s discussion, gender and sexual equality did not occur immediately. The
author does propose stances that appear to be moving progressively; he speaks out
against masculine archetypes that objectify and use women sexually and presents a fairly
responsible view of sex that attempts to dissuade men to engage irresponsibly with
multiple partners. He fails, however, to address adequately the roles of women and
homosexuality in the new Spain. Women, although de-objectified, do not have any
sexual agency and still appear to be submissive to men’s sexual desires. His views on
homosexuality are even less progressive, offering a perspective on homosexuality that is
ambiguous at best and at worst, one that equates homosexuality with sexual perversion.
For these reasons, these sexual cookbooks not only serve as encapsulations of the larger
historical, cultural and social context of Spain in the late 1970s but also demonstrate that
culinary texts serve to inform more than just the gastronomic trends of a given period.
Sexual Eating
De la Mata, in his Guía de la dieta y el sexo, explains three general rules in order
to eat properly in his sexually oriented diet. The first advocates the reduction in the
consumption of toxins, offering alcohol, coffee and tobacco as examples (21). The
second encourages the reader to be “reposado en todos los sentidos [rested in all senses]”
(21) while the third simply states: “controlar el peso [control your weight]” (21).
Interestingly, this is one of the few times that de la Mata discusses weight or obesity in
his cookbook. While today we are accustomed to diets and cookbooks that encourage
weight loss and promote an ideal of body type and composition, the present recipe

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collection encourages, above all else, self-esteem and happiness. Body politics is
inherently linked to sexuality and food but for Spaniards, the sexual awakening was
accompanied by a corporal awakening as well, forcing young Spaniards to rethink one’s
body. As Kornetis describes, the youth of Francoism exhibited the “low hygiene
standards of that period…signalling a poor relationship with one’s body” (181). Sexual
liberation also meant the raising of personal hygiene standards to modern European
expectations. As de la Mata goes on to state, obesity physiologically impedes sexual
function. He does not frame this argument under any false pretenses of maintaining or
losing weight to achieve an ideal of attractiveness. Instead, his tone and suggestions
comply with the overall attempt of the cookbook to be rooted in scientific fact.
Returning again to the discourse of health as the root of good sex, the culinary
author again reaffirms his position that the best aphrodisiac is your wellbeing: “El cuerpo
es una delicada maquinaria. Ninguna de sus piezas es independiente de la otra. La
enfermedad de cualquier sector repercute en los demás [The body is a delicate machine.
None of its pieces are independent from each other. A sickness in any sector affects the
others]” (47). De la Mata continues this discourse by also speaking to the importance of
sleep.
In order to be healthy, de la Mata insists that one must eat at least 3,000 calories
per day including 100 grams of protein, 400 grams of carbohydrates, 100 grams of fat
with those spread apart into sub-categories that suggest 400 grams of grains, 300 grams
of tubers, 200 of vegetables, 100 of fruits, 40 of sugars, 100 of dairy products and 170
grams of meats, fish or eggs (40-1). This is what de la Mata calls eating for normal
hormonal equilibrium (41). While the standard US dietary suggestions have long been
based on a 2,000 calorie per day diet, it is interesting that the Spanish version increases
this number by 50%. De la Mata continues to argue correctly that this diversification and
increase in nutrition has helped to rectify some of the gastronomic and nutritional
problems seen during the postwar years of hunger. This new diet, representing all food
groups in proportion, stands in stark contrast to those disproportioned diets of necessity
seen in Chapter Three.
Hunger, however, is another recurring theme throughout de la Mata’s text. As
Torres proposes the extended metaphor of the years of sexual oppression under Franco as

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an incessant sexual hunger, de la Mata links both the metaphorical lustful hunger and the
literal physical hunger in his discussion of Spanish diets. He establishes a baseline for
each type of hunger, stating that as a result of the Spanish Civil War, impotence in young
men rose (65). Gastronomically, however, the results of the Spanish Civil War were
evident in the physical attributes of all Spaniards. He reminds us that in Spain “está bien
claro que la mejor alimentación que se registra con el aumento del nivel de vida, en los
años sesenta, provoca un embellecimiento de las características físicas y una mejor
preparación del cuerpo para la vida sexual [it is clear that the better nutrition that
corresponds to the increase in standard of living, in the 1960s, provokes a beautification
of physical characteristics and a better preparation of the body for one’s sex life]” (65).
Speaking of the years of hunger, de la Mata explains that “el hambre produce, sobre todo,
pérdida de la fortaleza física y de la atención [hunger produces, above all else, a loss in
physical strength and of attention]” (65). The specter of Francoism and the Civil War
still loom large in the years immediately following the dictator’s death with the author
noting that Spaniards still “tienen en su memoria el hambre y las penurias de la posguerra
[have in their memory the hunger and scarcity of the postwar period]” (70). In
comparison to other developed countries and especially those European countries who
similarly suffered the effects of war, the author argues that Spaniards are delayed
physically and sexually due to malnutrition. The author confronts this idea directly both
presenting the economic, nutritional and agricultural rationale for this claim.
Although we saw in Chapter Three that Spanish agricultural production surpassed
its prewar levels and rationing officially ended in the mid to late 1950s, the nutritional
effects of this era were still present until the 1960s (de la Mata 67). Moreover, the
economic burden of postwar Francoist autarky extended well beyond the 1950s as de la
Mata declares that in 1965 “el presupuesto familiar español dedicaba el 48,6 por ciento a
la alimentación, cuando en Francia, por ejemplo solo llegaba al 36 por ciento [the average
Spanish family budget dedicated 48.6% to food, where in France, for example, only 36%
went to food]” (70). The numbers paint a staggering deficit both nutritionally and
economically for Spain in the global context.
Eating Nationally

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 Focusing on the actual recipes given in the second part of the cookbook, de la
Mata’s recipes break stylistically with what we have seen so far. While earlier recipes
have generally followed a similar style of offering a dish’s name, ingredients and
amounts followed by the culinary directions, de la Mata does not follow this same
pattern. His recipes are varied to include foods that alone constitute aphrodisiacs to
dishes that elaborate extensive ingredients and culinary techniques. Amidst these recipes
is a constant narrative form that continues to inform the reader of facts regarding either
the aphrodisiacs involved, histories of foods and dishes and also incorporates more
dietary and nutritional advice. The recipes that include culinary direction are presented
without pattern, mixing in diverse modes of communication from the se impersonal,
verbs in the infinitive and formal commands. The culinary directions are simple and
straightforward, avoiding complicated descriptions or advanced culinary technical
descriptions. In contrast to the standard cohesion of the Sección Femenina cookbooks,
the presentation of these present cookbooks underlines the identity confusion exhibited
by its culinary choice. There is no clear culinary philosophy advocated in relation to
national cuisine.
In regards to the types of dishes, de la Mata begins first with a general section
followed by a section that is entitled La cocina erótica americana [American Erotic
Cuisine] that highlights dishes from all countries of the Americas. In contrast to the first
section that includes the running narrative advice, the American section simply offers
recipes and no other narrative facts or tips. As far as creating an ideal of national cuisine,
de la Mata does not enter into this debate and aside from denoting from which country
the recipes originate in the American section, does not confront the question of national
cuisine.
Lizar’s Afrodisíacos similarly does not directly contend with this issue of national
cuisine. While his recipes are presented in a much more traditional style (title,
ingredients/amounts, directions), Lizar does not offer any extra advice in the form of
narrative asides or clarifications. The recipes given by both authors are fairly similar
with many of the same (with slight variations in the recipe) appearing in each edition.
Although both do not address the idea of a national cuisine, this oversight further
signifies these cookbooks as transitional works between pre- and post-Francoism

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cookbooks. Their inclusion of more international fare and ingredients not only
demonstrates the power of globalization within Spanish gastronomy but also foreshadows
the impending exportation of Spanish gastronomy to the world.
As much a guide to sexual cooking and eating, this is a guide that promotes
appropriate nutrition and a well-balanced diet that seeks to improve the overall health of
all Spaniards. The framing of a cookbook as sexually themed serves as a platform for the
author to address serious issues facing Spain at the onset of democracy. Free to openly
discuss and contest official Francoist rhetoric, the cookbook uses the guise of sexuality in
an attempt to re-educate Spaniards in proper nutrition and appropriate sexual politics
during the Transition.
The Next Course
Although marketed as gastronomic guides to have more and better sex, the two
cookbooks analyzed in the current chapter are decidedly unsexy. The descriptions of sex
do not exhibit an overly sexual or gratuitous tone. They do not promote sexual
promiscuity or illicit or dangerous sex. They are superficially suggestive through their
content matter and cover illustrations but the discussions within each cookbook are
strangely scientific, straightforwardly eschewing any slang or colloquial language,
metaphorical allusions or euphemistic descriptions. This is not a comically self-aware
cookbook that makes use of sexual double entendres or puns. What is provided,
however, is a frank and mature conversation about sex and sexual politics within post-
Franco Spain.
More than just offering a description of and recipes that utilize aphrodisiacs, both
cookbooks inform the reader of the sexual and gender politics that were addressed during
the Transition. The cookbooks feature the confusion that defined the Spanish sexual
revolution. Attempting to correct misinformation and reject previous sexual norms, both
authors present ideals of Spanish men and women that provide a contradictory approach
to sexual liberation. At once condemning dominating, macho men for their outdated
views of women as sexual objects, yet rarely addressing a woman’s role in a newly
sexually liberated society, the authors present a bridge between the old and the new.
While there is much room for improvement, both cookbooks stand out for their
progressive views in comparison to Francoist sexual discourse. Avoiding an explicit

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conversation regarding gastronomic nationalism, the recipe collections instead present a
cuisine that is developing a globally influenced palate. This again offers a transitional
perspective that seeks to reconcile years of Spanish national cuisine with an impending
boom of gastronomic globalization.
The tourism boom of the 1960s and 1970s introduced Spain to the world but it
would not be until the 1980s that Spanish cuisine would be accepted on the global stage.
Delayed by years of economic and gastronomic uncertainty, the tourist boom opened
Spain up to new influences as well as new economic opportunities. The 1980s will see
the rise of Spanish haute cuisine cooking and its eventual position as a global cuisine
player during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Exploring the rise of Michelin cuisine
culture and examining two cookbooks from haute cuisine legends in Spain, the next
chapter explains the shift of Spanish cuisine that was at once dominated by local and
traditional influences to a cuisine that glorifies the local by incorporating global flavors
and techniques. Although readily experimenting with new cuisines and methodologies,
Spanish chefs emerge with a style that is uniquely rooted in the Spanish provincial
tradition.

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

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 Chapter Six:
The Alta Cocina Revolution: Spanish Michelin Cuisine, 1980-2014
Although Franco’s death brought about rapid and monumental changes as
evidenced in the trend of sex cookbooks, what could be considered Spanish national
cuisine underwent minimal changes in content and flavors. Taking a cue from their
neighbors from the north, Spanish chefs mounted a radical change in the preparation and
presentation of their national cuisine, imitating the French Nouvelle Cuisine to elevate the
national cuisine to a uniquely Spanish variety of haute cuisine. This French influence,
however, did not manifest itself as a pure recreation of French cuisine as Pardo Bazán
had warned against half a century prior. Instead, Spanish chefs imitated French culinary
philosophy, not ingredients or techniques per se in order to create a unique brand of
Spanish national cuisine. Ultimately rooted in traditional and local Spanish flavors and
dishes, this movement brought Spanish cuisine to the forefront of the global culinary
community in twenty short years. Chefs like Juan Mari Arzak and Ferran Adrià sought to
elevate Spanish cuisine to haute cuisine status while still invoking traditional regional and
provincial flavors. They also helped to usher in the first true Spanish haute cuisine of the
twentieth century. Through their efforts and the efforts of many chefs, Spain has slowly
risen in estimation in the global culinary scene. Their efforts are evidenced by Spain’s
strong Michelin star record over the last twenty five years. The Michelin Guide, often
thought of as the de facto fine dining guide in the world, creates in itself a version of the
Spanish national cuisine. Through the mapping of the restaurants that comprise the list,
we see a shift from the traditional urban centers of Madrid and Barcelona to a map that
represents the less urban, more rural areas of Spain. This decentralization can be seen as
a product of a pluralistic national cuisine, French Nouvelle Cuisine and tourism. This
visualization also suggests that the true culinary center of Spain is located in the
geographical northern part of the country. Overall, the rise of haute cuisine and the
Michelin guide within Spain reveal a national cuisine that no longer demonstrates any
tension between the regional and national but instead finally embraces regional tastes as
the basis of the larger Spanish national cuisine.
Vázquez Montalbán’s Culinary Nationalism

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 Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s 1991 novel Sabotaje olímpico begins by invoking
the father of classic French cuisine, Escofier. The detective series’ main protagonist,
Carvalho’s servant Biscuter, suggests that Escofier represents “la gran tradición de la
cocina burguesa [the grand tradition of the bourgeois cuisine]” (4). It is Biscuter’s wish
to take a course to learn the secrets and techniques of classic French preparations of
soups and stews. He even goes so far as to speak of Spanish stews as being considerably
inferior to their French brethren. He becomes consumed by the ideal of French
perfection that he speaks of his own native Spanish soups and stews as simply “los
potajes ‘extranjeros’ [those foreign stews]” that spoke from “una postiza identidad
francesa [false French identity]” (Vázquez Montalbán, Sabotaje 4). Facing the threat of
the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Biscuter’s sudden affinity to French cooking can be read
as insecurity towards one’s own cuisine and broader culture. The narrator rhetorically
asks if Biscuter has suddenly changed his Spanish ways, questioning the servant/cook’s
love of Spanish products such as Ribera del Duero wine or Corcá goat cheese even taking
note that Biscuter’s preferred method of stew making is the pressure cooker. In his heart,
Biscuter remains Spanish in his gastronomy but the onset and pressure of the pending
Olympics forces him to question the validity of a Spanish cuisine. Carvalho ends the
discussion by giving Biscuter his suggestion on how to make a better stew: “Ponle
garbanzos…A todo…Ponle garbanzos y chorizo a todo… [Add garbanzos…To
everything…Add garbanzos and chorizo to everything]” (Vázquez Montalbán, Sabotaje
5). To which Biscuter responds: “Eso es nacionalismo, jefe. La ola de nacionalismo que
nos invade [That’s nationalism, chief. The wave of nationalism that is invading us]”
(Vázquez Montalbán, Sabotaje 5).
The duo of Carvalho and Biscuter represent what had long been considered
Spanish cuisine. With Biscuter, we see a true believer of Spanish gastronomy, someone
who loves his Spanish products but desires a more refined way of cooking, desires the
elegance that is associated with French cooking. Conversely, Carvalho revels in the
provincial tradition of comfort dishes based on garbanzos and chorizo. Carvalho’s
insistence on maintaining tradition combined with Biscuter’s insistence on elevating his
cuisine is a metaphor for the emergence of Spanish haute cuisine of the twentieth century.
The letter written by Biscuter at the end of the novel reveals that to the French the

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Spanish way of cooking will never be an art, especially with chorizo, the “embutido
considerado bárbaro [barbarous sausage]” (Vázquez Montalbán, Sabotaje 60). Much like
our early culinary nationalists seen in Chapter One, Biscuter relinquishes his need to
imitate the French and instead knows that Spanish cooking can be a high cuisine while
still maintaining its regional and provincial roots.
Spanish Alta Cocina
The Spanish variety of haute cuisine can ultimately be traced back to the long and
enduring tradition of great French chefs and world-renowned French cuisine. Although
Spanish culinary nationalists lambasted French influence beginning with Dr. Thebussem
in the late nineteenth century and continuing with writers like Pardo Bazán and Dionisio
Pérez in the early twentieth century, French influence played much less of an importance
following the Spanish Civil War. By necessity and not choice, Chapter Two clarifies
how the national cuisine of the years following the Civil War resisted French influence
by once again promoting classic and simple traditional Spanish cuisine. Dictated by
shortage and scarcity, these years of hunger unwittingly played an integral role in the
formation of contemporary Spanish cuisine. The return to simple and traditional Spanish
food as a way to survive eliminated any remaining French influence within the Spanish
culinary sphere.
In the 1980s, however, the French influence was celebrated with a caveat. Instead
of trying to emulate the French cooking style and flavor profile as chefs and cookbook
authors did earlier in the twentieth century, knowledge of French culinary techniques was
now seen as critical in the formation of a Spanish haute cuisine chef. In his introduction
to the seminal cookbook Cien recetas magistrales: 10 grandes chefs de la cocina
española [100 Masterful Recipes: 10 Great Chefs of the Spanish Kitchen] (1981), Carlos
Delgado explains that the most innovative Spanish chefs are those that are “concentrados
en pequeñas peñas innovadoras, bien dotados de una preparación técnica de alta cocina,
es decir, de tradición francesa [concentrated on small innovative difficulties, well
equipped in the technical preparation of haute cuisine, or better said, of the French
tradition]” (8). Delgado implicitly states that the French influence is not only good, but
necessary in the formation of quality Spanish chefs. He does not, however, advocate for
a Spanish cuisine that loses its Spanishness.

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 As arguably the most celebrated cuisine in the world, French culinary techniques
during this time stood as the pinnacle of what Delgado calls “este noble arte [this noble
art]” (8). He concludes that within a short amount of time, Spanish chefs have once again
established all that is culinary as a noble art. While on a world stage it will be another
two decades before Spanish cuisine would receive its highest global praise, Delgado does
confirm that these chefs and this movement constitute the arrival of what can arguably be
called Spain’s first haute cuisine of the modern era. What Delgado celebrates about
Spanish cuisine and its chefs is their ability to take the highest of technical training from
outside influences and transform those abilities to create a new ideal of Spanish cuisine.
For him, these chefs “han sabido reconquistar y recuperar, no como eruditos o como
amanuenses de recetarios, sino como creadores, los viejos y eternos platos regionales
[have discovered how to reconquer and recuperate, not as an erudite or as an imitator, but
as a creator, those ancient and eternal regional dishes]” (8). This new style of cuisine is
not a new entity; it is, instead, a traditionally rooted concept that has been tweaked to
showcase the most innovative and creative of Spanish talents. For Delgado, Spanish
haute cuisine follows the formula of classic French technique combined with Spanish
flair, flavors and sensibilities.
This alta cocina revolution constitutes “el gran resurgimiento gastronómico de
nuestra cocina…irremisiblemente nacido de lo tradicional y regional [the great
gastronomic resurgence of our cuisine…irremissibly born of tradition and regionality]”
(8). As the first modern Spanish haute cuisine, the culinary vanguard does not ignore its
predecessors. Instead of creating new ideals of what Spanish national cuisine is, these
chefs simply expound upon and innovate what had always been. For Delgado and in his
assessment of these chefs and their culinary styles, Spanish national cuisine is nothing
more than a pluralist regional cuisine coming together under the banner of one nation.
Furthermore, in the wake of Franco’s death, Delgado hopes that this new cuisine “se
proyecte con espíritu federal, que es nuestro más genuino espíritu, hacia el futuro
[projects itself with a federal spirit, which is our most genuine spirit, towards the future]”
(8). New to culinary nationalism discourse, this idea of a federal cuisine is a direct
product of Franco’s death and subsequent transition to monarchical, parliamentary
democracy. In accord with the political and social discourse of the Transition, Delgado’s

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concept of a federal cuisine is an attempt to reconcile the fractured Spanish society that
remained after forty years of dictatorship. Although the rhetoric is new, the sentiment is
not. Whether referred to as a federal cuisine or a national cuisine, Delgado’s definition of
Spanish cuisine is a continuation of what we have observed for decades: a regionally
pluralized national or federal cuisine. Inasmuch, Delgado invokes both the famed Dr.
Thebussem and Post-Thebussem within the first paragraph of his declaration. He is,
undoubtedly, a descendent of their doctrine of what constitutes Spanish national cuisine.
As such, he evokes this throughout his introduction and within the selection of
chefs and dishes included in his cookbook. For Delgado, the dishes included in his
collection are “nuestro tesoro regional, pero concebidos y elaborados al nuevo estilo [our
regional treasure, but conceived of and elaborated in the new style]” (9). This new style
is distinguished from the idea of a haute cuisine or alta cocina. For Delgado, the new
style “significa creatividad, simplicidad, autenticidad, ligereza y racionalidad en el buen
comer [signifies creativity, simplicity, authenticity, agility and rationality in eating well]”
(42) while the concept of alta cocina is “una revalorización o, mejor ‘elevación’ de la
cocina regional [a revaluation o better said an ‘elevation’ of regional cooking]” (42).
These two ideals marry and create the new Spanish haute cuisine. For Spanish haute
cuisine, chefs take what has been previously conceived of as regional cooking and
employ a new creative twist to elevate standard everyday food to something worthy of
the global haute cuisine tradition. While the French “una vez más…han revolucionado la
cocina con su ‘nouvelle’ estilo [once again…have revolutionized the kitchen with their
‘nouvelle’ style] (Delgado 42), it is the Spanish who are using the French, not in order to
imitate as in the past but now as a model to reinvigorate a lost cultural tradition.
The Nouvelle Cuisine tradition can be thought of as “the creation of a new order,
a purging of the past, and the regulation and ongoing purification of the new order”
(Mallory 79). Although occurring north of the border, the message of Nouvelle Cuisine
resonated with Spanish chefs. In the context of a post-Franco nation, cuisine and
gastronomy were only two facets of the Spanish society that were searching for a new
identity in the wake of Franco’s death. In the gastronomic world, we see the rise of haute
cuisine, of a new culinary and gastronomic order, as a direct response to the social
vacuum produced by the end of the dictatorship. Citing the article “Vive la Nouvelle

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Cuisine” by Gault and Millau, Heather Mallory summarizes the main philosophies that
came to be associated with this culinary revolution. For her, the movement promoted
“the use of new ingredients and cooking styles, the use of new technologies, and the
appearance of new leadership in the form of chefs with the new-found freedom to create
entirely new menus, flavor combinations, and presentations” (79). While French chefs
were reacting to well-solidified culinary culture that demanded a strict adherence to
culinary forbearers, it can also be read from the Spanish context as a break with forty
years of dictatorship during which an entire nation, including chefs, were told exactly
how to behave. The need to re-identify oneself and the nation at large coalesced perfectly
within the tenets of a Nouvelle Cuisine that emphasized individual self-expression and
newness over everything else.
French Nouvelle Cuisine also focused on a “less-is-more approach, simple foods
prepared simply” (Mallory 84). Mallory claims that the new style is rooted in Paul
Bocuse’s “principle of simply buying the freshest, highest quality ingredients available
and letting that determine the menu” (84). The style, above everything, “emphasized the
autonomy of the chef, with short menus requiring fresh ingredients and low inventories”
(Rao 798). In other words, French chefs sought to cook with local ingredients that
highlighted the taste of the nation or a specific region or locality. Even though
globalization allows for the shipment of fresh products throughout the globe, the
Nouvelle Cuisine movement favored local provincial and regional products. The French
idea of terroir encapsulates this idea and associates taste and space by emphasizing that
certain products are inextricably linked to specific geographical areas. Hispanist Robert
A. Davidson describes terroir as the “special characteristics that a particular geographical
area imparts to the food products that are cultivated there” (41). Although Davidson’s
discussion of the term involves the modern day marketing of the rural that will be
discussed in the second half of this chapter, the idea that a geographical landscape
permits a specific taste brings a new dynamic to how we conceive of national cuisine.
This is the most explicit linking of space and taste seen thus far. For the early alta cocina
chefs, French nouvelle cuisine permitted them to not only showcase their technical
skillset but to also elevate the physical taste of Spain through the use of geographically
specific ingredients via this concept. Complementing the previous ideas of a regionally

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plural national cuisine, terroir gave Spanish chefs a pretense to claim that provincial
dishes and ingredients could be thought of as haute cuisine. For Rao, et. al, nouvelle
cuisine also exemplified culinary transgression that consisted of “using old cooking
techniques with new ingredients, or using old cooking techniques with old ingredients in
illegitimate ways” (806). The authors also point to acclimatization that represented “the
import of exotic foreign cuisine traditions, notably seasoning and spices” (Rao 806). For
Spanish chefs, this new culinary philosophy gave them the impetus to create the “primer
y más auténtico renacimiento gastronómico [first and most authentic gastronomic
renaissance]” (Delgado 42). Spanish chefs took years of regional cooking and tradition
and began to alter these ideas slightly, presenting versions and variations of classic dishes
that emphasized Spain but also borrowed from cultures from around the world in a style
that represented a new culinary outlook. While the acclimatization of Spanish haute
cuisine will progress gradually over the next few years, Delgado is adamant that the
“único camino hacia la ‘alta cocina’ española…puede ser ‘nueva’ y ‘federal’ [only path
towards a Spanish haute cuisine…can only be new and federal]” (42).
As for the chefs Delgado chooses to showcase, the list reads like an early
Michelin guide of the 1980s. As a consequence of the Nouvelle cuisine, the role of chef
also began to change. As Alison Atkins debates, Delgado and his cookbook “firmly
identif[y] the chef as artist, as creative author and inventor of culinary dishes” (28). She,
however, questions Delgado’s portrayal of these chefs in relation to tradition and novelty
stating that “these chefs are simultaneously inscribed within tradition and beyond
tradition, defined by their faithfulness to the past and by their originality” (Atkins 28-9).
Atkins raises valid doubts about how to exactly conceive the role of chef in this new
burgeoning haute cuisine. As with all chefs and cookbook authors, dishes reflect years of
tradition as well as original innovation. The question of ownership over a dish is very
similar to the argument regarding authenticity and national cuisines. This cookbook and
others that accompany this new haute cuisine movement, however, force the critic to
rethink the role of the chef as creator of cuisine. In her dissertation, Atkins describes an
“apparent conflict between the affirmation of the featured chefs as unique culinary
geniuses of autonomously ‘authored’ creations and the creative role played by the general
public in the cultivation of ‘high’ culinary art” (82).

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 Here, the general public can be seen as the consumers of this culinary market
whose demands and tastes influence chefs to innovate further but it also refers to a
tradition at large that the general public brings to the table. Chefs, as part of this public at
large, based their new innovations on years of a culinary tradition that has been passed
down by each generation. Atkins further questions the role of chef in the creation of
haute cuisine by proposing that these chefs are paradoxically presented, “portrayed as
simultaneously radically innovative and indebted to tradition, as dedicated to practicing
regional as well as ‘international’ cuisine, and also as creating art that is spontaneous and
divinely inspired as well as learned and theoretically based” (82). In the context of
writing cookbooks, the dish is transmitted textually. This act converts each chef from
mere cooks to becoming authors as well. In order to question culinary ownership, we
must remember that cooking and cookbooks derive from an oral tradition. This orality of
the culinary arts supersedes ideas of ownership that arise from the printing of recipes. As
stated earlier by Atkins and Delgado, these chefs continually reference tradition. A dish
as an idea can never be claimed by an owner but each chef’s specific variation of that
idea represents their own culinary authorship and thus, ownership. In cookbooks, and
especially Delgado’s, “the written word reigns supreme and the culinary masterpiece
becomes synonymous with the printed recipe, as opposed to the idea of the dish or even
the dish itself” (Atkins 77). The act of writing, as Atkins alludes, creates yet another
barrier and removes the reader further from the physical dish. This reconfigures the way
in which the relationship between chef-author and reader manifests. This relationship
and its culinary and literary consequences will be detailed later in this chapter.
Nevertheless, these chef-driven cookbooks bring to the forefront the questions of culinary
ownership as well as culinary recreation and the idea of the recipe as metaphor and what
it means for a reader to consume a recipe or a dish.
In fomenting this so-called haute cuisine revolution, Atkins suggests that the
“movement, in its various forms, was decidedly self-aware and intentional in nature”
(29). These chefs were all aware of changes in gastronomy and culinary art in France
and did, in fact, make an active attempt to create new ways of conceiving Spanish
cuisine. Their loose affiliation as well as their willingness to be published in 10 grandes
chefs…, a compilation cookbook such as this volume gives the aura of a coordinated

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group effort to change and mold Spanish cuisine from the top-down. While this was not
necessarily true, we cannot ignore the fact that this group, individually and collectively
through compilation cookbooks, did in fact change the gastronomic landscape of Spain.
Although presented alphabetically, Juan Mari Arzak’s position as the first chef detailed
sets the tone for this work. Arguably the father of Spanish haute cuisine, his restaurant
Arzak has consistently held three Michelin Stars for over 20 years. Delgado notes that
his guidance of the family restaurant in San Sebastián coincides with its transformation
from a “local popular en uno de los centros más prestigiosos de la ‘Nueva Cocina Vasca’
[popular locale into one of the most prestigious restaurants of ‘New Basque Cuisine’]”
(46). Arzak being a “gran amigo de Paul Bocuse [great friend of Paul Bocuse]” (46)
gave him an intimate knowledge of the French Nouvelle cuisine and Arzak applied those
principles to reestablish Spanish haute cuisine.28
The rest of the chefs are equally impressive and their restaurants comprise the
first wave of Spanish establishments that began making inroads into the coveted Michelin
dining and hotel guides. Clotaldo Cortés attended the Escoffier School and as Delgado
notes was “el primer restaurador español que alcanzó reconocimiento nacional [the first
Spanish restaurateur who gained international recognition]” (60). His Madrid restaurant
Jockey dots early Michelin guides for Spain. Similarly, Ramón Cabau’s Agut D’Avignon
was one of the first haute cuisine establishments that “basa su cocina en los platos, gustos
y materias primas catalanas [bases their cooking in the plates, tastes and natural products
of the Catalan region]” (Delgado 74). The restaurant Rincón de Pepe from chef
Raimundo Frutos represented a Michelin perspective that was not rooted in traditionally
haute cuisine regions of the Basque Country, Catalonia or even Madrid. His Murcian
restaurant was also a Michelin starred establishment. Reno by Antonio Juliá quickly
became a Barcelonan and Michelin favorite in the early 1980s. Jesús María Oyarbide has
the honor of giving Madrid two of its first Michelin starred restaurants in both Príncipe
de Viana and Zalacaín, the latter becoming the first Spanish restaurant to garner the
pinnacle 3-star rating from Michelin. Guría by Genaro Pildain continued the success of

28
Paul Bocuse is considered to be the Father of French Nouvelle Cuisine. The global culinary competition,
Bocuse d’Or, is named in his honor and are considered to be the pinnacle of culinary competitions. A
Spanish delegation has never won first prize.

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Basque chefs and restaurants, solidifying the region’s status as the de facto leader of
Spanish cuisine.
While these Spanish chefs were recreating the concept of Spanish haute cuisine,
Delgado also admired foreign chefs who had converted to Spanish cuisine and also
contributed to the development of Spanish culinary fame. Chefs like Luxembourg’s Paul
Schiff, France’s Jean-Louis Neichel and Gustavo Horcher from Germany all contributed
to the alta cocina foodscape with their respective restaurants La Hacienda in Marbella,
Neichel in Barcelona and Horcher in Madrid, which all held Michelin stars at one time.
The influence of the Spanish cuisine of foreign chefs proved to be a turning point in
Spanish cuisine. With more and better chefs recognizing the advantages that Spain had
to offer, Spanish cuisine was slowly creating its own culinary sphere of influence. It
must also be noted that Neichel was the former executive chef of a small coastal
restaurant named El Bulli. This restaurant and its subsequent chef, Ferran Adrià, will be
discussed later. This exemplifies that despite forty years of Francoist rule, Spanish
cuisine was primed to rise to global fame as a dominant culinary force.
As a whole, the alta cocina revolution brings about a redistribution of what is
considered Spanish national cuisine. While New Basque Cuisine is seen as the forbearer
to Spanish haute cuisine and Bilbao had long been thought of as the Spanish gastronomic
capital, the early haute cuisine capitals represented the cultural capitals of Spain: Madrid
and Barcelona. If we use Delgado’s 10 grandes chefs… as a baseline to establish haute
cuisine culture, the basis of Spanish haute cuisine resides in both Madrid and Barcelona,
which both are home to 3 restaurants each. The Basque Country does have two
establishments (one in both Bilbao and San Sebastian), while Murcia and Marbella
account for the remaining two restaurants. While the Basque Country has long since
been known as the gastronomic capital of Spain and the home to Spanish haute cuisine,
why then do Madrid and Barcelona claim the gastronomic throne?29 Madrid, as we have
seen historically, had long been looked down upon gastronomically as not having
contributed greatly to Spanish national cuisine. Regardless, its position as the cultural
and economic capital of Spain secured its place as an early haute cuisine capital as well.

29
See Chapter One for a discussion of regionality in Spanish cuisine during the early twentieth century.
See also Chapter Three and the discussion regarding the Sección Femenina’s cookbook Cocina regional
which officially named Bilbao and the Basque Country as the Spanish gastronomic capital.

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Both Madrid and Barcelona, however, would gradually lose their titles as alta cocina
capitals as we will see later in this chapter. What will be seen is a general shift away
from large, urban centers in favor of smaller, rural cities and towns, another shift away
from centralized capitals in favor of a decentralized, pluralistic concept of national
cuisine. Nothing better defines this trend than arguably the most heralded Spanish
restaurant, El Bulli. Under the tutelage of “super chef” Ferran Adrià, El Bulli
transformed from a French inspired restaurant directed by Jean-Louis Neichel to the
forefront of Spanish cuisine and the global culinary trend known as molecular
gastronomy. Adrià’s restaurant will not only revolutionize the restaurant and culinary
sphere but also the cookbook genre.
El Bulli and the Redefinition of the Cookbook
Today, the global culinary community considers Ferran Adrià to be one of the
most talented and creative, if not the best, chef in the world. In 1997, his restaurant El
Bulli (now closed) received three Michelin Stars, the highest honor a restaurant can
receive and never relinquished that title. In addition, his restaurant has been named to
many top lists including holding the title of Best Restaurant a record five times by the
British publication Restaurant in their annual “The World’s 50 Best” rankings. The chef
shuttered the doors of his flagship restaurant that had been Michelin starred for over 30
years in July 2011. Adrià’s “plan is to reopen El Bulli as a culinary research foundation
that will publish its findings online at no charge” (Minder, “El Bulli”). Despite his
critical success, his culinary style has been seen as problematic and a topic of debate. A
founder of the global culinary movement of molecular gastronomy (Minder notes that
this moniker is “a term [the chef] dislikes”), his food combines traditional Spanish flavors
with more global influences and uses technology and science in new ways that underline
his culinary philosophy. Regardless of his nomenclature preferences, he is undoubtedly
the de facto leader of the so-called molecular gastronomy trend that has created an uproar
over the safety of the increased technological presence in food preparation. Without
entering into this argument here, suffice it to say detractors as well as followers can agree
that Adrià has reinvigorated not only Spanish but also global cuisine, reaching a fervor
never seen before on the world gastronomic scene.

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 Adrià’s gastronomic philosophy is viewed as equally radical and innovative. The
rhetoric most often used to describe his food evokes science fiction but his creativity is
the defining notion of today’s haute cuisine culture. In his own words, Adrià proposes
his culinary arte poética:
Cooking is a language…Each person takes away something new. In most human
activities, it would be normal to find humour, irony and deception. The one place
this isn’t expected is in the kitchen. (Adrià, Q&A 267)
Invoking a structuralist analysis of gastronomy, Adrià appreciates the human
connection to food and cooking while attempting to emphasize the most basic human
emotions within the cooking and eating contexts. “What we’ve done…is create a new
vocabulary, a new language for cooking” (Abend 3), he explains. Moving away from
constricting definitions of the culinary arts, Adrià seeks to reemphasize the artistic,
creative nature of cooking. His philosophical musings and his constant attention to the
idea of cooking as a language situates gastronomy within what philosopher Roland
Barthes proposed in his 1970s article “Toward a Psychosociology of Food
Consumption.” In his article, Barthes muses that food “transmits a situation; it
constitutes an information; it signifies” (29). Adrià seems to be reminding us of Barthes’
idea that food constitutes a language unto itself. As Barthes and many other gastronomic
scholars have noted, food language is often passed over and taken for granted. Adrià
seeks to remove the banality and superficiality of that language and reinvigorate it with
new and deeper meaning. As he does with all his culinary endeavors, Adrià also attempts
to reinvent the language of cookbooks.
The chef understands this idea and seems to further it. Riffing on the mundane
nature of food and these preconceived structures, the chef actively challenges what has
been generally accepted in the culinary world. Not only does Adrià create food by
introducing a new gastronomic lexicon, he changes the way in which we think of food by
creating new possibilities for how food is presented. Following his rejection of
traditional culinary language, the cook also rejects the traditional norms of gastronomy’s
literary genre: the cookbook.
In examining the edition 1998-2002 (2005) of his series of El Bulli cookbooks, it
is easy to note this radical textual shift. We are able to decipher El Bulli’s gastronomic

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philosophy through an analysis of the accompanying cookbook. This edition is indicative
of the restaurant’s full maturity and represents the first years of Michelin Three Star
status as well as culminating in the first World’s Best distinction in 2002. Analyzing the
cookbook itself, we are able to observe the radical shift presented by Adrià in a textual
manner. In this series, Adrià reinvents the cookbook genre by introducing a new
language and discourse wherein food production is celebrated as a work of art and actual
recipes are relegated to secondary importance. His vanguard approach establishes a new,
master cookbook that excludes and dissuades casual culinary amateurs yet taunts and
tantalizes the readers with vivid photos and descriptions of each season’s production.
Unlike traditional cookbooks that rely on collaboration between author, book and
reader, Adrià’s cookbook is only a metaphor for his food, removing this collaboration in
favor of a directed, non-interactive reading. The food in his cookbook cannot be
successfully recreated nor can it be tasted, smelled or presented in the ways in which
Adrià intends. As Dudek notes, “a poet cannot guarantee that the reader will understand
his metaphor. When understanding is guaranteed, metaphor turns into cliché” (53).
While Dudek comments on the reading of a menu, the same can be understood for
reading cookbooks. Dudek claims that in reading a menu, and as is proposed here in
reading a cookbook, the “diner [reader] has to face the actual materialization of the
metaphor” (53). The fact is that home cooking rarely re-creates a dish in the exact way
and in some ways will always remain as only a metaphoric representation of the original
intended meaning. In reading cookbooks and in eating, subjectivity erases the chef’s
intended metaphor. For these reasons, the food in El Bulli will only ever be metaphorical
representations for the dishes served in the restaurant.
Questioning this metaphor also forces us to question the relationship that exists
between the chef and diner. The chef functions as the author of the dish (both the food
and the recipe) as well as a conductor of sorts. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues that
the restaurant is a performance space where “the kitchen is an ensemble performance
improvising on a scenario. The diners get a three or four act play, each table with its own
performance, complete with program notes or menu” (6). This idea situates the diners
into a passive role, consuming the performance of culinary creation. In this way, the chef
almost reaches a level of complete authorial control. Literarily, the creation of a dish

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writes that dish into existence, even without a written recipe. The diner, on the other
hand, through consumption, reads the meal as a text or performance. Furthermore, the
chef can become a literary author through writing a recipe or cookbook. The diner, in
this case, can function both as a reader in the literary sense as well as a consumer of food.
Through the act of reading a cookbook or recipe, the diner must first metaphorically
consume the dish without physical consumption. The physical reading of a dish occurs
after its re-creation in the home kitchen. Depending on the authorial prerogative, a recipe
may or may not transmit the desired metaphor during the process of recreation. The chef-
author, however, chooses whether that metaphor is open or closed to subjective
interpretation.
The present cookbook is a part of a series that reveals the imagination of Adrià
through the visual landscape of each dish prepared during a summer’s season. While the
restaurant remained closed during the off-season, the chef’s imagination never ceases.
Instead, he and his sous-chefs perfected ideas, techniques and eventually final plates in
their Barcelona taste lab. The cookbooks, thus, represent the efforts of this off-season
experimentation to display each exceptional plate, reflecting the creative progress of the
restaurant. Highlighting this exceptional and vanguard cuisine, the 1998-2002 volume
represents Adrià’s perseverance and gastronomic thinking. At first glance (see figure
10), the recipe book appears to be a slated blackboard. Chalk lines adorn the front cover
with a simple yet distinct “3” that constitutes the only figure, number or letter, signaling
the third edition. The two heading chalk lines continue through the spine of the book
toward the back cover. Here, it looks as if there was once writing, but they are now
indiscernible. The numbers, letters, ideas and recipes that once dictated the day’s
experiments are now erased into oblivion. The reader is left with only faint chalk
blemishes, discolored lines summoning the chaos of ideas not yet realized by the master
chef. The inside cover continues this minimalist style. In the blackness appears a
solitary vertical line, a timeline marked with five horizontal notches representing each
season that appears in the present volume.

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 Figure 10: El Bulli 1998-2002 Cover
Source: Harper Collins

The appearance of the cookbook corresponds directly to the gastronomy of El

Bulli and Adrià. Like his food, his cookbook represents his never-ending creative
process, his renovation of the gastronomic language. It establishes the tone of his
gastronomic philosophy: the kitchen as a scientific laboratory that connotes cooking as
equally scientific as it is artistic. The blank slate of the blackboard is not pessimistically
vacant. Instead, it is open to the next creative experiment representing the freedom to
create. It corresponds directly to Adrià’s need to redefine gastronomic language. Erasing
the previous norms from the blackboard of gastronomic language, Adrià is recreating
food and the cookbook genre from a blank slate. Each creation, each dish, each
cookbook comes from the same origin: a single chalk line on an otherwise dusty, blank
blackboard.
Comparing this book to other, more traditional cookbooks, a very distinct contrast
is evident. As mentioned earlier, the El Bulli cookbook does not rely on posterity. It
seeks to dispel tradition in an attempt to create a new genre norm. In his food, Adrià
plays off well-known concepts, tastes and dishes and then recreates those traditions by
incorporating new textures and temperatures while maintaining the essence of tradition.
Following his culinary philosophy, Adrià employs the same deconstruction from his

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cooking to his cookbook writing. As Dudek observes, Adrià “break[s] a culinary
text…into its basic components and then reassemble[s] it in a different fashion. By
isolating (and hence alienating) the dish’s [cookbook’s] structure from its basic
components, Adrià examines the underlying tensions between them” (53). Riffing on the
celebrity chef-driven cookbooks of Spain during the late 1980s, Adrià offers immaculate
dishes of haute cuisine. While it is easily observed from the front cover, he ignores many
of the genre norms proposed by those authors who came before him. In contrast to the
cookbooks of Pedro Subijana, Juan Mari Arzak or Karlos Arguiñano (and even early
Adrià cookbooks such as El sabor del mediterráneo [The Taste of the Mediterranean]
(1993), there are no glossy pictures of the chef on the front cover nor are there sumptuous
looking dishes enticing readers. Adrià’s intent is to break up the components of these
traditional, chef-driven cookbooks, and then create a new structure, a new cookbook
norm.
Analyzing more deeply one example of these chef-driven cookbooks, Basque chef
Juan Mari Arzak stands above the rest of the contemporary Spanish chefs. As the
forefather of the New Basque Cuisine and the Spanish alta cocina revolution, Arzak has
been at the front of Spanish vanguard cuisine. His cookbook Las recetas de Arzak,
published in 1997, serves as a representative baseline for the chef-driven cookbook. As
seen in Figure 11, the chef himself features as prominently if not more so than the food
he is offering. Clean against a white background, the chef’s white jacket presents an
elegance and an air of high culture that resounds in the meticulous presentation of his
dish “’Foie-Gras’ natural con uvas glaseadas y hierbas al jerez dulce [Natural Foie-Gras
with glazed grapes and Sherry herbs]” (Arzak 104), a Spanish take on the classic French
dish served on the finest of gold-bordered china. The primary marketing draw of these
cookbooks is the chefs themselves and the exoticism of haute cuisine. The chefs, in turn,
have become synonymous with certain dishes or culinary techniques and even culinary
ideas. As such, Adrià has become almost a metonym for the molecular gastronomy
movement.

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 Figure 11: Las recetas de Arzak Cover
Source: Ediciones El País

The content of chef-driven cookbooks, however, can vary drastically. While

cookbooks like El Bulli present recipes that cannot be recreated at home, other chefs’
cookbooks are watered down versions of their most intricate recipes for easy at-home
consumption. Analyzing the celebrity chef culture further, Christine M. Mitchell argues

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in her review of United States celebrity chef cookbooks that male chefs are much less
likely to include basic technique instruction and focus more on their personal
development than their female colleagues. She also noted that those chefs with the
highest degree of training offer less reader-friendly recipes. This is both affirmed and
rejected when looking at the cookbooks by Arzak and Adrià. As arguably the two most
technical chefs in Spain, both present cookbooks in distinct ways; Arzak, intending his to
be read by a general public and encouraging this audience to interact with each recipe in
any way their culinary abilities allow, and Adrià, who directs his cookbook at a more
refined audience, discouraging his readership to participate in the culinary process by
removing most cooking instructions until the end of the book and presenting his
cookbook as less an instruction manual and more as a culinary spectacle. Arzak’s
increased attention to instruction suggests a more interactive cookbook, where the
dialogue between chef/author and diner/reader permits a subjective end result. These
cookbooks commonly allow readers to include their own personal preference by
encouraging them to season dishes to their liking or accommodating taste by suggesting
alternative products to be used as Arzak does. These chefs/authors embrace the
subjective nature of taste and do not wish to control the final reception of the dish. On
the other hand, cookbooks like El Bulli do not accommodate taste variations. These
collections mimic the American tendency in offering less-reader friendly cookbooks by
those chefs with the most critical acclaim. Their recipes are not subjective suggestions
open to interpretation. The end result is not their dish or recipe unless it meets the chef’s
standard. The American chefs sampled in Mitchell’s article, however, are not of the
caliber of their Spanish counterparts and the Spanish celebrity chef cookbook is vastly
different than the American version. Where celebrity chefs such as Rachel Ray or Paula
Deen write cookbooks for the explicit reason of home cooks exploring and cooking their
own personality, Spanish chefs like Adrià reject this idea.
In comparison to the compilation style cookbooks exemplified by Delgado’s Cien
recetas, “the emergence of self-curated cookbooks provided more exclusive authorial
control, and thus a greater range of opportunities for a nuanced contemplation of the
nature of their own culinary artistry. These chefs affirm themselves as unique,
autonomous creators and ‘authors’ of dishes while at the same time ceding creative

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authority in varying levels to potential readers” (Atkins 84). In the context of Arzak, his
literary endeavor posits himself as a chef-author but also as a chef who attempts to bridge
the gap between his creations and the reader’s recreations while also accepting that
perfection is not attainable and variation is a must. He does not believe that he controls
the message of each dish or ‘owns’ each dish; instead, the chef explains that his intention
“no es otra que mostrarles clara y sencillamente cada uno de los secretillos que utilizo a
la hora de cocinar. Una cocina que a ustedes puede parecerles algo complicada por los
nombres, condimentos y elaboraciones de las recetas; y aunque exige un cierto grado de
preparación y profesionalidad, mi objetivo es hacer accesible lo que ahora puede parecer
imposible de alcanzar [is no other than to show you clealy and simply each one of the
little secrets that I utilize at the time of cooking. A cuisine that to you may seem
somewhat complicated due to the names, condiments and elaborations of the recipes; and
although it does require a certain amount of preparation and professionalism, mi
objective is to make accessible what appears to be impossible to reach]” (Arzak 9). As
Atkins describes similar cookbooks by other renowned chefs, these cookbooks “are
firmly rooted in the everyday and meant to be actually used in the home kitchen, not
merely read” (135) like those cookbooks of Adrià. For Arzak, his view is one of a top-
down approach wherein high cuisine concepts and ideas are disseminated from above to
even the most amateur of cooks in the hopes that the gastronomic ideas associated with
haute cuisine are accessible to all but his recipe collection does demand a certain culinary
finesse that few possess and his presentation doubles both as an everyday cookbook as
well as one that can be marveled at in the vein of Adrià.
Although accommodating to even the most rudimentary of home cooks, the chef
does acknowledge that what is needed is “una persona con cierta práctica o
conocimientos culinarios [a person with certain culinary knowledge and practice]” who
will “seguir con precisión cada una de las indicaciones y, por supuesto, darle un toque
personal, tan importante para el éxito final [follow with precision each one of the
instructions and, of course, add a personal touch, which is so important to the final
success]” (10). His charge to the reader affirms Atkins’ suggestion that the chef-author is
an oxymoron, at once requiring strict adherence to a recipe while simultaneously calling
for personal variation. Nevertheless, it appears that Arzak is softening his control on the

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final outcome of each recipe. While he does acknowledge the difficulty of each recipe,
his desire for everyone to cook and re-create his recipes signals that the chef is less
worried about each recreation transmitting the same meaning that his original dish
conveyed. Again, this questions the relationship between chef-author and the reader-
amateur cook. The recipe as a text, even if followed explicitly, will never be the same as
the original. Each recreation will only ever be a metaphor, a simulacrum of the original.
In this way, the chef-author will always retain complete ownership of each dish
regardless of their intention for the reader. For Arzak, however, his intention is for each
amateur cook to recreate his recipes. He, as the author of a dish, allows for and
welcomes its reinterpretation.

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Figure 12: Las recetas de Arzak Recipe Left
Source: Ediciones El País

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 Figure 13: Las recetas de Arzak Recipe Right
Source: Ediciones El País

Following the style presented by the front cover, each recipe receives a two-page
spread in the coffee-table size cookbook. While the style of each layout varies, the main
components of each recipe remain the same. Complementing a previous project
undertaken in coordination with El País Semanal, the cookbook compiles previously

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published essays and recipes from Arzak’s weekly column with the periodical. Each dish
is presented first with an essay that speaks to different aspects of the dish from its history,
presentation, and the chef’s culinary approach. Each essay is accompanied by a section
detailing the cooking instructions entitled “Elaboración,” as well as a presentation guide
titled “Final y presentación” and an ingredient list succinctly titled “Ingredientes.” While
these sections represent standard fare for cookbooks (although the presentation guide
serves as a reminder of the haute cuisine nature of each recipe), what separates Arzak
from what we will see with Adrià is a section entitled “Trucos y consejos [Tricks and
Tips].” This advice covers all aspects of the recipe from technical tips on how to achieve
perfect consistency of a soup or sauce to helpful suggestions on ingredients that can serve
as adequate substitutes in the event a home cook cannot or does not have access to the
required ingredients. This confirms Arzak’s softened approach to absolute culinary
ownership. As well, this acceptance and promotion of change and personal style
necessitates that the critic reevaluate whether or not absolute culinary ownership is
attainable. As Atkins has previously mentioned the paradoxical approach of the alta
cocina movement, combining both tradition and innovation in order to create a seemingly
new dish, it can be further argued that the recreation of a dish from a recipe constitutes
this same idea. One takes the general guidelines of tradition (the recipe) and infuses it
with their own personal circumstance (innovation). It may very well be that Arzak
understands this notion and is suggesting that his readers use the same mantra, albeit on a
much less refined scale. Much like the argument regarding an authentic national cuisine,
a dish is a product of a myriad of influence, change and innovation. Even if we do trace a
dish back to its original recipe, we must remind ourselves that this written recipe is a
derivative of an oral recipe that will be impossible to trace. The argument of culinary
ownership is moot. With that said, chefs do present their work, their dishes in ways that
allow for reinterpretation (in the case of Arzak) or deny reinterpretation (in the case of
Adrià).
In terms of content, Las recetas de Arzak exemplifies the fusion approach of
French and global technical and flavor influences melding with Spanish tradition. As
evidenced by the cover dish, Foie-gras is an extremely traditional French dish but with
Arzak, he infuses his culinary approach by adding a sauce made from traditionally

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Spanish sherry. Organized by moving from Starters to Fish and Seafood to Meats and
finally Desserts, the recipes included are a mix of dishes that represent the French
tradition to dishes that are purely Basque in origin. Foie-gras appears often while other
French influences such as en papillote appear in recipes like Anchoas a la papillote, fritas
al ajillo y albardadas [Anchovies en papillote, fried in garlic and batter fried] (154). The
French technique en papillote refers to wrapping a food, most often fish, in paper and
baked. Arzak extends this definition, stating that this “clásica técnica culinaria…consiste
en cocinar los alimentos en coberturas no comestibles – aluminio, papel de estraza o en
bolsas de horno [classic culinary technique…consists in cooking foods in inedible
materials – aluminum, parchment or baking bags” (154). Arzak, however in his essay for
this dish, writes that nomenclature is often a misnomer, signaling traditions that do not
necessarily apply to a dish. He states that this is a dish that is purely Basque and that “en
ningún caso tiene nada que ver…con cualquier tipo de envoltorio hermético [in any way
does it have to do with any type of hermetic wrapping of a dish]” (154). The reason for
the naming of this dish, for Arzak, could be the result of a joke, making fun of cooks who
tried to be overly French. Nevertheless, the Spanish and French traditions, whether in
technique or nomenclature, coexist and play off of each other to create a prototypical
Spanish, and specifically Basque, dish.
For Arzak and other early chefs of the Spanish haute cuisine movement, the
cookbooks they produced are extensions of the chefs themselves. Playing off their
celebrity status and marketing themselves as well as the food, their cookbooks are
intended for a general audience as both spectacle and practical cooking knowledge.
While not specifically dumbing down or changing his recipes, Arzak does create a more
everyday-cooking friendly collection by allowing for his recipes to be altered ever so
slightly by accommodating for technical and gastronomic tastes and abilities of all levels.
If we analyze further the function of cookbooks as a literary genre, all cookbooks
focus on the stories that are intertwined with the numerical formulas and textual recipes
that fill each page. Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster, in their edited book The Recipe
Reader: Narratives, Contexts, Traditions, state that “the recipe, in its intertextuality, is
also itself a narrative which can engage the reader or cook in a ‘conversation’ about
culture and history in which the recipe and its context provide part of the text and the

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reader imagines (or even eats) the rest” (2). The literary tradition of cookbooks is a rich
one that proves that they consist of much more than simple instruction. Janet Theophano,
in Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives Through the Cookbooks They Wrote, echoes a
similar sentiment when she explains that the “themes found in cookbooks are timeless:
life and death, youth and age, faithfulness and betrayal, memory and forgetfulness, yet
cookbooks also tell us how to make beauty and meaning in the midst of the mundane”
(6). While these two works present the genre through the lens of women writers, these
are universal characteristics of all cookbooks. Regardless of gender, Theophano notes
that the writing of a cookbook is akin to writing the self. Writing a cookbook is an act
that is “self-conscious or not…is an act of autobiographical writing and self-
representation” (121). So while the cookbook is presented as an instructional culinary
guide, it is inherently coded with the personal philosophy of the chef/author.
Using New Zealand as a testing ground, Michael Symons analyzes the changes in
titles of cookbooks and affirms that “the basic premise is that book titles are ready made
encapsulations of prevailing interests and expectations” (216). For Symons, cookbook
titles reveal the dominant and emerging gastronomic trends. Themes appear through a
recurrence of words, phrases and topics. Through a study of titles, one can theoretically
uncover the normalized tradition as well as the vanguard, introducing new ideas into the
established canon. Furthermore, Danish historian Carol Gold suggests that cookbooks
and their titles go beyond gastronomic interests and trends. For her, “[c]ookbooks, as do
all books, tell stories” (11). These stories are often gastronomic in nature but more often
the historian notes that cookbooks “rarely convey what people actually eat” (C. Gold 11).
Instead, cookbooks present much broader ideas about the society at large. Speaking of
the distinct changes seen in title, theme and style of cookbooks, Gold acknowledges that
these changes “parallel changes that we know are taking place in the social and political
world” (12). Cookbooks, thus, address much more than just simple gastronomic trends
and ideas. They are encapsulations of the social, political and cultural climate of a given
context.
In this way, the El Bulli cookbook’s story is one of innovation and technological
change. Adrià uses “foaming, freeze-drying, and capsulating to reach higher levels of
self-expression and flavor intensity” (Dudek 53). Airy foams are created by injecting

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carbon dioxide into liquids. Caviars are made from liquids by spherifying them in a
particular solution. Liquid nitrogen is used to instantly freeze room temperature items. It
is a change that illustrates the seismic shift in the way food is perceived and conceived,
one that broadens and introduces a new language of food. This cookbook does not
narrowly describe the foods of an isolated restaurant on the Catalonian coast. It tells the
broader story of the national, continental and global changes that haute cuisine was
experiencing in the early 2000s. This cookbook does not, as Gold suggests, convey
anything about what the general public is eating or has eaten. It does, however, signal
what and how people will eat in the future. Moreover, the current cookbook sustains
Symons’ idea that titles are indicative of gastronomic trends and interests. Immensely
popular and renowned as a restaurant, El Bulli demonstrates the shift from chef-driven
cookbooks (those marketed by name recognition) to restaurant-driven cookbooks. The
present cookbook exhibits the trend of haute cuisine restaurants extending into the
cultural majority. Although many enthusiasts never ate in the restaurant, it as well as
other high-end establishments have become cultural icons worthy of consumption by the
masses. Its appeal extends beyond the elite into the more democratic foodie culture.
Published in both Spanish and English, the seemingly presumptuous eponymous El Bulli
captures the zeitgeist of late 1990s/early 2000s vanguard haute cuisine.
Capitalizing on its high praise and award-winning status, the restaurant itself
became a gastronomical icon and its self-titled cookbook emphasized the transition of
haute cuisine from an esoteric culture to a popular celebrity and to a certain extent a
democratic, consumer culture. Its rise to fame also coincided with the invention of the
blogging culture and distribution of the culinary arts to the mass media markets of the
internet and cable television. Again, this food does not represent what people are actually
eating. Instead, it is evidence of a new type of gastronomic consumption: that of
metaphor. Most people will never eat the haute cuisine of El Bulli yet they are
consumers through reading the cookbook. As opposed to physical consumption,
consumers of gastronomic knowledge can understand foods, restaurants and taste without
ever leaving their home. The internet and food discourse exemplified by the Food
Network exposes food knowledge to all classes of people. This democratic nature breaks
down economic and social barriers by teaching consumers about taste. Theoretically,

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viewers familiarize themselves with haute-cuisine techniques and trends, taste
expectations of exotic and expensive food stuffs without ever physically experiencing the
cooking or tasting of a dish or food. The cookbook becomes a way in which consumers
can metaphorically consume food without physically tasting, smelling or touching food.
While the New Zealand and Dutch contexts differ greatly from that of Spain,
Symons notes that cookbooks are a global movement: “This implies that the New
Zealand experience, rather than being some isolated curiosity, is associated with
profound global movements” (216). In today’s globalized society, it is not surprising that
El Bulli’s fame extends across oceans. It is significant, as well, that the edition examined
is a translated, English version. Gastronomy no longer exists solely within the confines
of political and national borders. This cookbook acts as a transmitter of both Spanish and
global high cuisine.
Further analysis of the cookbook’s title cements the vanguard nature of this series.
The lack of a descriptive title and of any depiction of food on the cover highlights not
only the restaurant’s name recognition but also falls in line with Adrià’s motto of: ne pas
copier. The readers already have a preconceived notion of what a cookbook is and how it
should be presented and organized. They even have preconceptions of Spanish alta
cocina cookbooks. Again, Adrià rejects these traditional notions in favor of placing his
stamp on both Spanish and global gastronomy.
In contrast to his haute cuisine cookbook forbearers, this cookbook and the
restaurant refuse to fall in line and reaffirm that there should be no expectations other
than a quality culinary experience. The blank slate of the book’s cover transmits Adrià’s
expectation: empty preconceptions and intrigue. Each plate and recipe is different and
never repeats season to season, volume to volume. There is no need for description in the
title. Intrigue is created by promising a new and unique experience for each visit or
reading. Amateur culinary enthusiasts choose this book for that same reason. They want
the unknown, cutting-edge gastronomy. Although this sense of surprise and intrigue
dominates both the recipe book and restaurant, each plate and recipe has a strict order and
logic. As mentioned earlier, Adrià’s essential gastronomic philosophy is personified in
the theory of deconstruction. According to Fabio Parasecoli, the chef thinks that “recipes
are a re-invention of tradition” (66). Parasecoli continues:

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 The concepts of Adrià translates and materializes into food are, by his own
admission, amazingly close to those developed within the literary and
philosophical movement generally known as deconstruction: the same
provocative use of estrangement, intended to make the most familiar structures,
classifications, and conceptual systems totally unfamiliar; the same intense effort
to subvert any absolute set of assumptions, to relentlessly fray the signifying
differences in the canonized and mythicized culinary discourse..[it] consists of re-
reading texts or recipes, while simultaneously soliciting them. (Parasecoli 63)
This should come as no surprise given Adrià’s constant desire to re-create
culinary language. In addition to deconstruction, the book and Adrià’s gastronomy can
be viewed through Antonio Sánchez’s ideas of the postmodern Spain. For him,
postmodern Spain is defined by a “juxtaposition of traditional symbols” (21). In Adrià’s
cooking, this juxtaposition is evident through his use of traditional flavors and ingredients
to create new dishes. Riffs on Spanish dishes such as tortilla española or gazpacho
invoke these traditions while presenting them in new ways such as through foam or
temperature manipulation. Sánchez proposes that this hybrid quality of culture is another
tenet of postmodern Spain (27). Similarly, Adrià seeks to redefine what is thought of as
typical Spanish cooking by incorporating regional and foreign influences and combining
them to create a uniquely and innovated Spanish cooking style. Equally, this innovation
illustrates the “postmodern emancipatory ideal that enables the evolution of political,
social and public discourses that challenge the existing system” (Agawu-Karkraba 14).
His gastronomy liberates culinary discourse from the suffocating, traditional system.
Renowned Catalan chef Carme Ruscalleda supports this idea by stating that Adrià “was
the first one to tell the chefs of Spain we could think for ourselves” (Moskin). Brimming
with creativity and possibility, Adrià’s cookbooks break the culinary norms and rewrite
the gastronomic system to reflect today’s Spain.
Following this new norm, Adrià’s food presentation reveals a playful style that is
represented in the cookbook. The book is organized in an almost capricious way that is
in line with the chef’s new ideas on how cookbooks should be:
Customarily, the page before the reader now should contain a conventional
presentation. The presentation would say that this book is a compilation of the

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 last five years in El Bulli, a period that has meant the consolidation of our style
and our way of understanding cooking. It would go on to say how, when and why
we decided to publish a work of this type; but we feel that the Guide to the work
that is included with this book, as well as the introduction on the next page,
provide enough explanations in this respect, and so, just this once, we prefer to
ignore the rules. Adrià, ElBulli 13
This passage exemplifies Adrià’s humorous, self-aware take on the cookbook.
His passage demonstrates a deep understanding of the tradition and what readers expect
when opening a recipe book. In doing this, he subverts the tradition, taking the accepted
norm and delivers that norm, that “conventional presentation” in an unconventional way.
The same information is included in each presentation but in his playful way, Adrià
challenges the traditional structure without removing too much familiarity. The book
reflects on the genre itself and its expectations and simultaneous questions them while
maintaining the essence of the cookbook. From page one it announces that it is a
different take on the cookbook.
Like we have seen with Arzak’s cookbook, other alta cocina cookbooks are
organized in a very deliberate way, showcasing the chef’s talents and also making their
exclusive foods available to a much more broad audience, focusing on the artful
presentation of the final product and the culinary process to achieve that presentation.
General cookbooks are prepared thematically and geared towards a specific audience
(diabetics or working mothers), a specific cuisine (Italian or French) or a specific cooking
method (grilling, microwaving or roasting). These books, defined by text and few
photos, focus on the recipe itself. They orient the reader to the preparation and cooking
process, but not necessarily to a finished product. El Bulli, on the contrary, does the
opposite. The book makes the finished product featuring the final dish as the centerpiece
while relegating the process of the recipe to the periphery. While it does follow a logical
order tracing each season’s dishes from the first plate to the last, El Bulli does not offer a
single recipe in the book itself. Instead, the recipes are found in an accompanying CD-
ROM that you find located at the end of the book. Already an outdated technology, the
CD-ROM addition highlights Adrià’s willingness to marry food and technology.
Presenting the recipes through a digital medium, Adrià actually removes the reader

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further from the kitchen. While 2005 did know laptop computers, portable and durable
tablets did not exist and the idea of using a piece of electronic equipment to guide
cooking was unheard of. It demonstrates the chef’s vanguard, forward thinking but in the
context of the year, is also a testament to Adrià’s discouragement of replication. The
physical cookbook is ultimately not for cooking but meditating on the cooking process of
another, marveling at the spectacle of these improbable dishes and glorifying the El Bulli
style.
The CD-ROM represents yet another barrier Adrià places in front of the reader in
an attempt to discourage any perversion of his new culinary language. The dialogue
between chef and diner, while presented via an interactive platform, does not provide any
interaction between author and reader. Instead, it reiterates Adrià’s complete control of
his dining metaphor. Outside of the confines of the El Bulli dining room, these dishes
and their recipes lose their intended metaphor. Furthermore, the CD-ROM offers another
way in which Adrià has maintained the traditional components of a cookbook yet
presented them in a new fashion.
Instead of recipes, the book fills itself with high-definition photographs on glossy
stock documenting the many dishes of El Bulli. Adrià obligates the reader to marvel at
the impossibility of his intricate creations. The plates appear as if they were works of art,
full of varying brilliant color and geometrically defying forms. The reader soon
recognizes the difficulty and folly of any attempt to recreate these masterpieces. This is
not a typical book of recipes but a glorification of a master chef’s work. The reader must
ask themselves: How could I possibly recreate this recipe?
If this cookbook does not focus on the recipes, what then is its purpose? To
answer this question, one must understand Adrià’s motives. His impetus is artistic. In
her dissertation, Alison Atkins presents Adrià as a chef in a cocina de autor where the
principle characteristic is an unfulfilled desire to liberate oneself from the binding norms
of tradition. Creation drives him. Joshua Abrams speaks of this artistic influence by
explaining that Adrià’s “concerns were equally with the intersection of scenography and
dramaturgical structure of the meal” (9). Taking cues from theater and performance,
Abrams equates dinner service at El Bulli to a carefully constructed and well-designed
performance. Isabelle de Solier observes in her study of molecular gastronomy and El

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Bulli that the chef enjoys the triangle created between him, his creation and the client: “A
dish is a dialogue between the chef and diner” (162). Similarly, Atkins notes in an earlier
cookbook that Adrià “establishes a relationship with the reader and implies that he or she
will join Adrià in active creation of nuevos platos” (99). Abrams suggests that this
relationship, this dialogue, extends into the theatrical realm where the “diner’s encounter
is choreographed with an awareness of the setting and the dramaturgy of the meal” (8).
His gastronomic drama, his art, however, is no longer open to interpretation. De
Solier notes that “[d]iners…are instructed by their waiters on the ‘right’ way to consume
each dish in order to understand the chef’s intended meaning…In Adrià’s gastronomic
world, there is no death of the chef” (163). As well, Abrams’ invocation of this idea of
the dining experience as performance and scenography reiterates the idea that Adrià’s
food is a carefully constructed act, written by the chef with a specific meaning in mind.
While Abrams suggests that diners become “co-producer[s] in the dramaturgy of the
meal” (10), it feels more likely that diners lose a sense of agency and are relegated to a
passive role in the artificiality presented by this performance. Without the “death of the
chef,” diners are mere pawns in Adrià’s creationist, performative experience.
Similarly, his cookbook must be understood as an extension of this performative
presentation in the appropriate way to read, receive and understand his work. It is an
instructed reading in which a reader cannot pick and choose dishes; rather they must
contemplate the work as a whole following the intended progression. As de Solier
suggests, Barthes’ death of the author does not apply to Adrià’s gastronomic outlook.
His plates are not open to interpretation and his purported triangular dialogue is relegated
to a one-way didactic instruction. This puts into question the true aim of this cookbook.
Whereas the cookbook is used as a guide for active re-creation for the reader, Adrià’s
iteration does not value this function. Atkins hints at this idea regarding his first
cookbook explaining that the collection “merely serves to teach readers how to concebir
nuevos platos” (100). His recipes are too intricate and esoteric, both technically and
gastronomically, to be re-created faithfully. Inevitably, the desired meaning so valued by
Adrià will be lost in the cooking process. The recipes are offered only half-heartedly at
the end so that the reader can further marvel at Adrià’s genius. His philosophy does not
permit interpretation as this would violate his intended meaning. In this way, his

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cookbook does not offer any literal recipe. His recipes can only be metaphor as they will
never be smelled, tasted, or understood according to his preferred meaning.
After the photo essay section, the reader finally arrives at the previously
mentioned guide and recipe section. The guide, however, differs greatly from traditional
recipe books. This guide reads much more like a scientific text describing new
technology and techniques. As seen in many cookbooks, this edition includes a
gastronomic glossary. This glossary, however, does not include any elementary culinary
terms such as roast, sauté or other French-derived cooking terms. Instead, the reader is
introduced to a literal manifestation of Adrià’s new culinary language. Words such as
deconstruction, foam, gelatin and sixth sense are re-defined according to the El Bulli
culinary lexicon. Here, Adrià does textually challenge the traditional cookbook’s
language and rhetoric while inventing and putting into words new techniques and
gastronomic concepts.
Turning to the final page of the guide, the reader is presented the coding system
that Adrià implements to classify his food pyramid. Moving beyond the basic
classification system of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats, etc., Adrià classifies all
products from meats, fish, fruits and vegetables, gases, waters, wines, and foie gras by
coded symbol. These symbols resemble chemical symbols utilized in chemistry labs
across the world, not in kitchens. While the word recipe originally referred to a more
scientific prescription, there was always an accepted deviation to accommodate personal
preference. For Adrià, there is no deviation. His recipes are scientific formulas dictated
by scientific logic that is not easily understood by the casual reader.
Nevertheless, Adrià’s less accommodating style has extended well beyond his
small inlet on the Catalonian coast. In Spain, Adrià recognizes the interest in imitating
(and imitating poorly) his style as well as lamenting the state of “traditional” Spanish
cooking as evidenced by what he deems as poorly constructed paellas and tortillas
españolas (Richardson 44). While disciples like José Andrés are bringing Spanish flavor
stateside, the vanguard lies within Adrià. As Claudia Roden exclaims: “They can’t go
further than Ferran…It’s impossible” (Moskin).
In conclusion, Adrià and his El Bulli restaurant have revolutionized the global
gastronomic discourse. Moreover, he has elevated gastronomy to an even higher cultural

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and popular discourse. His philosophy rejects the traditional and situates itself within the
gastronomic vanguard. He questions the limits of the art and redefines them in order to
redefine the meaning of gastronomy in the twenty-first century. As a consequence, the
cookbook as a genre has succumbed to this redefinition. The El Bulli series is a
celebration of food. It is, in itself, a spectacle of Adrià’s molecular gastronomy.
Photographs dominate the pages, ignoring traditional cookbook norms. Recipes are
presented through digital CD-ROMs. This volume is an introduction to the new culinary
vanguard and demonstrates the ability to transform how we consume food discourses.
This edition, however, exemplifies the cookbook that dissuades physical consumption of
food. For Adrià, the purpose of his cookbook lies in metaphorical consumption. The
goal is not to assist recreations of his gastronomic art; instead, the diner/reader can only
consume the recipes without tasting them so that Adrià’s meaning is conveyed
accurately. The traditional genre norms no long apply. This book, in contrast, intends to
glorify the limits of gastronomy by offering unreproducible recipes forged in the
technological kitchens of El Bulli.
Spain: A Michelin Analysis
As we have seen thus far, a national cuisine is difficult to define. While a national
cuisine is an intangible concept, there have been other conceptualizations that have
sought to tangibly define a gastronomic environment. This classification can be
understood as a food landscape or foodscape. It is important to clarify that a foodscape is
but one component in understanding and defining national cuisine. Plainly, it is any
opportunity to interact with food. In more certain terms, the foodscape is as Amelia
Lake, et al. define: a “food environment…encompass[ing] any opportunity to obtain food
and includes physical, socio-cultural, economic and policy influences at both micro and
macro-levels.” It exists as many overlapping planes of multiple sub-foodscapes that
represent the multitude of ways in which food is consumed within the local, national or
even global food geographies. It must be added, however, that the foodscape also
represents all opportunities to create and sell food as well as the discourse of food itself.
By creating a gastronomic discourse, we ourselves are constantly reshaping and
redefining what the foodscape is and how it interacts with the population.

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 What complicates the foodscape even more are the external forces exerted upon
it. Social, economic, political and cultural factors influence, as Lake explains, the ways
in which certain populations interact with food. These external factors create news ways
in which food is produced, consumed and thought of, shifting and creating new
gastronomic geographies. Furthermore, a specific foodscape is almost never entirely
self-sufficient. Following an ecological model, a specific foodscape is only one web of
an interconnected network of global foodscapes that mutually influence each other. This
influence is most readily seen through movement, both human and gastronomic. As
humans move and enter new foodscapes, they bring with them values that potentially
change existing foodscapes. Equally, foodstuffs themselves define foodscapes in a global
world as products are available year round through expanded and expedited shipping.
Every foodscape is defined by its interaction with each other, leaving behind distinct
traces of different peoples, cultures and values.
The Michelin Guide
The Michelin Guide, first published in 1900 (Olson 205), has become the de facto
haute cuisine dining guide for the past century. While other guides like Zagat’s and the
purely digital Urbanspoon (now Zomato) rely on feedback by innumerable user reviews,
the Michelin guides create a more nuanced collection of restaurants rooted in disciplined,
if unknown dining criteria. The dining guide is commonly referred to as the “red guide”
for its red cover and also includes hotel rankings and maps. As Olson explains: “at its
inception, the Guide was neither a tourist nor a hotel guide, but rather a handbook for
motorists” (205). In a period where cars were a relative novelty, the guides were given
out with tire purchases to inform motorists of automobile friendly areas and roads
(Olson). Olson also reminds us that maps “were included…from the start” (207).
This idea that, from a mapping project comes the preeminent dining guide,
underlines the work undertaken in this study. Inherently visual, the foodscape has been
insufficiently thought of and represented in visual terms. In his discussion of the French
Michelin Guide, Daniel Sipe writes that the “Guide was clearly responsible for retracing
the boundaries of what was generally considered comestible France” (4). The Guide
itself creates a national cuisine map. This map can be thought of as a foodscape, one that
in this case reveals haute cuisine preferences. The preferences and the selections of the

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restaurants, however, reveal more about the national cuisine than just dots on a map.
What it demonstrates is that the “ongoing question of the Guide’s authority is tied to the
larger issues of national and regional identities and the power relations that define the
socio-political agendas that shape them” (Sipe 4). While Sipe suggests two conclusions
regarding the impact of the Guide on national cuisine, the effect on Spanish national
cuisine is best defined “as a kind of decentralization of culinary expertise whereby
regional and local identities are confirmed and celebrated” (4). Examining the thirty-five
year data compiled for this study, the results show a decentralization from the urban
centers of Madrid and Barcelona to more rural areas that exemplify the regional influence
upon Spanish national cuisine. As Sipe concludes, the Michelin Guides provide the
“historical moment when centralized sources of legitimation (like Michelin) and regional
culinary identities ceased to be conflictual and instead entered into a relationship in
which they exist in a kind of blissful tautology, each serving to confirm and naturalize the
existence of the other” (4).
After sharing space within the German guide, the modern Spain/Portugal dual
guide of today began publication in 1973. For the sake of this study, the years of the
guides consulted range from 1980-2015. The Guide ranks restaurants on a scale of one to
three stars. One star is defined as a restaurant that is “a very good restaurant” while a two
star restaurant is “worth a detour” and a three star is “worthy of a special voyage.” An
accompanying classification, the Bib Gourmand, was introduced in 1997 and indicates
“good food at moderate prices.” As vague as the distinctions are, the selection process
and judging criteria are even more vague and are guarded in secrecy. Michelin inspectors
“operat[e] on the principle that only reviews by anonymous, professionally trained
experts can be trusted for accurate assessments of a restaurant’s food and service”
(Colapinto). Secrecy and anonymity are valued at the price of transparency for the
consumer. Judging criteria are not released. Inspectors cannot speak to the media and
“[m]any of the company’s top executives have never met an inspector” (Colapinto). In
this same New Yorker article, a supervised interview and dining inspection with
managing director Jean-Luc Naret revealed certain clues. Inspectors seek complex menu
items that reveal quality as well as technique. Each inspector must complete a multi-
month training which culminates in France. They, themselves, are required to come from

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a service industry related field and often work (eat out) for the majority of their meals
each year (Colapinto).
While inspector preferences, biases and taste criteria can be endlessly argued,
Christel Lane explains that for all of us eaters “[b]oth gustatory and metaphorical taste
are about the immediacy of the pleasure or displeasure attending experience, both
concern issues of relative preference and standards for aesthetic discrimination” (342).
Inevitably, the Michelin guide has become the standard bearer of taste and aesthetic
discrimination within the haute cuisine30 foodscape. Lane continues that “[h]aute cuisine
dishes invite aesthetic involvement by producers and consumers, and they demand
judgments of both gustatory and metaphorical taste and may give rise to the emergence of
tastemakers” (342-43).
The Michelin guide has, thus, become a taste maker. Michelin and other guides
represent a “[c]ritical discourse [that] is both a mediator between producers and
consumers of cultural objects and (original emphasis) a detriment of aesthetic and/or
symbolic value” (Lane 345). The detriment that Lane suggests takes form in the
influence that the Michelin guide exerts itself as a cultural object. With its reputation, the
metaphorical taste of these restaurants and, thus, their cultural power benefits or suffers
from the guide’s classification system. As a mediator of cultural value, the Michelin
guide determines a restaurant’s cultural value within a society without regard to
individual gustatory preferences. By being selected for the guide, a restaurant, based on
this taste maker status, is elevated to not only a cultural (metaphorical) elite taste level
but also simultaneously to a real (gustatory) elite taste level without most individuals
having physically eaten a dish. The Michelin guide creates a specific sub-foodscape
comprised solely of restaurants.
While the cultural power of the taste maker allows for the incorporation of taste
(on a metaphorical level) into the foodscape, the real gustatory individual taste preference
remains elusive. Zagat’s and Urbanspoon originally represented a possible means to
incorporating individual gustatory taste, but both those guides have arguably been
converted into taste makers through their popularity, thus negating any possibility of

30
The term haute cuisine is in need of a re-definition. While the mental image suggests a stuffy, elegant,
civilized environment, the current trend of chefs and restaurants combating this with casual fine dining
experiences merits a reevaluation of terminology.

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understanding and incorporating individual preference into our definition of gastronomic
urbanism. The only way to include taste as a value is through the metaphorical, cultural
value taste standard.
For this project, the Guides from 1980-2014 have been consulted and mapped to
provide visual accompaniment to the numerical data.31 In the year 2014, Spain registered
eight restaurants with three stars, the highest total the country has seen in the 42 years of
the modern Spain/Portugal Guide. At the outset of the present data set, Spain opened the
1980 guide with 58 starred restaurants. There were not, however, any three star
restaurants until 1987. In 1987, the Madrid restaurant Zalacaín registered Spain’s first
three star honor. That restaurant would maintain its three star status until 1996 and would
maintain at least one star until the publication of the 2015 Guide. Spain’s second three
star restaurant came in the form of San Sebastián and Basque stalwart Arzak, restaurant
of famed chef Juan Mari Arzak.32 Arzak has yet to relinquish its three star titles and is
the longest tenured three star restaurant in Spanish history. Overall, Spain has 11
restaurants that have held the coveted three star mantle.33 Only Zalacáin, El Bulli and
Can Fabes have lost their third star. In El Bulli’s case, it was due to the closure of the
restaurant with the three stars intact while Can Fabes lost three stars after the death of its
chef, Santi Santamaría. Along with Elena Arzak (Juan Mari’s daughter), Carme
Ruscalleda of Sant Pau is the only other female chef with the three star distinction.
The number of Michelin restaurants within Spain has risen steadily each year with
the exception of a minor downtick during the years of 1995-2004. It is also important to
note that although the transition corresponding to the onset of the economic crisis of
2008-2009 only produced four more starred restaurants for Spain, the economic
difficulties have not produced a negative trend in terms of total Michelin numbers. This
is not to say that all Michelin restaurants have fared well in the years following 2008.
For a more detailed discussion on the effects of the economic crisis, please see the
following chapter and its discussion of the accompanying gastronomic crisis. Along with
31
Preliminary data sets and tables are included in the addendum along with selected maps. Full data sets
can be requested via email.
32
Juam Mari Arzak is still chef at his namesake restaurant though he does share those duties with his
daughter, Elena, who has transitioned into running day-to-day kitchen operations.
33
These restaurants are (in chronological order): Zalacaín (1987), Arzak (1989), Can Fabes (1995), El Bulli
(1997), Martín Berasategui (2002), Sant Pau (2006), Akelarre (2007), El Cellar de Can Roca (2010),
Quique Dacosta (2013), Azurmendi (2013) and DIVERXO (2014).

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the eight three-star restaurants, Spain counts 17 two-star establishments, a figure that has
maintained even during the years of 2012-2014. In 2014, Spain had a total of 158 one-
star restaurants, an increase of exactly one hundred more one-star establishments since
the 1980 year. As we will see later, Spain still remains a relative newcomer onto the
Michelin gastronomic scene. France and Japan still dominate but the Spanish share of
Michelin stars continues to grown, and most importantly, Spanish chefs are held with the
highest global regard.
But what does all this data mean? What can we learn from studying the
numerical totals of Michelin restaurants and their geographical locations? What about
the food they serve? What can their menu choices tell us about the current state of
Spanish national cuisine? In order to answer those questions, we must first understand
how guidebooks such as Michelin produce a national foodscape and how the working
definitions of the urban and rural can inform the conclusions made by studying the
Michelin foodscape data.
Michelin Stars and Urbanity
One must question the definition of gastronomic urbanism by exploring current
ideas in Urban Theory as well as how gastronomy interacts within the urban and rural
contexts in order to understand the implications set forth by the Michelin-produced
national foodscape and their ramifications for the overall national cuisine. At its most
superficial reading, the Michelin data reveals that there exists a general geographic
prevalence to the northern part of the country. When examining 3-star restaurants, the
highest honor, there has only been one restaurant located in the geographical south,
Quique Dacosta in Dénia near Valencia. Furthermore, evidence shows that the two
largest cities, Madrid and Barcelona, do not account for and do not produce high levels of
Michelin starred restaurants and perform even worse when specifically analyzing three
star data. This trend has produced a movement toward less urban and more rural areas.
This process of de-urbanization is a product of multiple factors including tourism (both
urban and rural) and the established regionally pluralistic national cuisine.
In order to fully understand these trends, we must first understand current urban
and rural ideas, globally and within the Spanish context. Furthermore, we must adapt
these ideas to create urban and rural gastronomic theories. Neil Brenner, the renowned

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urban theorist, notes that the UN has already “famously declared the advent of an ‘Urban
Age’” (86) but that competing ideas of what urban really means has undermined many
efforts to define the urban with any authority. Nevertheless, the urban “ha[s] become
essential to planetary political-economic, social and cultural life and socioenvironmental
conditions” (89). Following this idea of the urban’s importance on everyday life, the
urban must be as important, shaping those same spheres of life, as it regards to food.
Urban spaces have traditionally been renowned for their avant-garde gastronomic and
culinary forward thinking and this idea is bolstered by the Michelin guides, as will be
discussed later.
While the questions of what is urban is still contested, we must consider whether
or not urban gastronomy mimics this indecision or is evolving at a less-rapid pace.
Brenner provides historical background on urbanity stating that “in the late 1930s,
Chicago School urban sociologist Louis Wirth famously delineated the analytical
contours of Urbanism with reference to a classic triad of sociological properties- large
population size, high population density, and high levels of demographic heterogeneity”
(90). This classic definition may serve well to create a working definition of
Gastronomic Urbanism. This type of gastronomic foodscape, as it relates to the urban,
must include a large gastronomic population, high gastronomic population density and
high levels of gastronomic heterogeneity.
In this definition, we must delineate ourselves what each criterion includes.
Gastronomic population, relating to the previous definition of Lake, must encompass all
opportunities to create, consume and speak of food. These opportunities to create include
traditional notions of culinary schools and kitchens (both private and restaurant) whereas
opportunities to consume should include both physical and symbolic consumption. These
places include restaurants, cafes as well as consumption sites such as grocers, super and
specialty markets, including the virtual internet market. Food discourse contains all
forums, both formal and informal, where food is discussed including personal
interactions, internet venues, cable TV and film programming as well as traditional print
media reviews and columns.
In regards to population, there must exist a high number of spaces of opportunity
in comparison to the general population. In addition, gastronomic heterogeneity must

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account for a large variety of gastronomic opportunity spaces highlighting the
classifications conceived by both Lake, et al. and Zachary Paul Neal34 to include all types
of retail, consumer and production spaces. Furthermore, there must be diversity in regard
to the types of cuisines available. These definitions create a working definition of
Gastronomic Urbanism.
Using this definition and concept as our base, we can hypothesize that both
Madrid and Barcelona would be considered gastronomically urban cities. They both
have large gastronomic populations and densities, and as major urban hubs, have large
immigrant populations that historically foment diverse urban cuisines. They are,
however, major tourist centers. This tourist angle provides both advantages and
disadvantages to the foodscape. Tourism benefits cities by attracting many diverse
populations with disposable incomes. This influx of peoples and money create the
demand and need for more food opportunities. On the other hand, tourists can be
reluctant eaters. Referring back to Chapter Three, the tourist food paradox is that while
they want to eat “authentic, local” food, they still desire and need a sense of familiarity.
Similar to the implementation of ethnic food, restaurants must create meals that are exotic
enough and transmit the local, authentic culture without crossing into displeasure. Most
tourist food products are, unfortunately, dumbed-down versions of classic national dishes
that transform into caricatures or clichés of the original. The increased demand always
entices mass-production techniques. Fast service and quickly cooked meals dominate
tourist hot spots where rent is often high and overhead is shaved by limiting costs through
cuts in quality. Pre-packaged and manufactured food defines the tourist pitfall.
Gastronomic tourism is, however, on the rise. This fad situates food first and
foremost as the reason for travel. Food becomes the destination. Restaurants or regions
famous for agricultural products situate themselves within this type of tourism. This has
been a common tool used in Spain recently and will be discussed later. While both
Madrid and Barcelona must cater to this tourist paradox, they also are the two largest
urban cities in a country whose culinary reputation has grown exponentially in the last
34
Neal categorizes restaurant opportunities into six categories: elite (based on AAA diamond ratings),
coffee shops, exotic ethnic, fast good, casual dining (national chains only) and entertainment restaurants
(national chains only). Lake, et al’s categories provide a much more inclusive range of food opportunities
including retail, bar, medical/hospitality and even production. Theirs creates a much better definition of
gastronomic opportunities not restricted to restaurant opportunities.

189
decade. How, as cities that fit the gastronomic urbanism criteria, do they not have a
better and more active gastronomic scene?
Spanish Gastronomic Urbanity
As we try to further problematize the foodscapes of Madrid and Barcelona, Neal’s
desert/oases dichotomy warrants further thought. As he begins his article, Neal laments
the lack of culinary innovation in the fitting desert climate of Phoenix, Arizona. Based
on the Phoenix New Times reader poll for 2003, many national chain and less authentic
restaurants populate the highest honor in many different categories. But the question
lingers, is food a reliable cultural barometer for Phoenix and other cities in the United
States as well as major world metropolitan areas and Spanish urban centers? Neal
answers this succinctly by proposing that “food is not only a functional good, but also a
cultural object – consumed not just for its nutrients, but also for its symbolic and aesthetic
value” (2).
In this way, the Barcelona and Madrid foodscapes are not only indicative of their
gastronomic settings and whether there exists a subjective notion of good food in each
city but also indicative of their larger cultural contribution. Foodscapes are but one
aspect that combines to create and validate a city’s cultural value. We must consider the
food environment and all its gastronomic opportunities as a means of understanding
culture. As we have discussed throughout the project, food has often been associated
with low culture, but the culinary innovations beginning with the French Nouvelle
Cuisine and extending to Spain in the form of the Basque and now Catalan (and national)
culinary revolutions have shifted their emphasis from a simple, thoughtless passive act of
eating to an act that encompasses all senses and attempts to create culture and ideas with
food. While new technologies have created news ways to create and think of food (as
evidenced in our previous discussion of the chef Ferran Adrià), there has been an equal
yet proportionate reaction to this trend that is often described as culturally elitist. Many
chefs have begun to rethink their culinary and restaurant approaches to reject the
common tradition of “formal service and French accents” (Heyman). The prices however
remain high, catering to an economic elite. Not overlapping into what Neal would
suggest as “McCulture oases” (13), newer chefs are creating equally fascinating and
boundary pushing foods without the high price tag and elitist criticism. While these types

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of gastronomic opportunities include food trucks, microbreweries and other restaurants
that cater to a more democratic demographic known mostly by the term ‘foodie,’ they
equally reject the homogenizing effects of McDonaldization as do their foils in haute
cuisine. An example of these restaurants would be the Spanish chef David Muñoz’s
more affordable but equally exciting StreetXO (Heyman), a democratic companion to his
three-starred Michelin restaurant DiverXO. This restaurant does not sacrifice culinary
innovation and quality for price.
Although Neal does not, however, adequately problematize his idea of “urbane
oases,” his definition does provide us with a good base of understanding the problems of
urban gastronomy. In his words, “urbane oases” are those foodscapes where
“establishments like McDonald’s and Burger King are still common in these cities,
stylish haute cuisine, hip coffee houses and exotic ethnic fare are also easy to find” (11-
12). This definition does not take into account in the ever-crucial taste component of a
foodscape. While an urban foodscape may fulfill each of these nicely packaged
categories, it makes no attempt to understand the quality of this food. Understandably so,
this quality element is the most difficult to define as taste is an inherently subjective
notion. Guides, such as Michelin and Zagat and now Urbanspoon (Zomato), seek to
influence and create a taste index. The fact is that Neal’s previous ideas of gastronomic
urbanity do not take taste into account. A city may be, by definition, a gastronomically
urban city and still have bad food. The quality aspect is one that cannot be sourced from
definitions rooted in gastronomic opportunities alone. To fully understand a foodscape,
we must include these external and varied quality indexes.
Returning to the Spanish context, both Madrid and Barcelona must be considered
urban foodscapes using both the gastronomic urbanism definition as well as Neal’s
classifications. They are both highly populated cities. They both have a large number of
gastronomic opportunities which create a high gastronomic density. They also are varied
in their gastronomic opportunities which create a high diversity amongst restaurants,
types of cuisine and types of foodstuffs. What cannot be ascertained by this information
is the taste component. For that, we must use external data and in this case the most valid
data is the Michelin Guide.
Spanish Michelin Foodscape

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 In analyzing this Spanish Michelin foodscape, what types of knowledge will be
gained in regards to Spain? First, based on rankings in comparison to other countries, we
can judge the gastronomic cultural capital possessed by Spain. In addition, within Spain
we can visually map the geographical hotspots and create a gastronomic culture value
system based on starred restaurants. From these maps, we can infer trends not only
regarding culinary innovation but also in regards to tourism and gastronomy as well as
the interplay between rural and urban gastronomies.
First, and foremost, we must analyze the historical data of Michelin starred
restaurants in Spain. Although the 1980s marked the turning point for Spanish fine
dining, it took until 1987 before a Spanish restaurant was awarded three Michelin stars,
with Madrid’s Zalacaín garnering the top prize. In the mid-2000s, Spain’s Michelin
three-star share grew, eventually reaching its high point this year with eight Michelin
three-star restaurants. Figure 14 below shows the yearly totals for Spanish Michelin
restaurants. 
Year Total 1-Star 2-Star 3-Star Madrid Barcelona
1980 58 52 6 0 12 (14%) 7 (12%)
1981 61 54 7 0 10 (16%) 9 (15%)
1982 73 66 7 0 12 (16%) 10 (14%)
1983 79 71 8 0 12 (15%) 12 (15%)
1984 81 73 8 0 13 (16%) 12 (15%)
1985 75 70 5 0 11 (14%) 12 (16%)
1986 90 85 5 0 14 (16%) 11 (12%)
1987 88 81 6 1 13 (15%) 12 (14%)
1988 99 92 6 1 16 (16%) 11 (11%)
1989 104 97 5 2 16 (15%) 14 (13%)
1990 101 94 5 2 16 1(6%) 14 (14%)
1991 103 97 4 2 15 (14%) 12 (11%)
1992 101 95 4 2 17 (17%) 11 (11%)
1993 113 105 6 2 18 (16%) 11 (10%)
1994 113 104 7 2 16 (14%) 11 (10%)
1995 98 90 5 3 14 (14%) 10 (10%)
1996 93 84 7 2 14 (15%) 8 (9%)
1997 89 78 8 3 13 (15%) 7 (8%)
1998 88 77 8 3 13 (15%) 7 (8%)
1999 89 78 8 3 13 (15%) 7 (8%)
2000 93 83 7 3 11 (12%) 7 (8%)
2001 94 83 8 3 7 (7%) 7 (7%)
2002 97 86 8 4 8 (8%) 7 (7%)
2003 90 78 8 4 7 (8%) 8 (9%)
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 2004 97 85 8 4 7 (7%) 7 (7%)
2005 102 88 10 4 6 (5%) 9 (8%)
2006 105 91 9 5 6 (7%) 11 (10%)
2007 119 104 9 6 7 (6%) 13 (9%)
2008 125 109 10 6 7 (6%) 14 (11%)
2009 129 114 9 6 8 (6%) 15 (12%)
2010 137 118 12 7 10 (7%) 16 (12%)
2011 139 117 15 7 10 (6%) 19 (12%)
2012 139 117 17 5 9 (6%) 17 (13%)
2013 147 123 17 7 9 (5%) 20 (14%)
2014 159 134 17 8 9 (5%) 23 (14%)
Figure 14: Historical Michelin Star Data Spain
Source: Michelin Guides Spain (1980-2014)
Compiled by: Matthew J. Wild

Analyzing the data above, we see that with the exception of the outlying years of
1999 and 2004 the number of restaurant receiving Michelin stars has steadily increased
with each subsequent year. As well, each category (one, two and three stars) has seen a
general positive trend. After losing two three-star restaurants in 2012, Spain quickly
reemerged in 2013 with seven and eventually increasing its total to eight in this current
year.35 Furthermore, the percentage of three-star restaurants has held steady at around
5% during the latter half of the 2000s and into the 2010s. One-star restaurants still make
up the vast majority of starred restaurants within Spain at a percentage of 85%.
In comparison to other countries, France registers with 610 total starred
restaurants including 27 three-starred establishments for 2014. The city of Tokyo itself
was awarded seven three-star restaurants while Hong Kong and Macau account for seven
as well. Western Japan contains 14 three-star restaurants. For Europe, Germany has 11
while Great Britain has four, Italy with eight, Belgium/Luxembourg three and
Switzerland and the Netherlands two. In the United States, New York leads the way with
seven while the San Francisco-Bay Area has two and Chicago one. The Michelin
Guides, in general, demonstrate a great preference toward Europe and Japan. The United
States editions were added to the repertoire in 2005 with the New York tome (Ferguson).
The guides still, however, ignore Africa, Oceania and Latin America. Being the home to
the original company and publisher of the European editions, France capitalizes on its
centuries old reputation as being the home of innovative cuisine. Japan, however, is
35
The 2015 Guide has also awarded Spain 8 three-star restaurants. Due to its publication date, the data
from the current year has not been included.

193
making up ground marking a total of 21 three-star restaurants this year. If we use the
Michelin three-star rankings as a de facto world culinary ranking, Spain and Italy are tied
for fifth position. For a country that only received its first three-star restaurant in 1989,
Spain has quickly established and continues to develop its unique brand of cocina de
vanguardia.
Figure 14 demonstrates the Michelin star share of Spain’s two most populous
cities, Madrid and Barcelona. Madrid’s highest share of Michelin stars was in 1980, the
first year included in this sample. Since then, it has shown a steady negative trend,
reaching a nadir of only 5% this year. Similarly, Barcelona’s zenith came in the first year
of the sample and continued downward until it reached a low point of 7% in 2004.
Unlike Madrid, Barcelona has changed course and has doubled its share within the last
decade to reach 14% this year.36
While madrileños will certainly express their biased comments that in Barcelona
no se come bien (you don’t eat well), Barcelona lovers will attest that the same is true for
Madrid. In either case, the data shows that neither city dominates the Michelin
foodscape. The two cultural capitals and by far, the two largest urban centers only
register a total of two three-star restaurants, ever. Both of those, Zalacaín (1987-1996)
and DiverXO (2014), call Madrid home. While Barcelona may claim a larger percentage
of total stars, neither city is at the forefront of this burgeoning Michelin foodscape. As
mentioned earlier, both cities are undoubtedly classified are gastronomically urban. They
have high restaurant densities and high heterogeneity in terms of cuisine as well as within
the chain/independent restaurant dichotomy. There is, however, a defining quality of
both cities; they are undoubtedly the tourism capitals of Spain. As stated prior, tourism
changes the gastronomic landscape. While gastronomic tourism and gastronomic
urbanism can coexist, it does change the foodscape, especially for three-star restaurants.
While there is not reliable data on tourist spending within Michelin starred restaurants in
Spain, common perception is that tourists make up a large dining demographic, especially
in three-starred restaurants. It is this tourist element and the existence of a tourism

36
The reader must keep in mind that this research is ongoing and subject to change due to the yearly
Michelin editions. In the 2015 Guide, Madrid has shown a considerable increase and it may suggest that
Madrid is beginning a Michelin resurgence much like Barcelona.

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foodscape within both of these cities that has contributed to the de-urbanization of the
Michelin foodscape in Spain.
In terms of tourism, we must remind ourselves that gastronomic experiences in
tourism “occu[r] in foreign and unfamiliar contexts” (Mak 176) and can be seen as both
as an attraction or an impediment (Mak). The attraction lies in the “authentic, local”
notion of exotic food while the impediment also lies within that same realm. There is a
fine line for tourists when eating. Mak, et al. also suggests “that tourists’ interests and
preferences for food in a destination can play a significant role in affecting their
destination choice” (172). This has seen the creation of gastronomic tourism where “food
products and culinary specialties become the vehicle for a closer understanding of
cultures” (López 166). This is tourism where food becomes the reason to travel as well
as the destination. While pure gastronomic tourism has increased within the last decade,
tourists have historically been reluctant to fully immerse themselves in a foreign cuisine.
This, again, speaks to the gastronomic paradox within tourism.
Tourism takes place now within a globalized world. As such, “globalisation can
significantly affect local gastronomic identity and image (the holistic impression of the
gastronomic landscape of a destination), and can result in the deprivation of a ‘sense of
place’ for both locals and tourists” (Mak 172). This sense of place, however, conjures an
idea of the French terroir and its ability to distinguish space through taste. Using
Catalonia as a case study, Davidson states that terroir functions through “the growing
practice of officially ‘denominating’ areas and products as having a fundamental
difference attached to their produce and practice” (40). This fundamental difference is
the space in which it was cultivated or made. The Spanish haute cuisine movement, as
evidenced in the earlier discussion, has sought to capitalize on this idea to market the
Spanish national cuisine as both being uniquely Spanish in the national sense as well as
simultaneously being uniquely regional. Davidson, however, asserts that a product does
not have to be consumed within its specified geography to transmit its spatial essence.
For him, the “act of tasting though, is not limited geographically and herein lies the key –
one need not experience terroir or its results in situ; for even if one bites into that pear in
Barcelona, the Lleida terroir will still be evident” (43-4).

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 With that said, the spatial repercussions of globalization, according to Mak, can
be superseded through a concerted effort on behalf of the chef and restaurant to produce a
terroir taste effect. Nevertheless, the tourism foodscape must coexist within these
spatial-taste contexts and within the larger national foodscape. The tourist foodscape can
act as a sub-foodscape that contributes to this ‘sense of place’ but this can be lost if the it
grows too large and becomes the dominant foodscape, as is often the case as the tourist
food environment is often described as being too homogenous and portraying reductive
ideas of the local and national foodscapes as evidenced in the consolidation of the
national cuisine during the Franco tourism boom.
For Spain, however, tourism remains a very economically rich industry. In 2013
alone, tourist spending made up €58.6 billion which accounted for almost 6% of total
GDP generating almost one million jobs, or 5.2% of the workforce. The country as a
whole, however, generated more domestic tourism dollars than foreign (55.7% vs.
44.3%).37 Individually, in 2012, Madrid received over eight million visitors at a foreign
vs. domestic rate of 1:1. Barcelona, however, received roughly seven million visitors
with foreigners comprising 76% of the visitors.38 From these tourism estimates alone, it
would seem that Barcelona’s foodscape would suffer more than Madrid. The Catalan
capital, however, has managed to reverse its falling Michelin trend; whereas Madrid’s
relatively high domestic tourism has not been able to overcome the perceived market
share of the tourist foodscape. As Mak, et al. reminds us that “tourist spending on food
can constitute up to one-third of the total tourist expenditure” (172), it should come as no
surprise that the tourist foodscape creates much supply. While there are no numbers to
define tourist gastronomic demand, tourists are generally confined to common tourist
areas during trips. The tourist foodscape appears to stifle innovation and creativity. As
evidenced by the Michelin data, both cities are not on the cutting edge of culinary
innovation within Spain. While it is the hypothesis of this analysis that the tourist
foodscape dilutes the local foodscape, more research is needed to better understand
tourism and its interaction with local foodscapes. Nevertheless, tourism is one factor in
the process of de-urbanizing the national Michelin foodscape.

37
These tourism estimates were taken from the World Travel and Tourism Council’s 2013 Spain report.
38
Madrid and Barcelona tourist estimate come from HVS Global Hospitality Services.

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 On the other hand, we must also consider the urban’s counterpart, the rural.
While Brenner affirms that the definitions and distinctions of the urban/rural binary are in
flux, he begins his “The Urban Age in Question” by questioning a commonly recited
‘fact’ that more than half of the world’s population lives in an urban environment.
Brenner cites a lack of coherence among urbanism definitions that vary between theorists
as well as within national census estimates. He further questions the validity of territorial
vs. demographic definitions noting that territorial boundaries are constantly in
redefinition, expanding the urban core and ever subsuming old and creating new suburbs
and exurbs. He concludes that ideas of urban are only theoretical categories and that
there is an immediate need for a new vocabulary within Urban Studies.
Just as the urban is difficult to define, so is the rural. More so, according to
Brenner, these distinctions may be insufficient as territorial boundaries, demographics
and our theoretical notions of the urban/rural dichotomy are dynamic and continuously in
a state of redefinition. As evidenced by these ideas and the earlier discussion of a lack of
definitions for gastronomic urbanism, this study will utilize the words rural and less
urban without regard to any population or territorial area threshold. We will use
population as a reference in relation to the urban centers of Madrid and Barcelona and
will treat all cities outside of Madrid and Barcelona proper as being less urban or rural.
In gastronomic terms and in comparison to urban tourism, rural tourism and
gastronomy appear to have an opposite effect than the interplay between urban tourism
and gastronomy. With the globalization context, Mak proposes that “whilst it is a
common perception that globalisation poses a threat to local gastronomic identity and
image, there is preliminary evidence suggesting that it can provide an impetus for
reinventing local gastronomic products and identity” (172). In their article describing
tourists in rural southeast Spain, Molera and Albaladejo conclude that “in its purest form,
rural tourism is concerned with tourists who are specifically attracted by natural
environment and rural culture” (758).
While their definitions focus on domestic tourism, this sentiment can be
extrapolated to foreign tourists as well. López suggests that “gastronomy enables people
to approach culture in a more experimental and participative way” (168). This type of
gastronomy is most associated with rural settings and serves as a foil to urban tourism’s

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passive reception of gastronomy. Similarly, Paniagua expresses similar sentiments
noting an abundance of high quality restaurants as an avenue of economic diversification
within rural settings, noting explicitly the case of Girona (365). Echoing this idea, López
affirms that “tourists in this category dedicate most of their budget to the food area”
(169). For Spain, “gastronomic aspects have come to be regarded as complementary
tourism resources or as basic resources to be used in developing tourism products” (X.
López 168). In the rural context, food is a main focus for tourism and not just an
afterthought or secondary aspect. In this way, gastronomy is creating tourism. Tourism
is developed around existing gastronomic features such as restaurants, vineyards and
other natural gastronomic features. In this present context, the restaurant becomes the
tourist destination.
While the urban tourist foodscape is defined by a combination of external supply
forces and internal tourist reluctance, the rural tourist foodscape is comprised by a mutual
passion and need for innovation on part of both the producer and consumer.
Theoretically, then, the best restaurants (those with three Michelin stars) should be
located in less urban and rural settings where chefs create chef-driven food free from any
reluctant tourist preferences. Figure 15 confirms this idea.

Figure 15: Historical 3 Star Map

Source: Michelin Guides Spain (1979-2014)
Created by: Matthew J. Wild

In total, Spain has had 11 restaurants that have garnered three Michelin stars
during the years 1979-2014. As stated earlier, only two of these restaurants have been

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located within Madrid or Barcelona, with both located in the Spanish capital.
Geographically, we see a clear prevalence to the northern part of the country. There is
only one restaurant that is located in the geographical south of Spain, Quique Dacosta in
Dénia which earned its third star in 2013. Also, there is a general trend towards coastal
regions. Both Cataluña and the Basque country have four restaurants, historically and
currently.
This cartography suggests that the culinary centers of Spain and thus, the Spanish
fine dining foodscape, are localized in the northern half of the country. The southern,
central and northwestern regions are not represented outside of Madrid. Based on this
information, rural Cataluña and less urban Basque Country are the epicenters for Spanish
high cuisine. Less urban is used to describe the Basque Country due to the high number
of three star restaurants in and around San Sebastián. While this city boasts a population
of almost 200,000, it still only represents a tenth of the population of Barcelona (1.6
million) and even less in comparison to Madrid (3.3 million).
The accompanying appendix of interactive, yearly maps confirms these results.
The maps were produced by inputting address data. Each star represents a Michelin
starred restaurant. Clicking on an individual star will reveal more information including
the number of stars, the city and address, and other miscellaneous information given by
the Michelin guides for that current year. When analyzing the full spectrum of each
classification, the Michelin gastromaps present similar results: prevalence toward the
northern half of the country. While the northwestern regions are represented more in the
other star categories, the south remains underrepresented. The desert climate appears to
produce gastronomic deserts.

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 Figure 16: Michelin 3 Star Density 2014
Compiled by: Matthew J. Wild
Source: INE and Michelin Guide Spain 2014

Figure 16 demonstrates the population and Michelin density of this year’s three
star restaurants. These statistics further underscores the prevalence of rural settings in
Spanish fine dining. Excluding Madrid, all cities have a population under 200,000 and
the combined total for the six other cities is roughly a tenth of Madrid’s population.

Figure 17: 2014 Michelin Density

Source: INE and Michelin Guide Spain 2014
Compiled by: Matthew J. Wild

Figure 17 shows the overall Michelin Density for each star classification of the
major population centers of Spain. This is further evidence of Barcelona’s burgeoning

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culinary comeback. Madrid, however, continues to lack in its contribution to the national
haute cuisine foodscape. These statistics do appear to suggest that Barcelona is not quite
the cocina de vanguardia desert that has been hypothesized. While progress is being
made in a positive direction, their star total is made up of mostly one-star restaurants.
The city still has not yet reached the culinary three-star pinnacle. For those reasons, this
study accepts the urban center’s progress but refuses to yet reverse its hypothesis of de-
urbanization.
Following its initial mission of creating maps, the Michelin Guides continue to
create cartographies. While still giving motorists the most up-to-date locations of
roadways and establishments, the guides are now creating new gastromaps. These new
maps not only guide tourists to restaurant destinations, they also create knowledge
regarding the national and local foodscapes of a given country. In the Spanish context,
the guides create maps that reveal a strong preference for northern cuisine from both
Cataluña and the Basque Country. In addition, the maps suggest a movement away from
traditional urban centers in regards to the highest rungs of culinary innovation, three-star
restaurants. This trend rejects traditional ideas of national foodscapes and is in direct
contrast to other countries like the United States and Japan where the vast majority of
three-star restaurants are located in large, urban centers (which are also tourist centers).
The data presented by the Michelin guides demands a rethinking of Spanish
national cuisine. In addition, it calls for a new definition and conceptualization of how
gastronomy relates to the urban/rural dualism. There is also a need to further
problematize how we define a foodscape as a component of the larger national cuisine
and in relation to tourism and the specific types of food opportunity establishments.
These opportunities are too varied to suggest reductive criteria that lump together
establishments under neat categories. Furthermore, we need to understand and explain
better how these foodscapes influence and are influenced by culture, at both the national
and local levels.
The Next Course
The economic crisis of 2008 sunk Spain to economic lows that had not been seen
since post-Civil War Francoism. The resulting global crisis has led to extreme economic
difficulty that has extended beyond the initial real estate market and has resulted in the

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reconfiguration of the Spanish labor market and the government’s economic policy. In
contrast to the economic uncertainty and associated gastronomic consequences of the
postwar era, the gastronomic response to the 2008 crisis has manifested itself in
drastically distinct ways. In contrast to the immediate postwar years, the 2008 crisis has
led to a mini-boom of cookbooks that directly reference the crisis and contain
information that intends to advise readers on how to continue to eat well without
spending much. The conclusion will take into account two cookbooks that are
representative of the economic crisis. With this final period of study, we will conclude
this dissertation and give an overview of how Spanish national cuisine has developed and
evolved over the last century.

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

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 A Conclusion: The Economic Crisis in Food and Spanish National Cuisine
In 2008, the global economic crisis impacted all corners of the globe but Spain
was hit especially hard. In 2013, Spain officially exited its multi-year recession with
growth of only .1% while Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy continued his plan of
“unpopular spending cuts and tax hikes in order to comply with budgetary targets in
accordance with Spain’s European partners” (Minder, “Recession”). This good news
came after nearly five years of economic recession that hit lows across all sectors that had
not been seen since early Francoism. The damage had already been done. 2012 saw a
new nadir in unemployment. Unemployed Spaniards “surpasse[d] 25 percent [and]…the
ranks of the unemployed swelled to 5.78 million people at the end of the third quarter
compared with 5.69 million a quarter earlier and 2.6 million four years ago [2008 pre-
crisis level], when Spain’s property bubble burst” (Minder, “Unemployment”). Even
worse, unemployment for Spanish young adults remains high, above 50% for this key
demographic (Minder, “Riots”). The economic austerity imposed upon Spain by
European economic powers and Prime Minister Rajoy’s conservative Partido Popular
(Popular Party) has created a slow, almost unseen recovery that has stalled all labor
sectors, including the restaurant and hospitality sector.
As Minder describes, restaurants are now facing problems that had not been seen
during the relative economic prosperity pre-2008. For restaurants, “their chief rival is
now a home-cooked meal” (Minder, “Chefs”). In the realm of haute cuisine, “some of
the very best restaurants are giving up Michelin stars to offer lower-cost alternatives”
(Minder, “Chefs”). While Spanish culinary legends like Ferran Adrià still claim that
“crisis or not, you’ve never eaten as well as now in Spain” (Minder, “Chefs”), Minder
quotes Nielsen Spain reports that find that restaurants are closing at an incredibly high
pace: 5,000 closed in 2009, 4,000 in 2010, 3,000 in 2011 and 2012 saw the total number
of restaurants sink to a 1997-low of 220,000 (“Chefs”). Michelin starred restaurants like
Evo in Barcelona and Ca’ Sentro in Valencia and Madrid’s Príncipe de Viana and Club
31 were forced to abandon operations due to economic difficulties (Minder, “Chefs”).
Beyond restaurants and discretionary spending, everyday food decisions have been
impacted by the economic crisis with one of the largest industrial fishing companies,
Pescanova, requiring an economic bailout in 2013 (Minder, “Aid”). All this evidence

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spells out that Spain is suffering its most debilitating gastronomic crisis since the Civil
War and its subsequent years of hunger.
In contrast to that period, chefs and culinary writers are actively combating this
recession in a very public forum. Not confined to Francoist rhetoric and censorship,
today’s contemporary cookbook authors are explicitly confronting the economic scarcity
that has put a strain on the vast majority of Spaniard’s gastronomic decisions. While the
economic turmoil is comparable to the post-Civil War era, the main difference is that
Spain is not suffering simultaneously from an agrarian crisis. As Chapter Two reminds
readers, the early Francoist period suffered equally from a sluggish autarchic economy
and these policies put a burdensome stress on an already faltering agricultural sector.
Regardless of this agricultural component, the cookbooks analyzed in Chapter Two and
the cookbooks that will be seen share many of the same rhetoric and themes.
Eating the Crisis
As the 2008 crisis continues to reverberate in Spain, one author is uniquely
equipped to understand the gastronomic difficulties facing the Spanish people. Miguel
Angel Almodóvar is the author of the first cookbook analyzed in this section, Comer bien
por muy poco: Consejos para ahorrar en la cocina [Eating Well for Little: Advice to
Save in the Kitchen] (2010), as well as being the author of the work El hambre en
España: Una historia de la alimentación [Hunger in Spain: A History of Food] (2003).
The present cookbook, like those ancestors of the wartime period, seeks not to reinvent
Spanish cuisine but to reconnect with a simpler cuisine that dominated long before
“fórmulas gastronómicas foráneas y deificación simplista de técnicas de laboratorio
arropadas por irreflexivos ritos tecnoemocionales [foreign gastronomic recipes and
simplistic deification of laboratory techniques rallied by impulsive technoemotional
rituals]” (Almodóvar, Comer 6). The cuisine that Almodóvar, Doménech and Vila
support is a culinary approach that seeks to “recuperar esencias de aromas, texturas y
sabores acendrados durante siglos de experiencia en ollas, fogones y yantares
compartidos [recuperate essences of aromas, textures and flavors refined during centuries
of experience in pots, stoves and shared meals]” (Almodóvar, Comer 6). This essence of
Spanish cuisine is directly in line with what we have seen throughout this project. While
making an indirect critique of the cost-inefficient Spanish haute cuisine and molecular

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gastronomy movement, Almodóvar’s version of Spanish cuisine should be “entendida
como suma y sigue de cocinas regionales…la más rica y original del mundo, gracias y
desgracias al histórico paso por sus tierras de un sinfín de pueblos y culturas culinarias, y
a siglos de penurias, escaseces y hambrunas que obligaron a tirar de imaginación a
raudales para replicar a lo poco que la despensa ofrecía [understood as the sum and
model of regional cuisines…the most rich and original in all the world, thanks and no
thanks to the historical passage of its lands by an infinite number of culinary cultures, and
to centuries of shortage, scarcity and famine that obligated a torrent of imaginative ideas
in order to replicate what little the pantry offered]” (Almodóvar, Comer 6).
Strikingly similar in tone to the many authors we have studied thus far,
Almodóvar’s Spanish cuisine is influenced by such culinary nationalists like Dr.
Thebussem and Post-Thebussem while also taking a pragmatic stance to the natural
hardships that have influenced the Iberian peninsula throughout the centuries. Imitating
other authors, Almódovar alludes to the myriad influences that have shaped Spanish
cuisine from the Roman invasions to the New World conquests. Differing from the
majority of authors, Almodóvar, however, makes a distinct claim that Spanish cuisine is
equally indebted to these culinary invasions as it is to its continual struggle in the face of
gastronomic insecurity. This next passage, the 2008 economic crisis, is no different from
the previous famines and periods of scarcity. What one must do is to return to a
sensibility of simplicity and tradition, not to innovation. The foundation of Spanish
cuisine is laid with simple provincial dishes that not only encapsulate and exemplify the
Spanish flavor profile of garlic, olive oil, cured ham, chorizo and garbanzo beans but also
naturally lend themselves to simple, nutritional and cost-effective preparations. As we
have seen, the most commonly referred to national dish, the Spanish stew known as
cocido, packs a nutritional punch while also simplifying cooking methods via the use of
one vessel and consisting of flavorful and fresh yet cheaper natural products. As the
author states simply in his front cover insert, “la cocina tradicional es una fuente
inagotable de ideas para elaborar platos sencillos y económicos con ingredientes
naturales y accesibles a todos los bolsillos [the traditional cuisine is an unending fountain
of ideas to create simple and economic plates with natural ingredients that are accessible
to all” (Almodóvar, Comer).

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 Replicating the tone used by Doménech and Vila, Almodóvar states that his
recipe collection “no solo brinda recetas baratas, sino consejos para la conservación y
reutilización de alimentos, trucos para ahorrar dinero y energía, calendario de alimentos
de temporada, un listado de alimentos por debajo de tres euros y otro de vinos de calidad
cuyo precio no excede de los siete [not only provides cheap recipes, but also advice for
the conservation and reuse of foods, tricks to save money and energy, a calendar of
seasonal foods, a list of foods under three euros and another list of quality wines that do
not exceed seven euros]” (Comer 11). His mission is simple: provide enough information
in the form of foods and dishes that the common family or individual can utilize to make
the most out of little. Following in the footsteps of his previous culinary writers, the
author seeks to create meals that are comprehensive while providing options for more
dishes that utilize leftovers. The tricks he refers to, however, take a different form than
those suggested by Doménech and Vila. Those authors, confronted with strict scarcity
and rations, formed recipes that simultaneously made the most out of scarce economic
resources but also proposed ideas that transformed simple foods into representations of
common pre-war dishes. We will not be finding any more recipes like Tortilla sin huevos
[Omelet without eggs] in this cookbook. Instead, Almodóvar focuses on the economic
aspect of cooking and seeks to provide each reader with foods and dishes that can be
made and remade with relative technical and economic ease.
Similary, Graciela Bajraj expounds on the economic crisis in her cookbook La
mejor cocina anticrisis: Ingeniosas y riquísimas recetas para gastar poco comiendo muy
bien [The Best Anticrisis Cuisine: Ingenious and Delicious Recipes to Spend Less While
Eating Well]. Immediately, Bajraj invokes periods of past hunger by stating that this
economic crisis “no es una cosa nueva…A lo largo de los años, hemos visto cómo se
repiten una y otra vez las épocas de “vacas flacas [is not a new thing…Throughout the
years, we have seen how the years of hunger repeat over and over again]” (Bajraj 9).
Echoing the sentiment of Almodóvar, the author states that the best thing to do “para
poder seguir alimentándonos bien y saludablemente…es lograr una efectiva economía
doméstica haciendo mucho con muy poco [in order to continue eating well and
healthy…is find an effective domestic economy doing more with less]” (Bajraj 9). She

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concludes her opening prologue section with five keys to achieving an ideal level of
economic efficiency:
 Empieza por planear todo antes de hacer la compra. [Plan ahead before
you do the shopping]
 Fíjate cuáles son los productos de temporada, pues siempre resultan más
frescos y más baratos, aprovechándolos para el menú. [Pay attention to
which products are in season, which always tend to be fresher and
cheaper, making the most of the menu]
 Estudia cómo poder proporcionar a tu familia y a ti la misma cantidad de
sustancias nutritivas al más bajo coste. [Study how you can give you and
your family the same nutritional benefits at the lowest cost]
 Dale a cada producto los mejores cuidados, de modo que no desperdicies
nada. [Give each product the best care, so that you don’t waste anything]
 Guarda todo lo que sobre y aplica una forma nueva de llevarlo a la mesa
en otra ocasión [Save all leftovers and use them in a new way to bring to
the table in another occasion] (Bajraj 9)
Bajraj’s ideas are by no means revolutionary but as we saw in Chapter Two,
sometimes the most simple dishes and advice create the most effective strategy to make
the most out of what you have. While some advice such as making a list before going to
the supermarket is not necessarily transformative within the kitchen, the idea of planning
is infused throughout all her helpful tips to attain maximum efficiency. This emphasis on
efficiency recalls not only the post-war period but also the transition of autarchic
economic policies to technocratic liberalization that we discussed in Chapter Three.
Combining rhetoric from both of these movements, Bajraj seeks to advise her readers on
how to create the most streamlined approach to all things cooking. From the initial plan
to the point-of-sale to kitchen execution and finally to repurposing of leftovers, the
author’s strategy is one that is comprehensively efficient while avoiding wasteful habits.
While the rhetoric of efficiency through technology is not present, this trend of
advocating efficient gastronomic behaviors should not be a surprise given the Spanish
historical context.

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 With her second tip, we again see a trend towards seasonal eating. While in Spain
this is much more prevalent than in the United States, the idea of eating locally and
seasonally in the face of a globalized gastronomic landscape may appear as trendy to
some in our current gastronomic situation. Rather, this is an age-old technique of
economizing gastronomy that was well-evidenced in the works of Vila and Doménech.
While these authors were forced to eat locally and seasonally out of necessity, the
benefits were obvious to each chef/author. Bajraj employs the same logic here
advocating that consumers continue to eat fresh (and as a consequence, continue
supporting local economies) rather than turn to convenience foods that often supply a
severely diminished nutritional profile. Local, seasonal produce, as she states, will be
found “a mejor precio, y serán más frescas y nutrivas [at a better price, and will be
fresher and more nutritional]” (Bajraj 17). She does not mention canned fruits or
vegetables which are canned using preservatives, most often sugar and syrup which
diminishes the nutritional profile. Economically speaking, buying fresh apples for
example out of season would incur import/export tariffs, transportation costs and thus
theoretically carry a higher price to the consumer.
A focus on nutrition is one of the key themes that Bajraj espouses. In contrast to
the attempts of Vila and Doménech to make the most nutritional meals out of what little
the ration cards of the day permitted, Bajraj differs slightly as she declares that the
“mayoría de las verduras están disponibles en los mercados durante casi todo el año
[majority of vegetables are available in markets throughout the year]” (17). She does
provide a helpful chart of seasonal vegetables but makes no mention of their nutritional
profiles. Simply stating the necessity to provide adequate nutrition, Bajraj falls short in
preparing any concrete advice on which foods provide the most nutritional benefits or a
recompilation of one’s daily nutritional needs. Without the restrictions imposed by
official rationing and an assumed higher level of nutritional knowledge in comparison to
the post-war period, the information that Bajraj provides should be sufficient for the
reader but a more comprehensive nutritional breakdown is desired.
In the second section, Bajraj furthers her advice providing “dieciséis consejos
para economizar en la cocina [sixteen suggestions to economize in the kitchen]” (11).
She again restates her overall goal of providing the most nutrition at the lowest cost

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possible as well as general advice of encouraging less wastefulness but her specific
suggestions do not form a cohesive or useful strategy that is in line with her overall goals.
While some suggestions such as adding water to an egg mixture in order to conserve eggs
or adding milk to butter in order to duplicate its quantity are useful tips both practically
and economically for all home cooks, other suggestions regarding béchamel and
chocolate sauces, whipped cream or flan seem superfluous to those strained by economic
hardship. The general public who are preoccupied by Bajraj’s overall goal of providing
the best nutrition at the lowest cost would benefit more from more practical advice that
can be applied to daily cooking and not necessarily to specialty or luxury
dishes/accompaniments such as béchamel and chocolate sauces or flan.
Nevertheless, each cookbook provides recipes that both reflect the current state of
economic difficulty as well as the evolution of national cuisine that we have seen thus far
in this study. For Almodóvar, classic and traditional dishes such as the Catalan Trinxat
amb rosta [a potato and vegetable tortilla], Basque Marmitako (tuna stew), numerous
classic potajes or stews, Torrijas [Spanish French Toast] and the omnipresent croquetas
[croquettes] that serves as the perfect dish to repurpose leftovers are included. While
Almódovar is an advocate for a traditional approach, his recipe collection also includes
many dishes that reflect the new, globalized Spain in which influences from around the
world make up the most common dishes. Plates such as Curry Chicken represent the new
oriental and Indian influences while other dishes such as Vichyssoise, Risotto, Pizza,
Lasagna or Minestrone Soup reflect the more traditional European influences of France
and Italy, respectively. Although his introduction glorifies the traditional and provincial
ingredients and dishes of Spain of the past, his recipes provide a much different view of
Spanish national cuisine. While all the dishes included in the recipe section can be made
easily with the use of local Spanish ingredients, the practical version of Spanish cuisine
that he promotes is one that is intertwined with the global influences that have infiltrated
Spanish gastronomy.
Contrastingly, Bajraj’s recipes section avoids national or named dishes altogether.
Instead of a collection full of traditional plates such as potaje, Marmitako, cocido or
Fabada asturiana, her recipes are much simpler. Without the name recognition of
famous dishes, Bajraj instead provides plates that are described by their ingredients. Her

209
recipes revolve around a simple collection of ingredients plainly named after those
ingredients. Dishes such as arroz con setas (rice with mushrooms), cerdo con alubias
(pork with beans) or pollo asado con manzanas (roast chicken with apples) comprise the
majority of the recipes given. Bajraj does include regional-centric variations of dishes
such as trucha a la mediterránea (trout in the Mediterranean style) and of course there
are obvious international influences with the inclusion of the seemingly ubiquitous curry
chicken, pizza and spaghetti dishes. The difference between Bajraj’s selection and the
dishes of Almodóvar could be found in the targeted audience of each collection.
Almodóvar, a respected journalist and author, is writing for a much more established
professional clientele. Being older, this audience may identify more with traditional
named dishes that had been so much a part of their youth. Bajraj, on the other hand, is
clearly writing for a much younger audience. Her ease of use, basic instructions and
simple dishes appeal more to a young audience who has not had much experience with
cooking or shopping. In fact, her cookbook is part of a series that also includes
cookbooks directed towards the miniscule niche market of emancipated minors. The
youth of today do not necessarily identify with nor have the respect for the traditional
named dishes even if the semantic difference in names produce an almost identical dish.
With much less fanfare and discussion of national cuisine, it is safe to argue that Bajraj
and her audience do not preoccupy themselves with such classifications. The lack of
named Spanish (or international) dishes and the nonchalant inclusion of international
influences suggest a national cuisine that is simultaneously rooted in local Spanish
ingredients but that are combined in ways that are seemingly without national
preoccupation.
While both collections give conflicting views of Spanish national cuisine, we see
a version of national cuisine that is respectful to Spanish tradition yet open to
international flavors and dishes. As both collections espouse similar philosophies to what
we have seen in previous chapters, the promotion of local Spanish ingredients and a
sensible and economic approach to cooking and eating can hardly be classified as
uniquely Spanish. Although external forces such as economics may dictate that a
national cuisine refocuses on the use of local ingredients and a philosophy of cooking
with less, the shift away from uniquely Spanish dishes evidenced by these two cookbooks

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suggests a national cuisine that is increasingly globalized and international. Departing
from the return to roots cooking seen during the Civil War and early Francoist era (see
Chapter Two for discussion), the 2008 economic crisis conserves the essential philosophy
associated with previous periods of hardship but replaces its cuisine with one that is
decidedly un-national. Globalization of the twenty-first century has rendered dishes such
as Curry Chicken, Pizza or Spaghetti without a nation. These ubiquitous foods now
belong to an international community. If we use these two cookbooks as markers of the
current and future state of national cuisine (not only Spanish but all national cuisines), we
see a shift in national cuisine that still maintains and promotes the use of national
ingredients and flavors but also has no qualms with the inclusion of international dishes,
flavors or ingredients within the national canon. Curry Chicken is superficially an Indian
dish but as its popularity, availability and consumption rise, its appearance as exotic
declines, even to the point of losing its notion of being foreign. The risk is, as writers
such as Pardo Bazán, Dr. Thebussem and Post-Thebussem warned, that Spanish cuisine
and all national cuisines will be subsumed by other, more powerful cuisines. While the
immediate threat in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came from France,
today’s threat is not that Spanish cuisine will become too French or even too much like
any other national cuisine. The threat today is that Spanish cuisine will become too
global, too international, that it will lose its inherent Spanish-ness in favor of a global
cuisine where former national dishes such as Pizza or Curry Chicken are so
internationally ubiquitous that they ingrain themselves within the national cuisines of
foreign nations. The threat today is that globalization will eliminate all notion of national
cuisine resulting in the creation of only one, global cuisine.
It is, however, too early to raise the alarms and incite panic. From what we have
seen throughout this project, Spanish cuisine is resilient, constantly reformulating itself to
adapt to internal and external forces. In the face of great adversity, Spanish cuisine has
flourished and will continue to do so in the future.

Copyright © Matthew J. Wild 2015

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 Vita
Updated: December 2015

Matthew J. Wild
Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D. Department of Hispanic Studies, University of Kentucky, December 2015

Dissertation: “Eating Spain: National Cuisine Since 1900”
Director: Dr. Susan Larson
Abstract: In this project I analyze cookbooks, gastronomic writing
and the representation of food in literature in order to identify
recurring gastronomic trends and describe how these works and
authors inform and create the concept of a Spanish national
cuisine. Engaging a cartographic component, I create digital maps
of the locations of Michelin starred restaurants and discuss how
this geographical data interacts with the construct of a national
cuisine. I address regional, urban and rural questions as well as
themes of sexuality, scarcity, chef celebrity and restaurant culture.
M.A. Hispanic Studies, Department of Hispanic Studies, University of
Kentucky, 2014
M.A. Spanish, Department of Foreign Languages, Auburn University, 2012
Thesis: El olvido está lleno de memoria: History in Post-Franco Spain
B.A. History and Spanish, Auburn University, 2010

Professional Experience

2015-present Oglethorpe University, Division of Foreign Languages, Visiting

Adjunct Professor
2015 University of Kentucky, Department of Hispanic Studies, Discover
Madrid Summer Abroad Assistant Coordinator
2012-2015 University of Kentucky, Department of Hispanic Studies, Teaching
Assistant
2010-2012 Auburn University, Department of Foreign Languages, Graduate
Teaching Assistant

Book Reviews

Wild, Matthew J. Review of Cooking up the Nation: Spanish Culinary Texts and
Culinary Nationalization in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth

224
 Century, by Lara Anderson. Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies.
2014: 299-300.

Papers Presented

“De-urbanization of the Spanish Alta Cocina Foodscape: A Michelin Analysis.”

Hispanic Cartographic Imaginaries I: Peninsular. MMLA Annual
Convention. Detroit, 14 Nov. 2014.

“El cine gastronómico: Food as Rhetorical Device and Critique in Spanish Film.”
Food in Hispanic World: Spain. PAMLA Annual Convention. San Diego,
2 Nov. 2013.

225