In times of political and moral disorientation, the Catalan parish seeks anchorages in the taula parada. This occurs even more within the spirit of Barcelona because, if one lives in the peasant ecosystem, historical moments of uncertainty usually pass like a fine easterly breeze; it is in cities, ultimately, where we end up digesting the world's convulsions. When everything approaches chaos, it is normal for the people of Barcelona to want to embrace the memory of their grandmother and thus commemorate the only human relationship that imitates the emotional dependence between parents and children, but without its dreadful frenzy of sermons and traumas. This unconditional love is embodied in a star dish that, besides being a metaphor for joy, possesses the dreadful virtue of filling your stomach and turning it into a future flatulence machine; I speak, of course, of macaroni, the teca that the last Barça elections have once again brought into question.
My dear president Laporta knows perfectly the morbidly nostalgic soul of the Barcelona tribe, and that is why he was photographed stirring a pot of macaroni at Bar Bocata (a dreadful place to which we will soon dedicate a specific article). Jan knows that, after all, when you want to excite the culés with a winning project ---even more ambitious if we think about the ancestral defeatism that castrates our land--- you must qualify it with a bit of stuffing and melancholy. Our national leader has had a good eye since, for some time now, the Barcelona neighborhood shies away from spherifications and other contemporary culinary nonsense to embrace the nostalgia of homemade food. This is how the most supposedly cool gastro-bars in the city are a tuned-up version of the old food inns, to which one adds a pinch of modern-ancestral-julianacanetesque aesthetic of fake glamour.
This nostalgia for grandma's cooking also explains the revival of traditional root grub in Barcelona; at home, we are fans of Estevet, of the restaurant La Havana, of Cal Robert, of Santornemi, of Ponsa and of the fonda Gelida, where yours truly eats every Friday after writing this Punyalada of yours. All these places have their respective macaroni dish ---the best, without a doubt, is eaten at Pepe Cabot's establishment---, a dish that is more satisfying when its preparation is conceived with greater simplicity. The local cuisine establishments with a modern disguise, with their dreadful snobbery and their desire to be photographed on Andreu Juanola's Instagram, cook this dish with foie, sobrasada, truffle and a parmesan gratin that usually has the artistic pretension of Pollock's colorful ejaculations. All this is unbearable to me, because a grandmother's dignity consists of dressing up only on Sundays.
We long for atavistic macaroni, because in this dish (as in all our impoverished cuisine) only the sofrito rules. Jubany ---the only authentic spiritual heir of master Gaig, in my immodest opinion--- prepares them with Figueres onion, carrot, a bay leaf, a few cloves of garlic, plenty of tomato, add meat and a glass of rancid wine, beaten eggs and salt-sugar to season. That said, anyone who wants something more elaborate and with higher doses of civilization, please do the damn favor of going to Italy, look for the best Rigatoni ai carciofi you can… and that day will be a year ago. But our macaroni must be a dish of satiety, in a way barbaric and unilateral like a referendum. Now that they will experience a certain revival, with all sorts of possible inventions, the need arises to save macaroni from any vulgar metamorphosis. It is not a matter of being conservative, it is a display of patriotism.
In any case, this return to macarronismo implies a journey to the essences of the country and a remembrance of our grandparents' devotion. In Barcelona's case, the change can only bring us positive news, because when we look back - and place ourselves at the center of our own history - the best ideas always come to mind, even if it happens by inertia. Welcome, then, are macaroni, despite their aesthetic corruptors and the great content of future snobbery that we must radically confront, as if our lives depended on it. Because we always discuss things that seem superfluous, but which, now that the almond trees are beaten, we know are the most fundamental of all.