While many city folks feel the call of Mother Nature and dream of moving to the countryside, Francesco Cerutti had a different idea: “Why not bring the country to the city?” Always innovating, he is trying to “ruralify” Barcelona through an activity that has been strictly connected with pastures, shepherds and the like: cheesemaking. In 2019, Francesco opened a cheese shop in the city’s Gràcia neighborhood, but he doesn’t just sell dairy goods here. Pinullet is a workshop where customers can see, and even participate in, the rustic and ancient art of transforming simple milk into sophisticated, mouthwatering cheeses. Originally from Pavia in northern Italy, Francesco studied agricultural and livestock sciences so that he could be a veterinarian for cows and pigs.

When perusing the menu at any traditional restaurant in Barcelona, one is sure to find a range of paellas and seafood plates. A closer look will also reveal the fideuá, its main ingredient left a mystery. Sometimes done up as fideos arrosejats in Catalonia, fideuá is actually a variation of the iconic seafood paella, but in this case made with fideo (short, thin wheat noodles) instead of rice and served with an intense allioli sauce on the side. Fideuá traces its roots to the Valencian port town of Gandía. According to the Asociación Gastronómica Fideuà de Gandia, the dish was created around 1912-1914 on board the fishing trawler Santa Isabel. The boat would depart at 4am each morning and return in the evenings, meaning the six sailors on board would dine on deck.

Generations of inhabitants of the modern-day Italian peninsula may have learned the art of aromatized ices and frozen fruits and puddings from the East (China, Persia, etc.) – perhaps it was the Ancient Romans or Marco Polo or the Crusaders who introduced some variation of these cold treats. But it is the Italian Francesco Procopio who is considered to be the father of modern gelato. In 1660, he created the first machine to mix sugar, ice and fruit to make “cream.” With less fat, less air, no egg and a slower churning process than traditional ice cream, gelato has taken over from Spain’s traditional orxateries. As Barcelona residents melt under soaring August temperatures, biding their time for a holiday getaway and continuing to battle the Covid variants, the one thing that provides some relief is the city’s stellar gelato scene.

At Bodega Salvat in the Sants neighborhood, large wooden wine barrels perched on high shelves almost touch the ceiling, looking down on those drinking below with more than 100 years of local history. For several generations of Sants residents, this old bodega, opened in 1880 by the Salvat Vidal family as a bulk wine store, is a fixture of daily life. Now, after a few decades of being run by others, Bodega Salvat’s original owners have returned to bring a new shine to their family gem. The Salvat Vidals, who still own the building housing the more-than-100-year-old watering hole, now protected by the Barcelona City Council as an “iconic bodega,” have passed the business on to various owners over the years.

Although the Gothic neighborhood in Barcelona’s Ciutat Vella (“Old City”) district is supported by deep foundations – it’s the site of the former Roman village of Barcino – much of the quarter’s more recent history has been swept away by the rise of tourism. The few remaining old shops and businesses are often in a precarious position, exposed to the changing times, and yet they continue to stand strong. One such spot is Bodega La Palma, which dates back to at least 1909. Back then it was a shop that sold a little bit of everything as well as bulk wine; now it’s a tapas bar, one that serves as a multigenerational meeting point for locals and visitors (when they’re around).

It takes bravery and strength to swim against the flow, traits the Catalan sommelier Anna Pla and her partner, the Sicilian chef Nicola Drago, certainly do not lack. The duo opened Contracorrent (“Against the flow” in Catalan) Bar, a natural wine bar and restaurant, in November 2020, amidst a series of pandemic-induced openings and closings. In fact, it’s one of the few new culinary projects in Barcelona. But opening in these complicated times was in some ways easier for Anna and Nicola. They had been plotting this project for quite a while, but the pandemic created opportunities that had been hard to come by previously. “For us, not big business people with big fortunes, the pandemic made it possible to start something new, since more things were up for negotiation than before,” Nicola says.

Born right before the Covid-19 storm, Taberna Noroeste opened its doors in February 2020, mere weeks before the pandemic hit Spain and strict confinement forced them to close. It was a turn of events that spelled disaster for many established restaurants and food businesses, let alone one that was brand new. Yet this project from the chefs Javier San Vicente and David López has grown healthy and strong, despite the hardship, and emerged with a unique culinary identity, now known across the city for elevating the popular cuisines of Galicia and Castilla y León (Castile and León, in western Spain) while incorporating Catalan touches.

Some of my most powerful memories from 2020 are of the post-lockdown reunions with the owners of my favorite bodegas and grocery shops in Barcelona. After such a long period of confinement, it felt dizzying to move beyond the borders of my neighborhood and visit bars and restaurants again, which had newly reopened for takeaway. It was hard not to hug my friends – you know, we hug a lot in Spain. On one particularly ridiculous day in May, I remember sneaking a glass of vermut in a paper coffee cup at one of my local bodegas. The coffee cup was a disguise – any police patrolling the streets would think that I was just buying a takeaway coffee (permitted) and not having a drink inside a bar (forbidden).

Typically eaten at Christmastime in Spain, turrón (a type of nougat) originated centuries ago. Some historians believe it was a sweet paste with nuts eaten by athletes in ancient Rome, while others trace its origins to a more elaborate medieval Arab delicacy that combined various toasted nuts with spices and honey. First documented in Spanish by an Arab physician writing in 11th- century Andalusia, “turun” may have been introduced to the Iberian Peninsula by Arabs or Jews from North Africa during the period of al-Andalus. Either way, by the 16th century, the Spanish aristocracy was crazy about turrón, and its popularity eventually spread to all social classes and to other parts of Europe. Over time, this sweet with ancient culinary roots was further refined, becoming Spain’s most popular Christmas treat.

The scent of wood slowly burning is imbued with a sense of home and refuge: It calls to mind the fireplace around which people used to congregate at the end of the day, or the barbecues and grills that still commonly serve as gathering points. This feeling can also be concentrated in bites of food, like the almonds or hazelnuts that have been roasted in Casa Gispert’s wood-burning oven, a relic from 1851 that continues to roast to this day. The oldest food shop in Barcelona, Casa Gispert has both stayed stubbornly the same and slowly evolved. We’ll always remember how, 20 years ago, the beautiful shop was darker and more mysterious; locals used to line up around Christmas to buy their raw, roasted or caramelized nuts, dried fruits, spices and chocolates for their dinners and gifts.

The concept of what’s near and far has gone topsy-turvy as of late. In the last decade, before the pandemic hit, far was near: We could have breakfast in Barcelona, get on a plane and arrive in time for lunch in Athens. Nowadays, the other side of one’s municipality is considered far-flung, and going there to eat at a restaurant you’ve dined at a hundred times before is a big adventure, one worth documenting on social media. While we felt that distance keenly during the state of emergency, we could also close our eyes and imagine ourselves back in our favorite restaurants, sitting down to eat our favorite dishes.

You never think that it’s going to be you. But one day, everything goes topsy-turvy, and suddenly you find yourself doing the unimaginable: searching for information on how to access donated food or meals. Thousands of individuals and families in Spain have found themselves in this difficult position during the Covid-19 pandemic. City councils in Catalonia have seen double the normal number of petitions for assistance in the last month or two, while that figure has tripled for Cáritas, the large Catholic charity in Spain. And the Creu Roja (Catalan Red Cross) has received around 10,000 new petitions per week since Spain’s state of alarm began, over 60,000 in total.

“No kid without a mona” is the current refrain of Gremi de Pastisseria de Barcelona (the Barcelona Pastry Guild) – it’s their response to the coronavirus quarantine interrupting this Easter culinary tradition (godparents normally give the dessert as a present to their godchildren around the holiday). The guild, which includes 200 patisseries in the province of Barcelona, has launched a campaign to bring this slogan to fruition. The initiative is two-fold: first, they followed strict hygiene measures to make these delicious edible gifts that godparents ordered online or by telephone to be delivered to the homes of their godchildren last Monday, the Easter holiday called Pascua Florida.

In Spain, preserving the rituals of Lent – historically a period of 40 days of prayer, penance and pious abstinence from eating meat that leads up to Easter – was up until the second half of the 20th century mostly the responsibility of priests. Nowadays, however, it is more often the country’s chefs who are shaping the observance of Lent, by both maintaining and updating its delicious culinary traditions, which are still very much a part of Spain’s contemporary food culture. Each country where Lent was customarily practiced has its own special dishes in which meat is replaced with other protein-rich ingredients in order to fill the stomach. In Spain, the “king” of Lenten cuisine is cod (bacalao), introduced in the 16th century by Basque fishermen who had begun to catch it off the faraway coast of Newfoundland.

When we first step into Mitja Galta, a long line of matrons gaze down at us from the wall to our right. Lola, Antonia, María, Fina… the photos of these women, with their names written on them, are placed one right next to the other on a ledge. Together they watch the dishes served at the tables opposite them, like protective goddesses. They are the mothers of the owners, team members and friends who contributed their favorite recipes last year for the restaurant’s special International Women’s Day menu, which ran over the course of a week in March (the holiday is celebrated on March 8). These personal variations on traditional dishes were named after their creators.