Catalanidad in the Kitchen: Tourism, Gastronomy and Identity in Modern and Contemporary Barcelona

Abstract

Catalonia has, from the nineteenth century to the present day, promoted a distinct culinary tourism. Travel and tourism practices have, as early as the eighteenth century, worked as powerful agents of Spanish nation-building and self-identification. In the case of Catalonia, and Barcelona in particular, gastronomic promotion via touristic forums became a key outlet for the expression of such nationalist sentiment. Tracing the process from the earliest mass-tourism guide-books to Barcelona, passing through the regressive understanding of culinary and broader cultural difference during the Franco dictatorship, this essay recognizes the firm linking of food and Catalan identity. By the 1960s we can identify the reassertion of a Catalan gastronomic identity in the proliferation of gastronomic guides to the region and culinary tourism enterprises such as the recent ‘Ruta 1714’ campaign. Along the way, this essay examines the role of the Generalitat, the Catalan language, the mining of local history and various touristic entities and gastronomic figures in cementing the identification between Catalonia and gastronomy that has ultimately helped strengthen the region’s broader political and cultural recognition abroad.