"The Best Oil In The World"

Yesterday I went to "Les Borges Blanques", a village in Lleida (Catalonia) of about 6000 people located at approximately 1.5 hours from Barcelona, if you travel by car. The reason I got there was to visit "La Fira de Les Garrigues", a fair that takes place every January in this village to show different traditional gastronomical products that can be found throughout Catalonia, although the most prominent product shown is the Olive Oil, which makes the Fair to be also known as "La Fira de l'Oli" (the Oil Fair). The region of "Les Garrigues" joke about themselves to produce the best olive oil in the world, which holds a Protected Designation of  Origin. Although they make this assertion in a joking way, I can confirm the variety of oils this region produces are all excellent, and if you don't trust me, go there and taste it for free!

Below there are some pictures of the event, which is ending today, January 22th. And if you plan to visit it the next year,  I strongly recommend you to have lunch before, otherwise you will be tempted to buy all the products the exhibitors offer you for tasting!!

(click on the pictures to enlarge them)

The village of Les Borges Blanques

"Coques de Recapte"

"Embotits" (cold meat)

Cheese

Beautiful botle with olive oil

Different varieties of olive oils

Spain is different... Again.

Everybody knows the sentence "Spain is different" in the sense of how Spanish people often perform in a messy or inefficient way (lack of rigor, laziness,...) and also in the sense of having some sort of primitive behaviour (bullfighting, the believe of having the biggest balls in the world, ...). But Spain is also different in its way to understand democracy because Spain has another hateful tradition: to pursue the union of its territories by the force. Franco was the last of the Spanish dictators that attempted to unify all countries in Spain under a single national identity and language, by anihilating all other national identities and languages throughout what we know today as "Spain".

Now Spain has shown (again) that it is different to the rest of the developed countries in the world. Whereas many democratic countries chase and sue dictators and their right-hand men, Spain allows them to live until death with total impunity. Yesterday January 15th, Franco's minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne died at age 90. Fraga never regretted being the right-hand man of Franco to achieve the fascist dictator's goals. In Fraga's own words:

“One must say Spanish, not Castillian! Spanish is everybody's language. It has become Spain's language (...). I will always do my best to prevent the destruction of the national unity. Because Catalonia was conquered by Philip IV; Philip V defeated it; Catalonia was bombed by general Espartero, who was a great revolutionary; and we occupied it in 1939 and we are ready to occupy it as many times as needed, and so I am ready to pick up the rifle again.”

So everybody with just a little bit of democratic spirit can see that Fraga's way to achieve Spain's union is quite fascist.

Today, Fraga's legacy is the right-wing Spanish party Partido Popular (PP) a party that adopted Franco's principles of a unified Spain, although this union has NEVER been decided by people but by kings and dictators. United Kingdom has demonstrated to be a mature democratic country by allowing a referendum for Scotland's independence. As I could figure out from English media, citizens from UK may not like Scotland to leave UK, but they accept such decision if it is made by a democratic referendum. Talking about referendums for Catalonia's independence in Spain is a complete taboo... "Referendum" is such an advanced concept that is impossible to be understood by many Spaniards. They simply think "Catalonia is Spain, and that's it". Perhaps it is necessary to wait for 30 more years to let Franco's legacy to weaken in favour of a real, UK-like democracy.

Fraga's fascist salute	Recent picture of Fraga