Calçotades: Catalan Culture and Identity
Taste It All at One Fiesta in January
By Thomas DeVere Wolsey
The Spanish are well-known for their amiable nature and community spirit. In any pueblo in Catalonia, for example, you will find plazas where people gather to chat and check out any cafe where friends meet for comida (roughly, lunch) or a late night gathering for tapas and cervezas. But Catalans hit the sweet spot of community, fiestas, and gastronomy with the celebration they call the calçotada.
The calçotada is a barbecue, Catalan style, celebrating neighbors and calçots. What is a calçot, you ask? It is a type of green onion grown in the mountains of Catalonia, especially in the region around the city of Valls. Calçots are mounded up with earth as they grow, and that causes a larger portion of the stem to remain white and tender.
The most famous calçotada is held in Valls at the end of January each year. But you can find a calçotada anywhere you can find a group of Catalans from January to approximately April when the calçots are available.
At the Gran Festa de la Calçotada de Valls, you will find perfect strangers laughing it up together, drinking cava (Spanish sparkling wine), and demonstrating how to each a calçot. People come from all over for this particular calçotada. Many come…
