Consuming the nation: food and national identity in Catalonia

Journal article

In this article, I give an ethnographic account of the lived realities of everyday nationalism by presenting some of the ways in which Catalans in northeast Spain use food to express their national identity. Due to its quotidian, essential nature, food is an ideal tool for studying the experience of nationalism in everyday life. Catalonia, in northeast Spain, provides a useful context in which to study a contemporary nationalist movement, as the recent 2017 political crisis and the independence movement that has burgeoned since 2010 have made questions of national identity a highly relevant topic of everyday discussion in the region. I will first introduce the growing literature on nationalism and food, or ‘gastronationalism', which is the basis of my research. I also briefly discuss my methodological approach as an ethnographer. Next, I provide a brief introduction to some of the essential sauces and dishes of Catalan cuisine and the national sentiments that these foods represent. Following on from this, I discuss the gastronomic calendar, that is, the practice of associating particular foods with certain days or seasons, a notion that is shared across Catalonia and that creates recognized culinary unity. Finally, I discuss how food has been linked to the current independence movement in the region.

Authors: Johannes, V

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Anthropological Society of Oxford
• Journal: Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford Online
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-24
• Publication date: 2019-01-01
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wr6qwgxjo
• ISSN: 2040-1876
• Language: English
• Keywords: national identity; gastronationalism; Catalonia; Spain; JASO; Catalan nationalism