I see it as a good sign that whereas during my first trip to Spain there was no president here, nor had there been one for over a year, and during my second trip to Spain the Spanish government arrested the whole cabinet of northern Spain and charged them with treason while northern Spain’s president fled to Belgium where he still is today, the huge scandal today is that the New York Times grossly mispresented the process of making tomato bread.
Tomato bread is something that accompanies most meals here, and at the risk of incurring the wrath of every Catalonian Spaniard, I’ll say that it’s more or less tomato slurry on toasted bread. But just this weekend, the New York Times posted a recipe that suggested you could use cherry tomatoes, cut lengthwise and rubbed on toasted bread. Catalonia exploded – “You got it all wrong,” “You deserve extinction,” “Stop using Spanish for Catalan dishes,” and “Where can I file a complaint,” were some of the milder comments posted from Spanish readers.
Along those lines, I say that if Catalonians want to focus on these types of frustrations, then why not:
- The fact that in my neighborhood here there are two bakeries very close to each other. One is called “Funky Bakers” and the other is called “Fucking Bakery” (no kidding). These names are not only confusing, but they’re pretty bad names.
- Duck Stores
- A tattoo parlor that allows the word “oops” to remain in its marketing message.
- Terrifying mannequins
As for us, we ignored all of that and went for a bike ride through Barcelona today.
No comments:
Post a Comment