The Gràcia neighborhood of Barcelona lights up every year in mid-August for its week-long Festa Major. Every town here has a charming Festa Major during the summer, but as a particularly influential city in Spain and the world, everything about the celebration is done in bigger and more extreme ways. In order to experience the Gracia Festa Major yourself, join us on one of our Barcelona Cultural Tours. You will find that during  the Gracia feast the castells—or human castle competitions–are larger, there are more aisles of fireworks to run through, but the decorations are probably what stand out the most.

Each street is carefully and creatively themed with wild decorations everywhere. The beautiful floral decorations they specialize in are called arte festivo éfimero. Within the decorations visitors find orchestras, games, theater, music, dance and other activities, which combine for one energetic week-long party.

Well, of course, we know what a finely preserved treasure Catalonia is–we’ve dedicated our careers to it! But just in case you need an outside opinion to elaborate on the subject, the New York Times (we’re fans of this publication too) put out a wonderful article one weekend about the quiet aquamarine shores of Catalonia’s peaceful fishing villages. You can read it here and browse its lovely slideshow here.

The quiet villages it references–Cadaqués, Pals, Empuries–are important pieces of our Spanish culinary  tours because they do much more than give our clients a truly relaxing spot to vacation: They give our clients an opportunity to really savor a centuries-old culture undisturbed by the unfortunate overdevelopment that plagues so many other areas in Spain. From the bucolic scenery of farms and vineyards near Pals to the clear tropical-blue shorelines of real fishing villages, you are able to take advantage of the best in traditional Catalan cuisine, wine and personal hospitality.

Browse all of our tours through this area

Every Sunday, Catalans gather outside in their city’s plaza to do Catalonia’s centuries-old national dance, the Sardana. It’s a very sweet patriotic dance I’m quite enchanted by. Most of our guides, as proud Catalans,  can dance Sardana so you can ask them to teach you a lesson while they accompany you on one of our Spanish Cultural Tours. The most recently I observed sardanas it was when I was in a charming little medieval town called Besalu. Older Catalans are especially proud of doing it because the Spanish dictator Franco, a fascist who ruled from the 1930s until 1977, made it against the law for Catalans to speak their own language or do the sardana on Sundays. This dance is just one testament to the strong pride and energy Catalans Continue Reading »

One of the most entertaining things to watch at the town festivals going on all over Catalonia from May to October are the castellers, or human castle builders, at work. As devoted admirerers of this local tradition, we always take our guests to see them, if available, during our Spanish Cultural Tours. A tradition since groups around Tarragona started it in the 1800s, teams of castellers from all over Catalonia participate in competitions to see how fast, how tall or how big they can make their castles. Their size ranges from the most common—about 6-8 stories tall—to even more suspenseful heights and sizes in which daredevil athletes risk a dangerous collapse.

Who needs bulls running in the streets when these strapping Catalans can flex their macho muscles without them?

Once the capital of the Western Roman Empire, the seaside city of Tarragona still has a captivating amount of archeological finds. An amphitheater where gladiators made shows of courage and strength, a circus where legendary chariot races took place, museum of artifacts and archeological passage give visitors a fabulous setting to envision the ancient empire that once thrived here.  Tarragona is an archeological treasure and we have included the city in one of our Wine Tours in Spain.

After enriching yourself with these archeological destinations, you can relax at the beach, an atmospheric fisherman’s quarter called El Serralló or go shopping on one the city´s wide avenues. If you feel like visiting a relaxing hidden treasure, Altafulla is a quaint seaside city near Tarragona with boutique hotels and quiet seashores to walk along.

There really is no one recipe for paella. In the same way pizzas are made with endless combinations of ingredients, paella can be made with various kinds of meats and vegetables. The combination of ingredients below, however, is the most typical in Catalonia and the one we use at our Traditional Spanish Cooking Classes, especially along the coast where seafood can be caught and cooked in the same day. But, just in case you feel like experimenting sometime, we’ve helped you out by leaving an asterisk next to all the essential ingredients you should never leave out. Everything else can be left out or substituted as you wish.

Ingredients

• • ½ cup of oil*
• • 3 cloves of garlic*
• • 2 medium tomatoes*
• • 1 tender chicken
• • 3-4 oz. (100 g.) of jamón serrano
• • 20 prawns
• • 2 ¼ lb (1 kg.) of mussels
• • 1lb. (500 g.) of clams
• • ½ lb. (250 g.) of squid
• • 5.5 oz. (150 g.) of octopus
• • 4 artichokes
• • 3-4 oz. (100 g.) of peas
• • parsley
• • 2 cups of rice*
• • ¼ tsp. saffron or 2 saffron cubes
• • 4 cups of broth*
• • 1 hard boiled egg
• • 1 red chili
• • 2 lemons

(*)Essential ingredient

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The simplest things in life are often the best and this is the secret to making authentic Spanish Alioli, which contains two key ingredients – garlic and oil.

How to pronounce it, well it isn´t very difficult… “Al-ee-ohlee”, the Spanish version as opposed to the French aïoli. So then, how much difference is there between the two? Well, you could say that alioli is the less polite relative of aïoli and we mean that in the nicest possible way, because with its pungent garlic flavour combined with fruity extra-virgin olive oil, it’s not for the faint-hearted.

Alioli has a long history. It is mentioned in the writings of Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), a Roman procurator for a year on the Catalan coast, who favoured garlic for medicinal purposes. He wrote that when garlic is “beaten up in oil and vinegar it swells up in foam to a surprising size”. While not definitive, it’s not hard to make the leap from here to the Catalan classic we know today.

The name of this pillar of traditional Spanish cuisine derives from Continue Reading »

Fisherman arranging nets in their boats. Coffee, paella and crema catalana awaiting customers in white-washed buildings accented with brilliant blue hues. Children playing in soft waves lapping up on the shore. Painters still at work outside on the street. Feel such visions combine in the unforgettable atmosphere of what was once a haven for Salvador Dali here in Cadaqués. We invite you to experience this piece of heaven with us on Gourmand Breaks Cadaques trips.

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