Tomas Graves - Bread & Oil: Majorcan Cultures Last Stand

For Carmen

Oli de mnima, pa de mon cor
mare de ma fllla i amor, tot amor.

This edition published in 2006 by Grub Street,

4 Rainham Close, London SW11 6SS

email:

web: www.grubstreet.co.uk

First published in Spain as Volem pa amb oli in 1998.

The original Catalan text Toms Graves, 1998

The English translation Toms Graves, 2000, 2006

Copyright this UK edition Grub Street 2006

Line drawings in the text are by Laetitia Bermejo.

The author, translator and illustrators reserve their right to be identified as the author, translator or illustrators of their respective creations in accordance with the Copyright, Patents & Designs Act 1988.

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders.

A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 9781904943525
Digital Edition ISBN: 9781908117724

Typeset in Bembo, 12 on 14 point

Printed in India

Contents

pa amb oli:a dish very frequently consumed by families of modest means, consisting of a slice of bread soaked in oil and sprinkled with a little salt or sugar.

(Alcovers Catalan-Valencian-Balearic Dictionary)

Acknowledgements

A ll my Majorcan informants have been thanked in the original Catalan edition; I can only add my gratitude to Beryl Graves and Frank Riess for their invaluable comments on my translation, and to Piers Russell-Cobb for finding someone willing to publish a treatise on bread & oil outside its natural habitat.Thanks also to my Spanish publisher, Jos J. de Olaeta, for his support and collaboration, and again to all the artists involved.

The intuitive reader may realize how much I enjoyed writing this book, but he will never know how many new friendships were struck up in the course of researching it.

Preface to the English edition

The language of bread & oil

M uch as I dislike its connotations, Majorca is the correct English name for the Mediterranean island on which I was born and have made my home. It is also closer to the original Latin Maiorca than the Spanish and Catalan name, Mallorca. In one generation, the island has undergone one of the most radical cultural and geo-graphical changes of any region in Europe. From a sleepy agricultural society in the Francoist nineteen-fifties, still subject to a provincial aristocracy and with a very small middle class, it jumped into the service industry in the sixties, and over the next two decades the face of the island changed beyond recognition. A rural Majorcan of my age lived the kind of childhood that your great-grandparent might remember.

I wrote this book in Catalan, to which Majorcan bears the same relation as Glaswegian or Jamaican does to English: yes, its the same language and no, it isnt.When a Majorcan villager asks for directions in Barcelona, he receives the same blank stares as a Rangers supporter or a Brixton Rastafarian might when approaching a resident of Belgravia. Occidental Catalan is spoken on the eastern seaboard of Spain from Alicanteas as far as Lleida, while Oriental Catalan is spoken from Tarragona to Perpignan and as far east as the Balearics and the Algher area of Sardinia. Dialects then include Valencian, Catalan of the Principality, Rosellonese, Algherese, Majorcan, Minorcan and Ibizan, etc. The Barcelona dialect is considered linguistically the poorest, yet is the most widely divulged.

The Catalan language, along with Basque and Galician, was seen by Francos regime as a threat to national unity, and their use was forbidden in public until the 1960s. Although as a literary and spoken language it is as old as Spanish, Catalan wasnt allowed to be taught in public schools until the 1980s, except for a brief period before the Civil War,during the Second Republic.Today it is again the basis of social relations and shares with Spanish the status of co-official language in all those Catalan regions with autonomous governments (Valencia, Catalonia and the Balearics), yet only those under thirty and a minority of the over-seventies can read and write it correctly.This reduces the potential readership of a Catalan book in Majorca to a few thousand; half the population is made up of mainland immigrants and foreign residents. Many middle-class Majorcans of my age grew up with their backs to their own language and culture. Now they are having to take Catalan classesknown as recyclingif they want to enter politics or get a job in education, the civil service or even a savings bank.

So why didnt I write directly in plain Spanish, which all the islanders understand? Simply because the subject matter itself, a candid social portrait of our island disguised as a food book, insisted that it be written in the local language. Since one is obliged to write in official Catalan which is rather bland compared to the salty Majorcan dialect, I chose to get around the problem by quoting a lot of my informants verbatim, in italics, to preserve the flavour of the spoken language. In the present edition, italics are reserved for foreign words, so all my quotes will be in quotes.

The Catalan and Majorcan literary scene has been slow in growing from the bottom up; it has concentrated rather self-consciously on bringing an eight-century-old tradition up to date, instead of actually saying much of interest.The only area where it has caught the popular imagination is in rock and rap lyrics, graffiti and fanzines, offshoots of the protest songs of the seventies. New voices are emerging, spurred on by literary prizes, but Volem Pa amb Oli is more in line with the rock lyricists than with any serious writers. Many Majorcans have told me that it was the first book they had been able to read in their own language without reaching for the dictionary; thats thanks to my limited Catalan literary vocabulary, which permits no showing off. The title, literally We Want Bread and Oil, comes from a popular ditty akin to Give us some figgy pudding but with nationalist connotations. It was in fact sung by Majorcan political prisoners while on hunger strike against conditions in Francos jails and, more recently, by anarchist groups and conscientious objectors on street marches.

The Balearic market for our own culture is so limited compared with the six million Catalan consumers on the mainland, that most of it has to be subsidized, creating a very boring cultural panorama. New guides to the local cuisine, architecture, history, geography, art and literature appear weekly, sponsored by savings banks, newspapers and institutions, but very little emerges from the grass roots except for fringe theatre, radical groups manifestos or fanzines. Majorcan cookery books abound, but as restaurants try out fancy versions of traditional dishes on new up-market visitors (mainly German) which have replaced the holidaymakers (mainly British), so local publishers go for coffee-table glossies in which the photographs outweigh the recipes, and whose profits come from foreign-language editions. I thought it was time to defend the true essence of Majorcanand Mediterraneanfood, which is basically cheap and cheerful: whatever is in the larder or in the kitchen garden.

English readers, especially buyers of Grub Street books, are probably better informed about Mediterranean food and culture than the Mediterraneans themselves, so I apologize if I cover some familiar ground which the Majorcan reader hasnt had access to. The channel followed today by both culinary literature and food distribution is from the productive south to the consuming north. Since the demise of sea trade, there is little cultural interchange between Mediterranean cultures; like the air routes, the axis is vertical. It is much easier to find Greek or Turkish food in London or Hamburg than in Madrid or Morocco. Such typical Mediterranean products as hummus, black olive paste or