Keeping and killing a pig to feed the family for a year is a tradition that is dying out in modern Catalunya, although some are still keeping the old customs alive

Quite what drew crowds of people to turn out for public executions in the past has always mystified me. Yet here I was, bumping down a dusty farm track in northern Catalunya to witness just such an event. Okay, in this case the condemned was a pig but it didn’t make the prospect of watching its demise any more appealing. Not that we hadn’t been warned. When Quim Vidal, whose parents own Mas Aleix farm, outside the village of Bàscara, in the Alt Empordà, invited us to join his family for the annual slaughter of a pig, he had hinted that it might be better to skip the first day.

The custom of killing a pig to provide a family with meat and sausages for the coming year is an old tradition in Catalunya, and one that involves everyone from grandparents down to young children. Although health and hygiene restrictions now limit the practice to the countryside, it used to be commonplace in towns and villages where livestock was kept and fattened. Various Catalan friends with rural ties, including a hairdresser and a schoolteacher, told us their families still gather every December to help with the annual ritual.

Since our household had tucked into its fair share of juicy Catalan sausages and platters of cold meats - botifarra and embotit – it only seemed right that we saw for ourselves where they came from. While the occasions are social events and usually held over a weekend, the sheer scale of work involved in preparing the sausages means that everyone has to muck in to get the job done. The reward is a gift of fresh fare from a “free range” pig, untainted by the industrial process that churns out most of Spain’s meat products.

Before that is possible, a healthy and usually hefty pig has to be dispatched by a mataporc – literally “pig-killer” – hired by the family. As we drew up outside the solid stone masia a pony-tailed man in a boiler suit was busy unloading a large bag from the back of his car. This was Jordi, a local pig farmer who had recently learned the mataporc’s skills to supplement his main income. Having introduced ourselves, we followed him around to the back of the farmhouse where Joan Vidal, Quim’s father, was climbing off his tractor. The pair disappeared into one of the farm sheds and re-emerged several minutes later with the pig, an enormous specimen that was happily being led out into the sunshine completely unaware of the fate that awaited it.

Twenty minutes later the now-dead animal was lying on a wooden pallet being cleaned and prepared for butchering. Aside from protesting loudly at a hook being put through its snout, the manner of its death had been surprisingly swift and appeared to involve little suffering. The goriest moment so far had been when Joan’s wife Concepció thrust her hands into the bucket of blood beneath the hanging pig to mix it up and prevent it coagulating. The blood would later be used to prepare black sausages – botifarra negra  – a delicacy similar to black pudding.

While regulations have reduced the number of families able to keep and kill their own pig, the tradition is also slowly dying out in Catalunya as young people turn their backs on the hard work and low wages of farming in favour of better paid jobs in towns and cities.
The Vidals are no different. All three of their sons have opted for careers away from farming and the pressures of work meant they couldn’t take the Friday off to help with the killing of the pig. Concepció explained that instead they would be arriving that evening or the following morning, when the real job of making the botifarra got underway.

Outside, with the chained up farm dog watching his every move, the mataporc was cutting and carving, skilful work that has to satisfy the Catalan custom of “nose-to-tail-eating”, where virtually every part of the pig is used including the ears, tongue and tail. Even the trotters are turned into a traditional Catalan dish, peus de porc, where they are boiled and served with fried onion, chopped nuts, and a tomato and vegetable sauce. From the carcass come the raw ingredients for the local varieties of sausages: llonganissa, fuet, botifarra picant, botifarra de perol, bull negre, bull blanc and a sweet botifarra, flavoured with sugar and lemon. Botifarra - made from the pig’s intestines filled with minced pork meat, spices and salt - is extremely popular, both in the home and at local festas where it is often cooked in large quantities over an open fire and eaten with beans or potatoes.

The mataporc had now reached the most gruesome stage of the proceedings, reaching into the splayed cadaver to slice out the innards, which were then taken to a large table where Concepció was washing and preparing the various pieces for cutting and mincing. The knowledge about what to do with the confusing mass of slimy “bits” is passed down from generation to generation, as is the preferred mix of seasoning, herbs, garlic and spices.

So entrenched are these meat products in Catalan culture that there is even a museum in their honour in the Garrotxa town of Castellfollit de la Roca. Billed as the world’s only sausage museum, visitors can discover how some of the region’s finest products are made – from the slaughtering of the pig to the spices used to give the distinctive flavours. Beneath a ceiling lined with rows of hanging meats are glass cases of piggy banks and other unusual porcine ornaments, as well as a cabinet with models depicting the annual butchering of a pig.
As the mataporc started cutting the larger sections of meat, including the prized hams that come from the hind legs, they were taken inside by Joan and hung on a rack in a cool, dry cellar deep inside the farmhouse. Finally, after several hours of work the bloodstained pallet lay empty and the mataporc started cleaning his knives and saws, exchanging gossip with the elderly couple as he did so.

Early the next morning, we arrived back at the farmhouse where the family was already hard at work. In a large cellar the three sons and their wives were now mixing, mincing and washing parts of the pig, carefully supervised by Concepció, who gave instructions on the correct ingredients for different sausages and cold meats.

One large bowl of chopped meat was being seasoned with paprika, garlic, herbs and salt to make spicy chorizo, which is then hung to cure from the rafters in an attic room. On the other side of the table someone was preparing fuet, a mildly sweet dry cured sausage. Two of the brothers were using a hand-grinder to feed the sausage meat into the previously cleaned intestinal skin (which is used as a casing) while others used string to tie off the various botifarra and embotits. Noisy chatter filled the room, which, not surprisingly, smelled strongly of uncooked meat, and next door a cauldron filled with black sausages simmered gently.

A long family lunch interrupted proceedings, but by the evening the work had been completed. We drove off down the farm track, grateful recipients of some meaty samples the family generously pressed upon us. They were the first sausages I’ve eaten where I had “met” the pig from which they came – and, despite having witnessed its macabre transformation from animal to meat, undoubtedly the tastiest.