The little town of Valls celebrates its Catalan love of food with a messy festival dedicated to an unusual vegetable

THERE we were, more than 30 adults lined up on either side of a long thin table, hands blackened and faces smeared with a reddish sauce, getting stuck into piles of charred vegetables. This was the highlight of the calçotada – a Catalan gathering of family and friends that revolves around eating large quantities of a long, straggly green that gives the event its name.

The calçot, a cross between a spring onion and a leek, is barbecued over an open fire until it appears to have been burnt to a cinder. The outer skin is then stripped away and the fleshy inner section dipped in a spicy sauce before being eaten. Hardly a description that would have gourmets licking their lips - but then it’s difficult to imagine how enjoyable an experience it can be until you’ve tried it for yourself. So much so that while creative cuisine and classy restaurants have established Catalunya on the foodies’ map, it’s this far more primitive “dish” that gives a real flavour of the region.

The calçot was first cultivated in the late 19th century by a farmer called Xat Benaiges in the southern Catalan town of Valls – the place also credited with being the “cradle” of human tower building. It soon became customary in the Alt Camp to celebrate the approach of spring with noisy winter feasts, the focus of which was the humble calçot. Over the past 20 years the popularity of these get-togethers has spread and millions of calçots are now consumed every year throughout Catalunya.

To mark the calçot season - which runs from January until May - Valls holds the Gran Festa de La Calçotada. Rafael Castells, secretary of the Valls Camber of Commerce, which organises the event, says it was first held in 1982 and now attracts more than 30,000 people to the town.
“The festival is really well established and continues to grow,” he says. “While calçotades are now held in other parts of Catalunya, Valls is where you can experience the authentic, typical and traditional calçotada.” Rafael says that like most locals he attends numerous calçotades every year and to satisfy this demand there are around 40 growers in Valls producing an estimated 5 million calçots annually.

The growing process is a long and complicated one, beginning with onion seeds being planted and then plucked from the ground once they’ve formed a bulb at the base. They are then dried out in a cool, dark place before having their tops sliced off and re-planted at the end of the summer under a thin layer of soil. The shoots that quickly sprout from the onion bulbs are then repeatedly packed with earth – hence the name: calçar means to put someone’s shoes on. This covering of soil has the effect of blanching and sweetening the shoots. Each onion can produce a bunch of up to 12 thin-stemmed calçots.

Read the full story in our March 2008 issue.