Today’s guest blog piece comes from Barcelona based KILTR user, Robin Skilling. An irreverent look at Scottish cliches, mushroom foraging and the differences regarding the independence debate in Scotland and Cataluña.
“So in Scotland, I heard that you all pick mushrooms in caves?” was something a wee Catalan guy recently asked me during a boozy sunny Sunday family paella. Being a Scot in Barcelona, the whisky/golf/kilt questions are pretty much standard-issue patter. Having to confirm/deny that Scotlanders are foraging in caves for seasonal fungus isn’t usually part of the script.
I didn’t really know what to say. I have a Catalan friend who on returning from a visit to Aberdeen once told me about a B&B he had stayed in where, at breakfast, he thought he saw a fellow guest put blood in his porridge. I suggested to him that we don’t normally put blood in our porridge, salt if your old-skool, and that maybe it was jam or something else that’s reddish and isn’t blood. Naw – he was convinced it was blood. Porridge eaters are a broad church, but ‘blood-adders’ are just off the oaty scale. I remembered that tragically nothing I could do or say would convince him otherwise.
So, not wanting to bam this mushroom guy up too much, I just conceded an, “aye, anything’s possible mate”. Life’s too short.
From talking to mushroom boy, it turns out that fungus foraging is a big thing in Spain, and especially in Catalunya. He told me that there’s clandestine bits in woods that are so mushroom-fabulous that their location is only passed down from father to son. He told me about the bad-guy toxic mushrooms that pretend to be nice-guy mushrooms. Get those bad boys home, fried in a little salted parsley butter and doon the hatch and it’ll be goodnight Vienna, lights out meatball, game over sunshine. He said that you really need to know what you’re doing when you go out looking for mushrooms or ‘bad things can happen’, to which I replied “aye, I’ll remember that, cheers big yin”.
So as well as getting asked about Scotland’s gastro-funghi rummagings we eventually ended up, as you do, talking about the Scottish Independence thing. I’ve heard this question from curious Catalans so repeatedly now that I get misty-eyed for the old days when being asked what I wore under my kilt was about as worrying as it would get.
It was at that point that I realised that his old boy had just appeared with a big plate of wiry looking black mushrooms that looked like they’d been fried in a lightly salted parsley butter. I asked if they were indeed the sort of potentially lethal wild mushrooms that we had been talking about. And of course, indeed they were. Brilliant, I thought, my anxiety levels now literally mushrooming.
I asked if his da’ had picked them himself and sure enough he had. His da’ was about 90, wore glasses, and frankly looked as though he would have had trouble picking a tie. He wasn’t the ‘guy on the team’ that I would have chosen to go out into the woods looking for non-toxic edible fungus.
“You want one?” he said.
“Ok”. They looked tasty after all. I like to live on the edge, YOLO etc.
So as well as getting asked about Scotland’s gastro-funghi rummagings we eventually ended up, as you do, talking about the Scottish Independence thing. I’ve heard this question from curious Catalans so repeatedly now that I get misty-eyed for the old days when being asked what I wore under my kilt was about as worrying as it would get.
Catalans, if you didn’t already know, take Catalan independence, like mushrooms, and almost everything else, very seriously indeed. Unlike the very real prospect of a referendum in Scotland in 2014, there is absolutely no chance from the Spanish states perspective that Cataluña will get a similar opportunity.
The polls say that almost 55% of Catalans want a separatist Catalan state, compared to 48% or so in Scotland wanting a fully independent Scotland. The 2010 elected majority party in the Catalan parliament, the CIU, are ambiguous on the matter. Despite the apparent popularity of independence there appears to be no credible secessionist political party with widespread support. Given that, you can understand Catalan nationalists being frustrated and just a tad jealous when they see what’s now happening in Scotland.
You get the same vibe from the Catalan media as well. Listening to the radio over here you’d pretty much think that Catalunya had a complex about Scottish independence. TV3, the national Catalan broadcaster, recently came under fire by the Consejo Audiovisual de Cataluña, the local TV industry watchdog, for devoting more air-time to the bold Alex Salmond than to the King of Spain’s naughty son-in-law who is currently embroiled in a major financial scandal.
I think its inevitable that Scottish and Catalan nationalists will draw comparisons with each other as 2014 looms. For me, the most superficial comparison is probably the most accurate – Scotland and Cataluña are relatively small countries currently absorbed by a larger and sometimes historically hostile neighbour. Having lived for some time in both places, I think that’s probably where the similarities end.
Oh aye, and the mushrooms were great by the way! Very tasty indeed.
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(Image taken from Andrew Barr at: http://andrew-barr.com/2012/04/13/independencia)
