The best cuisine in the world?

Catalonia has been recognized as the World Capital of Gastronomy for 2025. It's the first European region to deserve this distinction. Four months have passed, we're a third of the way there, and I still haven't heard anyone relevant say what, in my opinion, is almost the only thing we should say about this unique event. And not just say it, but repeat it insistently until we're sure everyone—and I mean that literally—has heard.

I hope someone among those who can decide on these matters has the patience to read these words. I don't know if we'll have another opportunity like this to explain the truth.

If there's one joke I don't find funny in the least, it's that apt aside that cruelly describes our tragic destiny as a nation of enemies of commerce, of noblemen gripped by the religion of honor, of small shopkeepers, and of wholesalers. "Italy is Spain with marketing," laughs those who are unable to grasp the drama of a statement that explains us so well and so sadly. What we call marketing, a banned word, is merely the effort to value that which has value, and which for whatever reason has not been expressed. Exactly what we don't do.

Marketing is impossible without a profound, recognizable, and verifiable truth to tell. Because when there isn't one, marketing merely fulfills a sanitizing mission and accelerates the demise of an irrelevant product.

Catalonia is today, almost without question, the place in the world where food is best. Nowhere else is there a product, a culinary tradition, and a legion of top-level chefs like we have here today. And besides, this is the place where the revolution began. It may be a debatable statement, but it's so close to the truth that we can confront that discussion with the best arguments. And convince.

Just imagine what Denmark, Italy, or France would have told the world if they had what we have. Or half of what we have.

To summarize briefly. Western haute cuisine has always been French. That undisputed leadership has carried its products along. Haute cuisine is the best possible marketing tool for a sector that represents a huge portion of GDP (even more so if we include, as we should, tourism). If it's French, it's very good. And very expensive. That's called creating value.

Thirty years ago, everything changed. Cala Montjoi was the epicenter of a wonderfully beneficial earthquake that changed universal gastronomy forever. It's no coincidence, it isn't, that something like this happened near France, because here the heritage is more natural. It could have happened in the Basque Country, but there, the hegemony was never clearly challenged.

It happened here, where it had to happen. In the Mediterranean, at this centuries-old crossroads of traditions, goods, and ideas, which make up a genetic makeup of incomparable richness. The New York Times certified the succession: The New Nouvelle Cuisine . How Spain became the new France.

The revolution is not over, no matter how much we ourselves try to bury it by celebrating anniversaries and erecting mausoleums (as the great Pedrito Sánchez de Bagá recommends, we must understand and appreciate El Bulli as a gift, not as a threat or something finished). Revolutions are measured by their consequences, which are clearly evident. The children and grandchildren of the insurrection continue to expand their radical approach to that cuisine to every corner of the world, but simply because of proximity, its presence here is greater and more intense.

One of the perfectly vivid consequences, perhaps the most fundamental, was the discovery of each region's traditional cuisine as the foundation and inspiration for haute cuisine. For centuries, this was outlawed; only French was acceptable. The revolution gave us the freedom to look wherever we wanted to think and create, and naturally, our gaze descended to the earth. Seeing centuries-old recipes and ingredients in a new and naive way opened us to an infinity in which we still live. In that sense, the unparalleled richness of our tradition and our products has fueled the search like nowhere else.

That what I say is very close to being true is confirmed by experience, but also by the lists and guides that establish the canon. Enigma is a beacon that demonstrates the serene and sublime maturity of Bullinian cuisine. Disfrutar holds the world top spot on the list of lists. The Roca brothers are universally expanding their serene and poetic humanism. Barcelona boasts four three-star restaurants and a group of extraordinarily influential chefs who build outside of the pneumatic laws.

I'm done. It's our year, as those who watch us from afar have told us. We have changed world gastronomy, we have liberated it, we have taken it further than anyone else thanks to an unparalleled product and tradition, we have trained an army of revolutionaries who continue to spread mystery and joy everywhere. Let us believe in ourselves. Let us leave behind philosophical disquisitions, sterile complexities, and intricacies. Let us shout, as loud as we can, and as many times as necessary, that at least in this, in eating, we are, without a doubt, the best. That would be good marketing, because it's true.

And if anyone still has any doubts, let's give Sagás a weekend to clear his mistake and sing our praises. Amen.