“A shared meal doesn’t solve the problems, but it improves them”, commented the media cook Maria Nicolau while rolling some cannelloni. She was one of the more than 80 women who responded to chef Ada Parellada’s invitation to participate in the Festa del Davantal that she has been organizing for 15 years at her restaurant in Barcelona on the occasion of International Women’s Day and that Tuesday dedicated to Itziar Castro. The Catalan actress, who died in December of a heart attack, was one of the most veteran apron wearers: “She did the impossible to come from Madrid”, remembers Parellada, who, in tribute to her, printed on the aprons a phrase of Castro, “To be strong, one must be vulnerable”, and with the drawing of the legs of an octopus, since to say I love you he used the emoticon of this animal because it has three hearts.
Anna Tarrés was particularly excited because she was the last person to see Castro alive: he was rehearsing the performance for the Christmas festival of the Kallípolis club in Barcelona, ??where Tarrés is a coach. The former Spanish synchronized swimming team coach is now coaching the Chinese delegation, which won the World Championships in Doha and hopes to also win the Paris Games: “We already have the choreography, now I’m looking for emotion”, she explained to her tablemates. Gemma Recoder, director of Canet Rock, was very keen on the mobile phone. “We are about to sell out for the summer.”
The conversations kept jumping from topic to topic because, as Ada Parellada told this newspaper, “it was in 2010 when the first Apron Party was organized because in this country we have very interesting women”. Like the anthropologist Agnès Villamor, who has organized food exhibitions with the chef. “Since it is something for women, very little has been studied about the evolution of cooking.” The sexologist Eva Moreno gave her opinion on the access of children and young people to pornography. “You need to educate the young, it’s obvious, but maybe we should start with the adults.” For lawyer Carla Vall, the sentence to Dani Alves “is an undeniable change in society and in the judiciary”. And for the stylist Marta Pontnou, “elegance is not in money, but in knowing how to wear clothes safely”.
Judith Colell, the president of the Catalan Film Academy, made her debut at the feminist gastronomic event and compared the Gaudí gala with the Oscars, held hours earlier: “The budget is the fundamental difference, but we also have to reflect on how the Oscars, with the endless commercial breaks, lasted almost as long as the Gaudís”. For her part, the vice-president of the academy, Maria Molins, was exultant because her series Entrevías is currently the most watched on Netflix in a non-English language. Elisenda Roca had just recorded Saber y ganar and was surprised by the fact that one of the contestants was younger than the program. The clown Pepa Plana explained that she has a full schedule of performances all over Spain after receiving the National Circus Award. And Cristina Dilla also continues to triumph on the stages of Catalonia with the comedy El joc de la veritat.
After the dinner of canapés, vegetable cannelloni, meatballs and cheese mousse, a musical bingo was organized with the songs that Itziar Castro liked. But the bingo soon turned into a karaoke, with the voices of the generous Mónica Green, who is preparing to land in the USA, her native country; Paula Valls, who has just released the song Disculpa, and Beth, who was accompanied by Uma, her third daughter, almost four months old, and who was taken care of by some aprons. She seemed to be used to it, as her mother performed in Girona when she was nine days old.
