The pa amb tomàquet, one of the most iconic elaborations of Catalan cuisine, has just become the protagonist of a controversy without eating or drinking it. This Thursday, a collaborator of Hoy por Hoy, broadcast by SER, pointed out that this snack does not originate from Catalonia, a comment that Àngels Barceló, the director of the radio program, did not like too much. “Did you know that scrubbed bread is not Catalan?”, commented Ainhoa ??Aguirregoiti, cook and influencer.
“Excuse me? That the pa amb tomàquet, that the rubbed tomato, is not Catalan?” Barceló responded, stunned, not believing he was serious. At that moment, Aguirregoiti launches his theory about the supposed origin of this elaboration. “The thing is between Andalusia and Murcia. The immigrant workers took him there, because they did not have anything to fill their sandwiches with because what they did was work like convicts. The only thing they had was a little tomato and a little bread and they began to make tomato sandwiches”.
The director of Hoy por Hoy, however, still did not see it clearly: “I will not contradict you, because I do not have the documentation. But emotionally, I am contradicting you. You attack a symbol of Catalonia.” And she finished: “I’ll park the discussion for next week. If it comes from Murcia, my grandma was from Murcia and I’m not going to say anything either, but you are touching a somewhat complicated symbol there.”
A few months ago the alarms also went off for a version of pa amb tomàquet that was shared by The New York Times, and that was quite far from the Catalan production. The American newspaper suggested preparing it with toasted bread spread with garlic and grated tomato, and crowned with slices of different varieties of this summer fruit and pepper. When shared on Twitter, many Catalans reacted angrily, explaining that “traditional pa amb tomàquet is simply toasted bread, spread tomatoes and oil.”
The Catalan photographer and publicist Leopoldo Pomés, who died in 2019, clarified in this report from La Vanguardia that to prepare the authentic pa amb tomàquet you have to choose a wheat flour bread, baked in a wood-fired oven and not excessively toasted, in a format round (one kilo bread) with a crumb with small holes. This must be cut with a serrated knife, into 1.3-centimeter slices, and spread with circular movements with tomatoes, always hanging, very ripe on both sides of the slice. Finally, they are salted with fine salt, also on both sides, and a drizzle of olive oil is spread.
As for its origin, the first reference in Catalan literature to pa amb tomàquet is close to turning 140 years old. It happened in 1884, in a text written by Pompeu Gener, according to what Néstor Luján told this newspaper in an article from 1984.
