It is no coincidence that the book Las recetas del hambre (CrÃtica) went on sale this Wednesday, on the eve of May 7, Mother’s Day. The authors, David Conde and Lorenzo Mariano, have paid an extraordinary tribute to the mothers and grandmothers of the long post-war period in Spain, “who tried to dress Sunday days that were always Monday without bread” or who “did everything to put something of color to times so grayâ€.
Professors Conde and Mariano, both 43 years old, friends, PhDs in Anthropology who teach at the University of Extremadura, are great experts on the hardships that Spain went through between 1939 and 1952, while the ration cards were in force. This newspaper has spoken to them first thing in the morning, after they had had coffee, but real coffee, not peanut shells.
His work, subtitled Food in the Postwar Years, recalls ads like this: “It’s not coffee, but it tastes like coffee.” The milk was so watered down that prices varied depending on the quality: “Milk, cow’s milk, pure cow’s milk and cow’s milk-milk”. The most widespread culinary strategy, the researchers explain, was “the prodigious use of imagination to fill stomachs with what little there was.”
The potato tortillas were without potatoes or eggs (the lucky ones who had chickens preferred to use this scarce commodity for barter or on very special occasions): “The white part of the oranges between the peel and the segments was soaked as a of cut potatoes. The eggs were replaced by a mixture of four tablespoons of flour, ten of water, one of baking soda, ground pepper, oil, salt and colouringsâ€.
Housewives gave up their plate to feed their own. “Poor thing, she said that she wasn’t hungry… How could she not be? If she didn’t eat! â€, Says one of those children, one of the hundreds of custodians of memory interviewed by the authors. His field work has been enriched with contributions from some fifty colleagues who have reached corners of Spain where they could not reach.
Hunger recipes, like the ones we have reproduced, arouse a voracious appetite (sentimental, not the other). The book benefits from the prologue by Ana Vega and the illustrations by José Carlos Sampedro, of whose talent we give a small sample here. The foreword writer is the author of a work related to this one, Cocina viejuna: or how Spain went from black and white food to gastronomy in technicolor (Larousse).
A journalist specializing in culinary history, Ana Vega explains that the architects of this great gastronomic transformation were post-war children: BenjamÃn Urdiain, the first Spanish three-Michelin star, was born in 1939; and the great Juan Mari Arzak, in 1942. David Conde and Lorenzo Mariano emphasize that his wisdom is indebted to thousands of anonymous women who made possible the miracle of tortillas without eggs or potatoes.
Or the miracle of orange peel purees. And that of the acorn-fed polvorones (with honey, but without sugar, which was prohibitive), the poor man’s nougat (a paste of dried figs and nuts) and the post-war Nocilla, the delicacy of the poor, a melon molasses or pumpkin. Women, blessed women who took advantage of the leftovers and lengthened the rations. It was inevitable that such a sentimental work would have personal winks…
David Conde already addressed this issue in his doctoral thesis. Four of his main sources were very special, his grandparents: MarÃa and Casildo, and Josefa and MatÃas, who fortunately is still alive and at 96 can be proud of the successes of his grandson. One of the drawings in the book reproduces the face of the other grandfather. Alcuéscar, the hometown of the other author, Mariano Lorenzo, also appears several times in the work.
This municipality of Cáceres experienced nightmares that are still remembered. A desperate family dug up a pig dead from trichinosis (which became a public health problem in Extremadura). They all fell ill and two children died. “What that family would have to be going through and what that father would have to go through later,†recalls a witness. Cases like this were not infrequent, but neither were they the majority.
“Even in paradise, the powerful will have preference,” laments Tolstoy in that monument called War and Peace. Our anthropologists remember that there were “first, second and third category†rationing. A minority always ate well, even in the worst of the forties. Others, like the Alcuéscar family, broke taboos and resorted to carrion. And the vast majority got by as best they could.
People who have never gone hungry in their lives still have those days inscribed in their emotional DNA. The children and grandchildren of the mothers and grandmothers who brought Spain forward will always remember them scolding them when they left something on their plate (“Oh, if you had lived through a war!â€) or kissing the bread when they picked up a slice that had been left behind. accidentally dropped to the ground. The bread was and is sacred. Frank knew it.
When the Tyrannosaurus that led a 40-year dictatorship wanted to demoralize the Republicans, he did not throw bombs at them, but rather the quintessential symbol of our livelihood. Cities controlled by the legally constituted government were bombarded with 100-gram rolls, wrapped in propaganda paper with the proclamations: “Not a home without a fire or a family without bread” and “One, Great and Free.”
Black humor reigns in Spain, where the defeated sided with the dictator: “Spain is one because if there were two, ours would be the encore; it is big because it fits all those who have not gone into exile; and it is free because there is freedom of parties: you can see Atlético Aviación-Castellón or Castellón-Atlético de Aviación. Professors Conde and Mariano show that this great and free nation was above all hungry.
Ham was prescribed as medicine for the sick, hence the phrase: “If the poor person eats ham, either the ham is bad or the poor person is bad.” This book is about that time. Of unfortunate people who ate pineapples (but pine cones, not tropical ones) and who went out to the fields to graze all kinds of herbs. And of a figure “between myth and realityâ€, the foodie, who walked around with a ham bone.
The leg was rented to introduce it for a few minutes in the pots and flavor the broths. That was the Spain of the victors, of empty guts (“if the poor don’t have bread, at least they have a homelandâ€, boasted Serrano-Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law). David Conde and Lorenzo Mariano say that those who suffered so much and this chapter of universal history of infamy must be remembered, “but not with shame, but with pride.”
