I am interviewing chef Jordi Jacas on the day he prepared a catering service at a private home, where the Catalan Academy of Gastronomy and Nutrition welcomed academic Sandro Rossell. He prepared a meal there with foods in which honey and oil shone. For dessert, the pastry chef Oriol Balaguer provided the 'bisbalencs', small puff pastry bites filled with angel hair. Jordi is an ambassador for the cuisine and produce of L'Escala, where he was born, grew up, and where he works at the restaurant El Molí. And L'Escala has always been linked to fishing since ancient times: studies indicate that between the 17th and 18th centuries, fishermen from Empúries and Roses settled there and it became a town.

In the summer of 2023, l’Escala's sporting director was insistently looking for a midfielder for his new project. “When they told me his name, I didn't hesitate for a second. I had lost track of him a bit, but when we were kids, those of us who moved around the football fields, we already heard him being talked about. We had him under control,” says Toni Sánchez, the current coach of Figueres. He is referring to Izan González, one of the signings in Quique Álvarez's bid for Girona to return to First Division.

It is a pity – not for us alone, but for the whole world – that we do not have more of a taste for our Gothic painting. Romanesque is certainly more accessible to us because of the influence it had on the avant-garde of the 20th century, Catalan painting which, due to temporal proximity, we value more. But what a pleasure we miss by not celebrating painters like Bernat Martorell or Lluís Borrassà to the same extent!