Garrotxa cheese can only be made in one way, because as of today it officially holds the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) seal, becoming the second cheese in Catalonia to have this distinction (the first was Alt Urgell and Cerdanya cheese, which has a protected designation of origin). The PGI was approved in Brussels at the end of last year, and the Minister of Climate Action, David Mascort, made it public at the Catalan Artisan Cheese Fair in Girona, which brought together forty-two cheese dairies with two hundred different cheeses. However, producers have pointed to the crisis in the raw material, goat's milk, necessary for its production.

"Cheese has a 7,000-year history. However, production here is difficult, there's no experience, we don't have a school. In France, there's a degree of professionalization, but not here. Catalonia isn't a country of cheese; it's not in our DNA," says David Morera, one of the driving forces behind Artefor. However—or precisely because of this—Morera had no better idea than to dedicate his life to cheese. So one day, David—"the best salesman," says Jordi Arroyo—joined forces with Jordi Arroyo, his partner—"the best scientist," says David—and the result is Artefor, a center dedicated to experimenting, advising, training, and tasting cheeses.

Sometimes it happens that, although cinema is essentially an audiovisual art, some films acquire synesthetic qualities and we end up perceiving them through other senses, in addition to sight and hearing. This would be the case with The perfect recipe, a film that stimulates our sense of smell almost from the very beginning. This feature-length debut by Franco-Swiss director Louise Courvoisier exudes different scents: the smell of tractor diesel and manure; the smell of meat cooking on the grill and the sweat after a night of alcohol and impromptu sex following a rural drinking spree; and, obviously, everything is dominated by the stench of Comté cheese. This last scent is largely the focus of the film: a young man from the foothills of the Jura mountain range who, after the sudden death of his father, takes responsibility for his younger sister, but, above all, is determined to win a cheese competition for small producers in the region.

It seems to us that not a shred of the life our grandparents lived remains. But this isn't true, at least not at La Gloria, an artisan cheese factory in Gran Canaria. It doesn't matter that they've won international awards like the Super Gold at the World Cheese Awards and that their cheeses sell out as soon as they're finished. Here, there's a system that goes way back and is still in operation: they're sharecroppers.

I interviewed Jon Garcia (Bilbao, 1991) on a Wednesday at the establishment he opened just a month ago in Barcelona, ​​which is his third. It's located on Carrer de Sant Pere Més Baix and is called Jon Cake & Coffee. On Wednesday, May 21st, it will be exactly four years since he opened his first establishment on Carrer de Assonadors in the Born district. To celebrate, that same day, from 5 pm to 8 pm, he will be selling artisan pastries for €1 to anyone who comes.