On Wednesday I was at the summer party of ARA, where, besides greeting colleagues and readers, I heard live the conversation between Albert Om and Ada Parellada, who in September returns to the newspaper to share her recipe book with her numerous followers. Ada is a whirlwind of a woman, and you can easily imagine her cooking four dishes at once. But she is a person with a very thoughtful discourse, in which enthusiasm responds not only to impulse but to a method and an idea. When I hear her, or Maria Nicolau, or Empar Moliner, and so many other people who talk about the land, the product, the wines, and agriculture, I realize that behind their fiery speeches there is not only hedonism, good habits, and environmentalism, but a whole idea of country, of how what is now called the territory should be managed, of how food connects us with a way of doing and living that are also past, heritage, and culture in all senses of the term.I would venture to say that, in these times of political discredit, these proclamations are an authentic reformulation of Catalanism, that concept which, as Josep Pla said, links with everything, and which always knows how to reinvent itself and disguise itself in the most useful way to approach the objective – which is, as always, the defense of the right to exist of a national community–. In the 17th century (and until 1714) Catalanism was revolt; in the 18th, economic development; in the 19th, simultaneously and not always friendly, it was cultural renaissance and social revolution. In the 20th century, political Catalanism exploded, harshly repressed by two dictatorships. And now, in times of political weariness and authentic demographic metamorphosis, one of the safe havens of Catalanism is the land, also threatened, but which continues to function as a mirror of the values and intangible heritage of the country. If cuisine is – back to Josep Pla – the landscape put in a pot, the nation is a human collective living together in the same space. If the political landscape is a wasteland, and the human landscape changes constantly, the natural landscape, the space where we exist, becomes even more the repository of some essential truths that define us and allow us to face changes with the tranquility of knowing that some things – the fruits of the land and culinary tradition – remain unaltered, even if they are enriched and diversified over time. They are the roots that prevent the tree from having to suffer from the length and reach of the new branches, which alter its shape without damaging its essence.This Catalanism of the land, or of the fruits of the land, does not only serve to claim escudella, garnacha, sea and mountain or ratafia. It is also the guarantee of a model of country that respects the environment, the sown fields, fishing and livestock; a country that does not let itself be swallowed by exorbitant growth or the greed of tourism. A country, in short, that respects itself, that does not renounce offering all the good it has to the world. Of this, in politics, we would call it sovereignty. And while history shows us that politics ends up being necessary to defend the country's model, we also know, as is tradition in this land, that when politics fails it is society that protects and organizes itself, shines with its own light and makes the country remain despite not appearing on maps with its own color. I toast, therefore, to all the farmers, ranchers, fishermen, restaurant or home cooks, sommeliers and disseminators who help us understand that, under a surface increasingly battered by plastic and cement, there is the land, watching the centuries and millennia pass, reminding us who we are.

What you will read here, more than an interview, is a gastronomic manifesto that the cook Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) let go of on Wednesday, in a disordered, fun, and captivating way, at the ARA summer party, in front of 200 newspaper subscribers. Born into the family of the mythical Fonda Europa in Granollers, owner of the Semproniana restaurant in Barcelona, author of a dozen books, and disseminator of traditional Catalan cuisine on Instagram, Ada Parellada will collaborate again with ARA after the summer by publishing two weekly recipes on video.What does returning to the PRESENT mean to you?

I interview the cook Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) one afternoon after she has finished recording recipe videos. She offers me a piece of a blueberry pie, delicious, which she has prepared with nine ingredients. Only nine ingredients, because that way everything is easier, she says. We start the interview by talking about the last one I did with her, in which she told me the story of her family, and how it was that she decided to open the restaurant Semproniana with her partner. Ada Parellada has just written the book Els plats del dia (Rosa dels Vents), in which she vindicates set menus, like the ones she prepares at her restaurant daily for 23 euros, and which are dishes made from start to finish, and elaborate Catalan cuisine.

Ten years ago, chef Ada Parellada decided to host a four-euro dinner at her restaurant, Semproniana, to raise awareness about food waste. On June 16, 2015, Parellada created a dinner with foods that had either not entered the food distribution system or had left, proving that they were good, very good. This Tuesday, the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food launches the fourth edition of the campaignWe take advantage of food, which, of course, has the Semproniana chef as its driving force, and a total of seventy restaurants have joined the campaign. Until October 31, menus are available at very affordable prices (three dishes for around twenty euros) with the aim of raising awareness about the importance of making the most of food.

Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) comes from a family that has been serving food for seven generations and over 250 years and is a great advocate of recycled cooking. As a summer read, she recommends A life in the mountains (Now Books), by Abraham Orriols. The journalist and writer born in Berga in 1996 collects in this book the life of the Marina Vilalta, the oldest shepherdess in Catalonia. "Marina is almost 100 years old, and she goes out to graze the sheep every day," Parellada recalls.

At home, they always said that the best sauce is hunger and that water isn't tasteless if you're thirsty. We're so passionate that we needed to be gone to realize the value of what we had. That Paco was a unique character, a genius, an enlightened man, and a Renaissance man, is known by all of us who have enjoyed close contact with him and those of us who have met him occasionally. But aside from all his knowledge, which is already sufficiently important, Paco had flair, a particular style with a good patina of humor that made all this knowledge painful. One might think it was a technique acquired from so many years of teaching as a professor of economics at the School of Engineering, but in reality it was a mixture of innate aptitudes, others inherited, and the immense curiosity that made him wiser every day. He was interested in everything and everyone: technology, history, literature, painting, music (how we will long to hear him play) All of me by Ella Fitzgerald on the piano at 7 Portes), the country's economy, and, of course, the cuisine. Cuisine in capital letters, without exclusions or borders. However, since she took over at 7 Portes, she realized how fragile our Catalan cuisine is. Over all these decades, she has fought tirelessly, not only to showcase a coherent, sensible, and landscape-adapted culinary heritage, but also to delve into the roots of a precious legacy of rice dishes, fricandoso, and flans, which we have received for free and, ungratefully, have swept under the rug. Paco, we will miss you and mourn for you a lot. Rest assured, we will not stand idly by. We will not allow any of the work you have done to be lost, and we promise you that we will continue to be... the resistance from chicken to casserole!

Ada Parellada (Granollers, 1967) comes from a family that has been serving food for seven generations and more than 250 years. She learned the trade of cook and restaurateur at Fonda Europa in Granollers, the Parellada family's main house, "the university of hospitality," in her words. Since 1993, she has had her own restaurant in Barcelona, Semproniana, where every March 8th she brings together some of the most prominent Catalan women for the Festa del Davantal. In this interview, Ada Parellada explains why her restaurant doesn't have avocados and why sushi is a traditional dish for Catalan children.