Rivas has very clear ideas and delivers bold statements: "You don't have the right to a Louis Vuitton just as you don't have the right to drink expensive wines" or "Wine is agriculture, not for speculators or rentiers. If you want to ruin it by drinking four-euro wines, I don't want you for the sake of wine, nor do I want you to drink from me."

"I'm precisely the kind of nice, upper-middle-class white girl whose relationship with substances has been treated as benign or pitiable, a cause for concern, or a shrug, rather than a punishment." I read this from Leslie Jamison a while back. She wrote it in Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, a memoir on alcohol addiction that has been translated into Spanish (The imprint of the days, Anagrama). I recognized myself, despite the differences: I've never been accused of having a painful, violent relationship with alcohol. Something in me has saved me. Perhaps it has to do with the gesture, the posture. The family they think I come from. The very white skin. The relative public exposure.

In this story we will go through Holland and Tarragona and we will end up asking for a hand from the influencersThe mission? To popularize brandy among a segment of the population that doesn't even know what it is. To achieve this, they've created a simple but quite witty concept, the Earthling.

Its striking orange color is eye-catching, and now that summer has arrived, it's taking center stage among the cold drinks populating bar terraces. We're talking about the spritz, an aperitif cocktail where, in a glass or tumbler with ice, a wine—often a sparkling wine, like Prosecco—a bitters—such as Aperol or Campari—and soda or sparkling water are mixed together, topped off with an orange slice. As with so many other Italian products, the spritz has been an overwhelming success in Catalonia. Now, with the trend toward drinking less alcohol and more during the day—as well as at dusk—this cocktail has every chance of growing even further.

With green walnuts, spices, aromatic herbs, alcohol (of agricultural origin), and sugar, you can make ratafia, the herbal liqueur traditionally consumed as a digestive and now also popular as a festive drink, served either sipped or over ice. This liqueur has gained popularity and is currently a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). There is also a festival-competition in Sant Coloma de Farners, a brotherhood promoting its knowledge, and several books, including: The secrets of ratafia, published by Farell Editors written by agricultural engineer Pep Escudero Rivas, now in its second edition.