"Forget Cadaqués, give me the west of Catalonia, which is still free and authentic things happen there"

Ada Parellada isn't interested at all in summer nights “in the towns on the Catalan coast turned into shopping centres”. “Forget Cadaqués, give me western Catalonia, which is still free and where authentic things still happen,” she claims. “You take off to Les Garrigues and there you still find authenticity, doors that aren't locked, the sepulchral silence at three in the afternoon because everyone is at home napping, the neighbour who arrives and parks in the middle of the main street, and the couple of kids who defy the inclement sun and play football”. 

One of these “truly authentic” villages that the chef loves so much is Fulleda, in Les Garrigues, where she spends one of the best nights of the year every summer. “Nobody goes to Fulleda by chance. It’s a village at the end of the line, you have to want to go there,” she assures. She went there because a friend invited her and ever since then she and her husband have gone every year.

Around August, a village festival is celebrated which, for Parellada, summarises a way of understanding life in villages and summer nights that “is coming to an end”. “A winery sets out the tables and wine, and each person brings their own chair and dinner from home. The whole village goes, as well as people from the surrounding villages. It amazes me that every year the same show happens: a villager who puts on high heels and sings great hits, named Conxi, and who drives the masses wild with her risqué jokes”picantons”. 

Her childhood summers, recalls the Semproniana chef, also took place a bit off the beaten track. The youngest of eight siblings spent her first summers in an isolated house in Aiguafreda, without water or electricity, only with a small generator. Her parents worked at the inn and they were looked after by a woman who, according to her, “didn’t exercise much authority”. There could be up to fifteen children and young people, including siblings, cousins and friends, spending the day by the river or in the pool in swimsuits, t-shirts and flip-flops. “I think I could have easily spent the whole summer with the same bikini bottoms and without a single shower,” she remembers. 

At night, when the generator started to fail, the small television would turn off halfway through a film. Then came the cards, the board games, and the stories of the older siblings. “I remember it like a fairy tale. Nobody forced me to go to sleep and I was fascinated to spend time with my older siblings,” she explains.

Then, in adolescence, came the friends, the nights of painting ourselves “like a monkey” and going out to see “what we could catch”, the beaches and the first loves that always ended with watching the sun rise. “Let’s not kid ourselves, the goal wasn’t to see the sun, it was to end up rolling around with someone on the sand,” she says, laughing.