THE FLYING FORD ANGLIA, WHEN A CAR BECAME MAGIC

It is the third day back from vacation; The Grandma's body is still sluggish and her mind scattered. 

She has enjoyed her favourite antidote: a Lego set. This time, she has decided to build the Weasley family's Ford Anglia and she has invited Claire Fontaine to join in on the build.

Some vehicles are remembered because they are fast. Others because they are beautiful, luxurious or revolutionary. And then there is a small pale-blue Ford Anglia that once flew across the British countryside carrying two young wizards towards Hogwarts.

In the world of Harry Potter, magic usually comes from wands, spells, potions and enchanted objects. Yet one of the most memorable magical objects in the entire saga began its existence as something completely ordinary: a family car.

The Ford Anglia belonging to Arthur Weasley becomes one of the great symbols of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It is funny, unreliable, illegal, surprisingly brave and, eventually, wonderfully independent.

In other words, it is a perfect Weasley car.

The existence of the flying Ford Anglia tells us something important about Arthur Weasley long before the car begins its greatest adventure. Arthur works at the Ministry of Magic and is fascinated by Muggle technology. Unlike many witches and wizards, who either ignore the non-magical world or look down upon it, Arthur approaches it with genuine curiosity and affection. 

The car represents that fascination. He has secretly modified a Ford Anglia 105E, enchanting it so that it can fly. He has also given it an Invisibility Booster and magically expanded its interior and luggage space. 

There is something wonderfully characteristic about Arthur's choice. He does not enchant a prestigious sports car or an expensive limousine. He chooses a modest British family car.

The real Ford Anglia 105E was introduced by the Ford Motor Company in 1959 and became a familiar sight on British roads during the 1960s. Its distinctive rear window, sloping backwards, made the model immediately recognisable. It belonged to everyday Britain. And perhaps that is exactly why it belongs so naturally in the world created by J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter constantly places extraordinary things inside apparently ordinary British life.

Behind a brick wall there can be Diagon Alley. Beyond an ordinary railway platform there can be Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. And inside a small Ford Anglia there can be a flying machine.

The car first becomes important when Harry is effectively imprisoned at 4 Privet Drive by the Dursleys. Ron Weasley, accompanied by Fred and George, decides that waiting for adults to solve the problem is clearly not an option.

So they borrow -or, more accurately, steal- the enchanted Ford Anglia and fly to Surrey. The image is unforgettable: a pale-blue car floating outside Harry Potter's bedroom window while the Dursleys sleep inside the house. But beneath the comedy lies something more important. The car becomes Harry's vehicle of escape.

Harry's life with the Dursleys is defined by confinement. His bedroom has been locked, bars have been placed across his window and his connection with the magical world has been deliberately cut off.

Then Ron appears in a flying car. It is difficult to imagine a more literal representation of friendship arriving to set somebody free. The Anglia carries Harry away from Privet Drive and towards the Burrow, one of the first places where he experiences something resembling a loving family home. For Harry, therefore, the car does not simply transport him geographically.

It takes him from isolation to belonging.

Its most famous journey comes shortly afterwards. When Harry and Ron cannot pass through the barrier leading to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, they make one of those decisions that seem perfectly reasonable only when you are twelve years old.

They take the car. Their flight to Hogwarts is one of the defining sequences of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. They follow the Hogwarts Express northwards, flying above roads, fields and railway tracks. For a while, the adventure feels exhilarating.

Then reality intervenes. The Invisibility Booster begins to fail. The car struggles. The boys are seen by Muggles. And when they finally reach Hogwarts, their spectacular arrival ends not with a heroic landing but with a crash into the Whomping Willow.

It is pure Harry Potter: wonder, humour, danger and disaster compressed into a single journey. The episode also reveals something essential about Harry and Ron's friendship. They are loyal to each other, courageous and resourceful -but they are also children capable of making spectacularly bad decisions together.

Magic does not prevent them from making mistakes. Sometimes it simply makes those mistakes much bigger.  After crashing into the Whomping Willow, something extraordinary happens. The Ford Anglia throws Harry, Ron and their luggage out, ejects them from its interior and drives away into the Forbidden Forest. From that moment onwards, it seems to cease being merely an enchanted object.

It becomes almost alive. Months later, when Harry and Ron are in terrible danger in the Forbidden Forest, surrounded by Aragog's enormous family of Acromantulas, the Anglia suddenly returns. No wizard is driving it. Nobody has summoned it. It simply appears. The battered little car charges through the spiders, rescues the boys and carries them back towards safety before disappearing once again among the trees. It is one of the strangest acts of heroism in the series. A machine enchanted by Arthur Weasley has apparently developed enough independence to survive alone in the forest -and enough loyalty to return when Harry and Ron desperately need it. The car that they once used to rescue Harry eventually comes back to rescue them.

The Ford Anglia also represents something fundamental about the aesthetic of the Harry Potter universe. This is not a world where magic replaces ordinary life. Magic transforms ordinary life. Trains still exist, but one of them leaves from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Schools still have homework, teachers, exams and sports competitions, but the staircases move and the portraits talk. Families still own old cars. Some of those cars simply happen to fly. That mixture between the mundane and the impossible is one of the reasons why the wizarding world feels so tangible. The Ford Anglia is funny precisely because we recognise what it is supposed to be. A modest family car has no business flying through the clouds beside a steam train. And yet, somehow, it feels completely natural.

The Ford Anglia has relatively little time in the enormous Harry Potter story, but its presence is unforgettable. Perhaps that is because it represents several of the ideas at the heart of the saga. It represents Arthur Weasley's curiosity and tolerance towards a world different from his own. It represents Ron's loyalty to Harry. It represents childhood rebellion and the wonderful conviction that rules can occasionally be ignored when a friend needs help. Above all, it represents escape. The first time Harry travels in the Anglia, it carries him away from a house where he is unwanted. The last time we see it play an important role, it carries Harry and Ron away from creatures that are about to kill them. Between those two journeys, something curious has happened.

The machine has become a character. Perhaps that is the real magic of the flying Ford Anglia. Arthur Weasley enchanted a car so that it could fly. But somewhere along the road -or somewhere above it -the little blue Ford seems to have learned something that no spell could easily explain: how to be free. 

And perhaps even how to be a friend.

More information: National Motor Museum

Look, the forest has turned it wild.

Ron Weasley

CRIDAT, ARA ENTRARÉ EN LES FOSQUES ESTANCES...

El sol ha anat daurant
el llarg somni de l'aigua.
Aquests ulls tan cansats
del qui arriba a la calma
han mirat, han comprès,
oblidaven.

Lluny, enllà de la mar,
se'n va la meva barca.
De terra endins, un cant
amb l'aire l'acompanya:
"Et perdràs pel camí
que no té mai tornada".

Sota la llum clement
del mati, a la casa
dels morts del meu vell nom,
dic avui: "Sóc encara".
M'adormiré demà
sense por ni recança.
I besarà l'or nou
la serenor del marbre.

Solitari, en la pau
del jardí dels cinc arbres,
he collit ja el meu temps,
la rara rosa blanca.
Cridat, ara entraré
en les fosques estances. 

Cançó del matí encalmat, Salvador Espriu i Castelló

Descansa en pau, estimat Rafa. Que la terra et sigui lleu.

FONT DE CANALETES, BARCELONA CELEBRATES BARÇA

The first day back after a vacation is always tough. Your mind is in another dimension, and your body resists getting back into the daily routine.  A good way to ease back in -both physically and mentally- is to do something you enjoy that isn't too demanding.

The Grandma loves building Lego sets and has a few waiting to be assembled, so she hasn't missed the chance to build one each day; it helps her regain her focus without putting any physical strain on herself.

Today, she has chosen a beautiful Lego set of the Font de Canaletes -a magical, historic spot that holds great emotional significance for all Culers, and has decided to share the building experience with the fantastic company of Claire Fontaine.

There are football stadiums where history is made. And there are places where history is celebrated.

In Barcelona, when Barça wins something important, thousands of people know instinctively where to go. Not to the stadium. Not to Plaça Sant Jaume. Not even to Plaça Catalunya. They go to a small nineteenth-century fountain at the beginning of La Rambla. The Font de Canaletes.

For anyone unfamiliar with Barcelona, the choice may seem rather strange. Canaletes is not monumental. It is not particularly large. You could walk past it without realising that you had just passed one of the most emotionally significant places in the geography of FC Barcelona.

But when Barça wins a league, a Champions League or another great title, everything changes. Flags appear. Scarves are raised. Songs begin. People climb onto anything that allows them to be seen above the crowd. And Canaletes becomes blaugrana. It has happened generation after generation. But why here?

To understand that, we need to return to a Barcelona without television, without radio commentary and, of course, without mobile phones. A Barcelona in which knowing the result of a football match could itself require a journey.

The present Font de Canaletes dates from 1892. Its name preserves a much older history. An eighteenth-century water deposit located beside Barcelona's old walls distributed water through small channels  -canaletes in Catalan- and both the fountain and this upper section of La Rambla eventually inherited the name. Made of cast iron, with four taps arranged around its base and a lantern rising above them, the fountain belongs to a type that can be found elsewhere in Barcelona.

Architecturally, therefore, Canaletes is modest.  Symbolically, it is enormous.

And before football entered its history, water had already given the fountain its first legend. Tradition says: Whoever drinks from Canaletes will return to Barcelona. It is Barcelona's version of throwing a coin into the Trevi Fountain.

Drink. Leave. And somehow the city will bring you back.

But during the early twentieth century another kind of ritual began to develop around Canaletes. This time it involved football.

Imagine being a Barça supporter in Barcelona more than a century ago. Your team is playing away. There is no television. There is no internet. There are no live scores arriving every few seconds on a screen in your pocket. How do you discover what happened? You wait for the news. And Canaletes became one of the places where that news arrived.

FC Barcelona traces the association between Barça and Canaletes back to 1909, when supporters began learning the team's results at the drinks kiosk beside the fountain. Football supporters gathered there. They discussed matches. They argued. They exchanged news. And, naturally, Barça and Espanyol supporters could engage in some lively football debates. Then the connection became even stronger.

During the 1920s, newspaper offices around La Rambla displayed football results on blackboards outside their buildings. Among them were Las Noticias and El Sol. People gathered to read the scores. And when the score announced a Barça victory, something beautifully simple happened. They celebrated immediately. The place where people had come to receive the news became the place where they celebrated the news. No committee decided it. No marketing department invented it. No one needed to declare Canaletes the official celebration point of FC Barcelona. The supporters simply made it theirs.

That transformation fascinates me. Today a football result reaches us instantly. A goal can be watched repeatedly within minutes. Messages cross continents in seconds. But in early twentieth-century Barcelona, information had a physical location. If you wanted the result, you went somewhere. And because you went somewhere, you met other people who wanted exactly the same thing. Football became communal before the celebration had even begun.

One person arrived. Then another. Someone knew something. Someone else had heard something different. A result appeared on the board. And suddenly strangers had a reason to embrace. Canaletes therefore became much more than a fountain. It became an early social network made of people.

And perhaps this tradition could only have developed on La Rambla. Barcelona has many great avenues, squares and boulevards. But La Rambla has always been something different. It is movement. People arrive and disappear. Residents mix with visitors. Newspaper sellers, florists, theatres, cafés, shops and pedestrians have shared the same urban corridor.

The Catalan writer Josep Pla captured something of this beautifully when writing about La Rambla in 1919: La Rambla is a marvel. It is one of the few streets in Barcelona where I feel completely at ease (El Quadern Gris).

He observed that there were enough people to encounter someone you knew and, at the same time, enough people to disappear into the crowd. That is almost the perfect description of Canaletes.

Individual and collective. Anonymous and familiar. Barcelona compressed into a few metres of pavement.

As FC Barcelona grew, so did the ritual. Victories became championships. Championships became nights of celebration. And generations of supporters repeated what previous generations had done. They went to Canaletes. The fountain gradually became inseparable from the emotional geography of the club. This is important because football clubs do not exist only inside stadiums. They occupy cities. Certain bars become meeting points. Certain streets become processional routes. Certain squares become places of triumph or disappointment. And sometimes an ordinary object acquires extraordinary meaning. For Barça, that object is a fountain.

Even the club's own historical records describe Canaletes as the traditional setting for popular blaugrana celebrations. During Barça's centenary, the club deliberately returned there to revive the old ritual, with players and representatives drinking from the fountain.

More than a century after the connection began, the tradition remains alive. When Barça secured the 2024/25 Liga title, supporters once again packed Canaletes and the surrounding streets. Different generations. Different players. The same fountain.

But perhaps calling Canaletes simply the place where Barça celebrates titles does not quite explain it. Because the tradition tells us something about the relationship between the club and Barcelona itself.

FC Barcelona was founded in 1899. The present Canaletes fountain had been installed only seven years earlier. They therefore grew old together. And during the twentieth century, Barça became much more than a sporting institution within Catalan society. Its colours became part of Barcelona's visual language. Its victories entered family memories. Matches became conversations between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren. And Canaletes became one of the places where private emotion turned public. A football victory experienced at home could end several hours later among thousands of strangers on La Rambla. For one night, strangers were no longer entirely strangers. They were culers.

If objects could remember, imagine what Canaletes could tell us. It would remember supporters waiting anxiously for results they could not obtain anywhere else. It would remember newspapers and blackboards. It would remember arguments between Barça and Espanyol supporters. It would remember victories and disappointments.

Kubala. Cruyff. The Dream Team. Ronaldinho. Messi. The great European nights.

And it would also remember generations of supporters whose names never appeared in newspapers. People who simply loved their club. That may be the most beautiful thing about Canaletes. Football history is usually written around famous people.

Players. Coaches. Presidents.

But Canaletes belongs to the supporters. Its history was created from below. Literally from the street.

And then we return to the old legend. Drink from the fountain and you will return to Barcelona. Perhaps for Barça supporters the prophecy has acquired another meaning. You may leave Barcelona. You may travel. Players come and go. Teams change. Stadiums are rebuilt. Generations replace one another. But when the next great victory arrives, the city remembers where to meet. At the top of La Rambla. Around a small cast-iron fountain. Someone begins singing. A flag rises above the crowd. More people arrive from every direction. And Canaletes becomes blaugrana once again. Because some monuments are built intentionally. Others are created by memory.

And the Font de Canaletes became one of Barcelona's monuments not because of its size, but because generation after generation of people decided that this was where happiness should be shared.

Visca el Barça!  Visca Barcelona!  Visca Catalunya!

More information: Barcelona Born and Bred

 

Si beveu aigua de la font de Canaletes,
sempre més sereu uns enamorats de Barcelona, 
i per lluny que us n'aneu, 
tornareu sempre.

If you drink from the Font de Canaletes, 
you will forever be in love with Barcelona, 
and however far away you may go, 
you will always return.

Popular proverb

JE SUIS ENTRE LA COLLINE QUI PRIE ET CELLE QUI CRIE...

L'eau qui dormait'se réveille d'une longue nuit de sommeil
C'est comme si j'étais parti, parti la veille
Je suis entre la colline qui prie et la colline qui crie
Je ferme les yeux et mange, mange un morceau de soleil

Je serai dilettante ou mort de rire en sentant la mort venir
Du moins j'espère, j'espère, je serai dilettante à temps partiel
Même à l'autre bout du ciel du moins j'espère, j'espère, j'espère
Revoir la mer et la famille
Le point du jour, la statue d'or, la tour en stylo bille

Lyon, presqu'île

Il y a une gare morne et l'autre fière d'aller jusqu'aux sports d'hiver
C'est comme si j'étais parti, parti hier
Et puis la statue du Roi-Soleil sur la grand place éternelle
Des belles cours gorgées, gorgées, gorgées de soleil

Je serai dilettante et mort de rire en sentant la mort venir
Du moins j'espère, j'espère, je serai dilettante à temps partiel
Jusqu'à l'autre bout du ciel, du moins j'espère, j'espère
Revoir la mer, et la famille
Le point du jour, la statue d'or, la tour en stylo bille

Lyon, presqu'île, Lyon, presqu'île

Je voudrais m'éteindre ici ou pas loin de l'Italie
Avec ceux que je chéris, chérie que j'aime
Et puis regarder pousser le lierre, la guitare en bandoulière
Même si je ne suis pas hippie, hippie, hippie chic, mais quand même

Je serai dilettante et mort de rire en sentant la mort venir
Du moins j'espère, j'espère, je serai dilettante à temps partiel
Jusqu'à l'autre bout du ciel, du moins j'espère, j'espère revoir

Lyon, presqu'île, Lyon, presqu'île

 

The sleeping water wakes
from a long night's slumber
It is as if I had left -left just the day before
I stand between the hill that prays
And the hill that screams
I close my eyes,
And eat, eat a piece of the sun. I’ll be a dilettante or die laughing
As I feel death approaching
At least, I hope, I hope, I hope
I’ll be a part-time dilettante
Even at the far end of the sky
At least, I hope, I hope, I hope
To see the sea again, and my family,
Daybreak, the golden statue, the ballpoint-pen tower

Lyon, Presqu'île

There’s one dreary station and another proud one
Bound for the winter sports resorts
It feels as if I’d left—left just yesterday
And then the statue of the Sun King
In the eternal main square, Place Bellecour, bathed
Bathed, bathed in sunlight

I’ll be a dilettante or die laughing
As I feel death approaching
At least, I hope, I hope, I hope
I’ll be a part-time dilettante
All the way to the far end of the sky
At least, I hope, I hope, I hope
To see again...

Lyon, Presqu'île
Lyon Presqu'île

I’d like to pass away here
Or not far from Italy
With those I cherish -cherish and love-
And watch the ivy grow
With my guitar slung over my shoulder
Even if I’m not a hippie-hippie, hippie-chic-still...

I’ll be a dilettante or die laughing
As I feel death approaching
At least, I hope, I hope, I hope
I’ll be a part-time dilettante
All the way to the far end of the sky
At least, I hope, I hope, I hope
To see again...

Lyon, Presqu'île, Lyon Presqu'île

More information: Benjamin Biolay

 

 Jusqu'à l'autre bout du ciel, 

du moins j'espère, j'espère revoir

All the way to the far end of the sky
At least, I hope, I hope, I hope
To see again...

Benjamin Biolay 

LES LYONNAISES, THE PASTRY CROSSES THE PYRENEES

After a good while enjoying a football match that held little sporting interest but was deeply moving, today, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have decided to go for breakfast in Vieux Lyon before catching their flight back to Barcelona.

 

It is time to come back although Lyon is always home, too.

This morning, they have tasted a dessert that seemed very familiar.

Lyonesses? Lionesses? Lioneses?

Football? Gastronomy?

French? English? Catalan?

For a few moments, everything seemed to share the same name, and everything seemed, once again, very familiar and very dear.

After a salade lyonnaise, there should always be room for dessert. At least, that is what The Grandma and Claire Fontaine firmly believe. And in Lyon, surrounded by boulangeries, pâtisseries, chocolate shops and windows filled with irresistible little creations, there is certainly no shortage of possibilities.

But today The Grandma stopped in front of something extremely familiar. A small, round pastry. Light and hollow. Filled generously with cream. A chou à la crème. And The Grandma smiled. Because she had seen this before. Many, many times. Only at home, in Catalunya, she would probably have called it something different. Una lionesa.

And suddenly a very simple pastry raised a fascinating question. How can something so French feel so Catalan? The answer lies in one of the great travellers of European gastronomy: pâte à choux.

Few pastry doughs behave quite like pâte à choux. Flour, water or milk, butter and eggs. The ingredients could hardly be more ordinary. But the technique is unusual. Unlike most pastry doughs, the flour is first cooked with liquid and butter. The mixture is dried over heat to form what pastry chefs call a panade. Eggs are then gradually incorporated. And then the  real magic happens in the oven. There is no yeast. There is no baking powder. Instead, the water contained in the dough becomes steam. The steam expands. The pastry rises. And inside, a cavity appears. The result is a light shell with an almost empty interior. And humanity, naturally, looked at that empty space and reached the only sensible conclusion: we should fill it with something delicious.

Cream. Chocolate. Pastry cream. Ice cream. Anything, really. The empty centre became an invitation.

The history of pâte à choux is surrounded by one particularly persistent story. According to the traditional account, the pastry was created in the sixteenth century by an Italian cook associated with Catherine de' Medici, who married the future Henri II of France in 1533. Different versions call this mysterious cook Pantanelli, Penterelli or Popelini. He supposedly created a preparation known as pâte à chaud -literally hot pastry- which later evolved into pâte à choux. It is a wonderful story. There is only one problem. It is almost certainly a legend.

Modern historical examination has challenged the idea that Catherine de' Medici arrived in France accompanied by an army of Italian cooks who revolutionised French cuisine. The supposed Italian creators of pâte à choux cannot be reliably documented at her court. And I rather like that uncertainty. Recipes rarely have birth certificates. They evolve. One cook changes something. Another improves it. A technique moves from one kitchen to another. Names change. Ingredients change. And eventually everybody forgets exactly where the journey began.

What we can follow more confidently is the evolution of the technique itself. Earlier preparations known as popelins or poupelins already existed in France. They involved a dough that was dried over heat before being baked. Eventually this family of preparations developed into what we recognise as modern pâte à choux. The great transformation took place particularly during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when French pastry became increasingly sophisticated.

Two names are especially important: Jean Avice and Marie-Antoine Carême. Avice, an important pastry chef of his time, helped develop the possibilities of the dough. Then came Carême. And Carême changed almost everything.

Marie-Antoine Carême was one of the most extraordinary figures in the history of European cuisine. Born into poverty in Paris in 1784, he eventually cooked for some of the most powerful people in Europe. But Carême was much more than a cook. He thought about food architecturally. His spectacular pièces montées transformed sugar, pastry and confectionery into towers, temples, ruins and monuments. He codified. He classified. He refined. And pâte à choux became part of the sophisticated vocabulary of nineteenth-century French pastry. From this extraordinary dough emerged an entire family. 

Choux à la crème. Éclairs. Profiteroles. Religieuses. Paris-Brest. Saint-Honoré. Different shapes. Different fillings. Different presentations. But the same extraordinary principle: a cooked dough inflated largely by steam, leaving space inside for the pastry chef's imagination.

But why are they called choux?

Here language becomes delicious. In French, chou means cabbage. And choux is its plural. Look carefully at a little round baked choux pastry. With its irregular, folded surface, someone apparently thought it resembled a tiny cabbage. And the name stuck. So one of the foundations of elegant French pastry bears, essentially, the wonderfully unpretentious name: cabbage pastry. French has another affectionate expression: mon petit chou. Literally, my little cabbage. But used rather more charmingly as: my darling. Perhaps pastry and affection were destined to meet.

And then something even more interesting happened. Pâte à choux travelled. French pastry techniques became enormously influential throughout Europe, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Pastry chefs moved. Cookbooks circulated. Hotels adopted French culinary terminology. Restaurants imitated Parisian fashions. Local pastry shops absorbed foreign techniques. And recipes that had once belonged to professional French pastry kitchens began appearing in bakeries far beyond France.

Portugal. Italy. Catalunya. Each culture adopted them. And often renamed them. This is where our story becomes particularly close to home.

In Catalunya, those small filled choux pastries became known as: lioneses. The word is completely natural to Catalan speakers. A lionesa literally means a woman or something from Lyon. And yet the irony is wonderful. The French themselves do not normally walk into a pâtisserie asking for a lyonnaise when they want one of these pastries. They ask for a chou à la crème. What Catalans call lioneses belongs to the wider French tradition of pâte à choux, rather than exclusively to Lyon.

Even modern descriptions of Lyon's gastronomy sometimes have to explain this curious distinction: the pastries popularly known elsewhere as lionesas are choux and are made throughout France, not just in Lyon. So somewhere during the pastry's journey south, geography became a name.

France gave us the pastry. And we gave it Lyon.

But something even more beautiful happens when food crosses a border. Eventually, we stop thinking of it as foreign.

In Catalunya, lioneses became completely at home. They entered neighbourhood pastry shops. They appeared in Sunday assortments. They were carried carefully inside cardboard boxes tied with string. They arrived after family lunches. And they acquired the fillings that generations of Catalans recognise immediately. Nata. Crema. Trufa.

The Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana itself defines the lionesa as a small pastry made from what is sometimes called pasta choux, baked and then filled with chocolate, cream or custard. That definition tells us something important. The lionesa is no longer simply a French pastry eaten in Catalonia. It has entered the Catalan culinary vocabulary. It belongs here too.

And now we reach one of those questions capable of dividing otherwise perfectly reasonable people.

Which lionesa? Nata? Light whipped cream against the crisp pastry. Crema? Thick pastry cream, richer and more substantial. Or perhaps: Trufa? Cream transformed by chocolate.

There is no correct answer. Although every Catalan family probably contains somebody absolutely convinced that there is. Sometimes the pastries are finished with icing sugar. Sometimes chocolate. Sometimes they appear together on a tray, allowing everyone to choose. And perhaps that tray tells the story better than any history book could. Because the technique is French. The name points towards Lyon. The fillings have become familiar within Catalan pastry culture. And nobody sitting around the table needs to think about any of that. They simply reach for another one.

We often think about cultural exchange through enormous historical events. Wars. Empires. Migrations. Trade routes. Political borders. But culture also travels through much smaller things. A cooking technique. A recipe copied into a notebook. A pastry chef moving to another country. A word misunderstood or transformed. A customer tasting something abroad and wanting to recreate it at home. Food crosses borders remarkably easily. And when it arrives somewhere new, it changes. That is not corruption. That is culture.

The croissant travelled. Chocolate travelled. Coffee travelled. Tomatoes travelled. Potatoes travelled. And pâte à choux travelled too.

Eventually it crossed the Pyrenees and became so familiar that generations of Catalans would know one of its descendants simply as: la lionesa.

And this is why The Grandma finds today's dessert particularly charming. She travelled from Catalunya to Lyon. But the pastry had already made the opposite journey long before her. Perhaps not directly from Lyon. Perhaps not in one single journey. And certainly not with a passport identifying its birthplace. Recipes do not travel like that. They move from kitchen to kitchen. From chef to apprentice. From cookbook to cookbook. From country to country. And eventually they become part of somebody else's memories. That is what makes culinary history so fascinating. A recipe can belong to more than one place. France can recognise the chou. Catalunya can recognise the lionesa. And both can be right. Because food does something that borders sometimes struggle to do. It allows identities to overlap.

So today, sitting in Lyon, The Grandma looks at a little chou à la crème and sees something simultaneously foreign and familiar. France calls it chou. Catalunya calls it lionesa. The pastry itself does not seem particularly concerned. It has spent centuries crossing borders. And it knows that, sooner or later, wherever it goes... someone will fill it with cream.

More information: Mad About Macarons

Les beaux-arts sont au nombre de cinq : 
la peinture, la sculpture, la poésie, 
la musique et l'architecture, 
laquelle a pour branche principale la pâtisserie.

The fine arts are five in number:
painting, sculpture, poetry, 
music and architecture, 
whose principal branch is pastry.

Antonin Carême

SALADE & MÈRES LYONNAISES, A CITY SERVED ON A PLATE

Leaving the Mediterranean behind is never easy. After Cap de Creus, els Aiguamolls de l'Empordà, medieval Sant Martí and ancient Emporion, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have driven to Girona, boarded an international high-speed train and headed north.

Destination: Lyon.

They have arrived at midday with just enough time to catch the tram from Part-Dieu station to Décines-OL Vallée, where they had an appointment with the Northern Star. They already know the city. The Grandma was working there during two years and Claire Fontaine has visited it several times, but Lyon is amazing and beautiful and it is always a pleasure to visit it. They had walked along the Saône and the Rhône, explored Vieux Lyon, climbed towards Fourvière and wandered through the streets of the Croix-Rousse.

So this time, perhaps, there was no need -only- to look upwards at monuments. It was time to look down. At the plate. Because understanding Lyon without understanding its food would mean understanding only half of the city. And there are few dishes that express the character of Lyonnaise cooking better than something apparently very simple: salade lyonnaise.

A handful of leaves. Smoked bacon. Croutons. A poached egg. A sharp vinaigrette. Nothing particularly luxurious. Nothing unnecessarily complicated. And yet, put them together properly and something remarkable happens.

This is Lyon in a bowl.

Lyon's relationship with food is almost impossible to separate from the identity of the city itself. Its geographical position helps explain why. Lyon stands at the confluence of two great rivers, the Rhône and the Saône, but it also lies at a crossroads between some of France's richest agricultural regions. To the north lies Burgundy. Nearby are Beaujolais and the vineyards of the Rhône Valley. Bresse provides its celebrated poultry. The surrounding countryside has supplied vegetables, cheeses, freshwater fish, pork and charcuterie.

For centuries, goods, travellers and culinary traditions have passed through the city. Lyon absorbed them. And then made them its own. Its gastronomic reputation eventually became so extraordinary that the famous French food writer Curnonsky proclaimed Lyon the world's capital of gastronomy.

But Lyonnaise cuisine was never only about grand restaurants. Quite the opposite. Some of its most characteristic dishes came from kitchens where economy mattered, where nothing was wasted and where inexpensive ingredients had to become something delicious.

That tradition survives in one of Lyon's most famous institutions: the bouchon.

A bouchon lyonnais is not simply a restaurant. It is an atmosphere. Tables stand close together. Conversations overlap. There may be wooden furniture, old photographs, copper pans and the almost inevitable red-and-white checked tablecloth. The food is generous rather than delicate. And pork appears everywhere. Sausages. Pâtés. Grattons. Andouillettes. The famous tablier de sapeur. Meals are accompanied traditionally by a pot lyonnais of local wine.

The philosophy is uncomplicated: eat well, drink well and do both in company.

The origin of the word bouchon itself is debated, although one traditional explanation connects it with bundles of straw once displayed outside inns serving wine to travellers and coachmen. What is beyond doubt is that the bouchon became one of the great expressions of Lyon's popular food culture. And somewhere among all those wonderfully robust dishes sits our salad.

Calling salade lyonnaise simply a salad is slightly misleading. Yes, there are leaves. Traditionally, a bitter green such as frisée works particularly well. But then Lyon intervenes. Into those leaves go pieces of bacon -lardons- fried until beautifully browned. Then come crisp croutons, often carrying the flavour of garlic. A vinaigrette provides acidity. And finally, on top: a poached egg. Cut into it and the yolk begins to run. It mixes with the vinaigrette. It coats the leaves. It reaches the bacon and the croutons. Suddenly the dressing is no longer merely a vinaigrette. The warm yolk transforms it into something richer and silkier.

Crisp lettuce. Crunchy bread. Salty pork. Sharp vinegar. Soft egg. Fat against acidity. Warm against cool. Simple ingredients producing a remarkably sophisticated balance. It is rustic food that understands perfectly what it is doing.

That rustic quality matters. Lyon's gastronomic identity cannot be understood without the people who worked in the city. And among them were the famous canuts. The canuts were Lyon's silk workers, particularly associated with the slopes and plateau of the Croix-Rousse. Their working lives were demanding, their hours long and their political and social history turbulent. They also contributed to one of Lyon's most characteristic gastronomic traditions: the mâchon.

After working through the night or beginning work extremely early, silk workers would gather for a substantial morning meal. Forget coffee and a croissant. A traditional mâchon meant charcuterie, offal and other robust dishes, usually accompanied by Beaujolais or Mâconnais wine.

It was nourishment. But it was also companionship. Workers ate together. Talked together. Shared food and wine around the same table. Some Lyonnais bouchons still preserve the tradition today. And although we should not invent a direct historical line claiming that the canuts created the salade lyonnaise, the dish belongs perfectly to this same culinary universe.

Bread. Pork. Egg. Greens. Nothing extravagant. Everything useful. 

But there is another story behind Lyon's extraordinary gastronomic reputation. And it is a story largely written by women. They became known as the Mères Lyonnaises -the Mothers of Lyon.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women who had often worked as cooks in bourgeois households began running their own establishments. Their cooking combined two worlds. From bourgeois kitchens came technique and precision. From popular cooking came thrift, local ingredients and the determination never to waste good food. The result became something uniquely Lyonnais. Simple food could be treated seriously. Cheap cuts could become extraordinary dishes. A cook did not need luxury ingredients to demonstrate skill.

Among these women was Mère Fillioux, famous for dishes such as her truffled poultry. And then came perhaps the greatest of them all: Eugénie Brazier. La Mère Brazier. Born into a modest farming family, she worked for Mère Fillioux before establishing her own restaurant in Lyon in 1921. In 1933, she achieved something astonishing: her two establishments received three Michelin stars each. Six stars. A culinary legend had been born.

Years later, a young cook would work in her kitchen. His name was Paul Bocuse. The journey from the Mères Lyonnaises to Bocuse tells us something fundamental about Lyon. Here, popular cooking and haute cuisine were never entirely separate worlds. One grew from the other.

And this brings us back to our salad. There is no palace on the plate. No expensive ingredient is required. A traditional salade lyonnaise is built from things that ordinary kitchens could have: some greens, some bread, some bacon, an egg, vinegar and mustard. The genius lies in what happens between them. Old bread becomes croutons rather than waste. A modest amount of pork gives flavour to an entire plate. An egg supplies richness. Bitter leaves prevent that richness from becoming heavy. Vinegar cuts through the fat. This is cooking based on balance rather than luxury.

And perhaps that is why the dish feels so profoundly Lyonnais. It shares the philosophy that made the bouchons famous: straightforward ingredients, generous flavours and food designed to be enjoyed rather than admired from a distance.

This is one of the things I love most about Lyon. The city refuses to choose between sophistication and simplicity. It gave France the Mères Lyonnaises. It gave the world Paul Bocuse. Its gastronomic restaurants became internationally famous. And yet the city's culinary soul can still be found inside a noisy bouchon, sitting at a small wooden table with a plate of sausage, quenelles, cervelle de canut -which, despite its alarming name, is actually seasoned fresh cheese- or a humble salade lyonnaise.

Perhaps there is no contradiction. Perhaps that is precisely the point. Great cooking does not necessarily begin with expensive ingredients. It begins with understanding them.

Travel is often remembered through monuments. A cathedral. A castle. A Roman ruin. A museum. But sometimes memory chooses something much smaller. A smell. A table. A glass of wine. An egg yolk running slowly over warm bacon and crisp bread. And suddenly an entire city returns. That is what food can do.

After several days travelling through landscapes marked by geology, wetlands, Greek settlers, Roman soldiers, medieval counts and archaeologists, Lyon offered The Grandma and Claire Fontaine another way of understanding history.

Through taste. Because recipes travel through time too. They change. They adapt. They absorb influences. They preserve habits long after the people who created those habits have disappeared. The salade lyonnaise may appear modest beside the architectural splendour of Vieux Lyon or the great culinary mythology surrounding Paul Bocuse.

But perhaps that modesty is precisely its charm. Frisée. Lardons. Croutons. A poached egg. Four ordinary ingredients. And behind them, an entire world of bouchons, canuts, Mères Lyonnaises, markets, workers, cooks and shared tables.

Sometimes you do not need a monument to understand a city. Sometimes Lyon fits perfectly inside a salad bowl.

More information: Medium

Leur cuisine a atteint tout naturellement 
ce degré suprême de l'art, la simplicité.

Their cooking quite naturally attained 
that supreme degree of art: simplicity.

Curnonsky

EMPORION, DIGGING UP THE MEDITERRANEAN PAST

Today, Claire Fontaine & The Grandma visited Empúries and stayed at VillaTeresita, where they spent the night before leaving tomorrow for Girona to catch the train to Lyon.

Both are lovers of history and archaeology, and Empúries is a magical place where the modern Mediterranean coexists with its Roman (Emporiae) and Greek (Emporion) past.

Being able to rest in the very spot where, over a century ago, Josep Puig i Cadafalch directed the excavations at Empúries is an indescribable feeling; it is history knocking at your door, sharing breakfast with you, and enjoying views that have remained unchanged for centuries.

There are places where history is preserved in books. And there are places where history lies beneath your feet. Empúries belongs to the second kind. Walking along the coast from Sant Martí d'Empúries, with the Mediterranean on one side and pine trees on the other, it is difficult not to feel that this landscape has been waiting for travellers for thousands of years.

Today, the Camí de Ronda follows one of the most beautiful stretches of the Empordà coastline. But more than 2,500 years ago, other travellers were already arriving here from across the sea. They were Greeks. And they came to trade.

Around 575 BC, Greek settlers from Phocaea, through their colony of Massalia -modern Marseille- established themselves on a small island close to the coast. This first settlement, the Palaia Polis or Old City, occupied the promontory where Sant Martí d'Empúries stands today.

Some decades later, they expanded onto the mainland. The new settlement became  Emporion. Its name says almost everything. Emporion meant a trading place, a market, a place where people and goods met. And that is precisely what Emporion became. Not merely a Greek city on the western edge of the Mediterranean, but a meeting point between worlds.

The Greeks who settled at Emporion did not arrive in an empty land. The indigenous Iberian communities were already living here. What developed was therefore not simply a transplanted Greek world but a frontier of contact, exchange and negotiation. Ships brought ceramics, wine, oil and manufactured products from across the Mediterranean. From the surrounding territories came agricultural products, metals and other goods. But objects were not the only things travelling. Ideas travelled. Languages travelled. Religious beliefs travelled. Art travelled. Ways of measuring, trading and understanding the world travelled too.

Emporion became one of the great gateways through which Mediterranean culture entered the Iberian Peninsula. That is perhaps why standing among its ruins feels so different from visiting an archaeological site isolated from its surroundings. The sea is still there. You can see it from the ancient streets. And suddenly geography explains history. The Greeks chose this place because the Mediterranean was not a barrier. It was their road.

Centuries later, another Mediterranean power arrived at exactly the same place. In 218 BC, during the Second Punic War, Roman troops commanded by Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio landed at Emporion as Rome began its military intervention in the Iberian Peninsula. That landing would have enormous consequences. The Roman presence expanded. A military camp was established. Eventually a Roman city grew beside the Greek one.

Emporion became Emporiae.

Today, Empúries is exceptional because it is the only archaeological site in the Iberian Peninsula where the remains of a Greek city and a Roman city coexist side by side. Walking through the site means moving physically between two civilizations. In the Greek city we can still identify the Agora, sanctuaries, streets, houses and commercial spaces. In the Roman city appear another urban language: the Forum, the Basilica, the Curia, baths, shops and large houses decorated with mosaics.

Two cities. Two political systems. Two cultures. And one Mediterranean landscape.

Yet eventually both cities declined. By Late Antiquity, population had increasingly concentrated again around the old Palaia Polis -the place we visited in Sant Martí d'Empúries. The great classical city slowly disappeared beneath the earth. For centuries, Empúries became a memory.

Until archaeology brought it back. And here another fascinating chapter begins. Not in the sixth century BC. But in the twentieth century.

In 1908, the Junta de Museus de Barcelona began systematic archaeological excavations at Empúries under the direction of Josep Puig i Cadafalch. 

Puig i Cadafalch is usually remembered as one of the great architects of Catalan Modernisme. Casa Amatller. Casa de les Punxes. Casa Martí. The Casaramona factory. But reducing him to architecture would mean missing an extraordinary part of his intellectual life. He was also an art historian, archaeologist, scholar of Romanesque architecture, founder of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans and later president of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya. For Puig i Cadafalch, studying the past was not an antiquarian curiosity.

Understanding the architecture, archaeology and art of earlier centuries was a way of understanding the historical formation of Catalunya itself. And Empúries offered something extraordinary. Here was tangible evidence that the history of this land belonged to the great history of the Mediterranean. Puig i Cadafalch promoted and directed the excavations from 1908 until 1923.

Under the soil began to reappear streets. Walls. Temples. Houses. Mosaics. Inscriptions. Objects that had last been touched by people two thousand years earlier. Archaeology was giving a forgotten city back its voice.

But there is a much more intimate part of this story that I particularly love. Just beside the archaeological site, overlooking the Mediterranean, stands today the beautiful Hostal Empúries. Its story began in 1907. The original building was called Villa Teresita, and it was built specifically to accommodate the archaeologists working on the recovery of Empúries.

Think about that for a moment. More than a century ago, archaeologists slept here while one of the most important archaeological sites in Catalunya was beginning to emerge from the earth only a few hundred metres away. In the morning they could leave the house and walk towards the excavations. At the end of the working day, they returned towards the sea. Perhaps they discussed the discoveries they had made that morning.

A wall. A mosaic. A Greek inscription. A fragment of pottery. A coin. A sculpture. Small pieces of evidence from which an entire city had to be reconstructed.

Villa Teresita eventually evolved into the present Hostal Empúries, becoming an early landmark of tourism in the area even before the expression Costa Brava became established. And somehow that continuity seems perfect. A building created for people who came here because of the past eventually became a place for people who come here because of the beauty of the present.

And what a present it is. There are archaeological sites whose surroundings have been swallowed by modern cities. Empúries has been extraordinarily fortunate. The landscape remains an essential part of the experience. The Mediterranean lies only metres away. Pine trees frame the coastline. Small beaches interrupt the rocks. The camí de ronda connects L'Escala, the beaches, the archaeological site and Sant Martí d'Empúries. And beside the path stands the old home of the archaeologists. It creates an almost perfect sequence: sea, path, hotel, ruins, Sant Martí.

But these are not separate places. They belong to the same story. The Greek sailors saw this coastline. The Roman soldiers saw it. Medieval inhabitants of Empúries saw it. Puig i Cadafalch and his archaeologists saw it. And we see it today.

The landscape becomes the one element connecting people separated by more than two millennia.

Perhaps this is why the work begun in 1908 matters so much. Archaeology does more than recover objects. It restores relationships. A piece of pottery tells us about trade. A coin tells us about power. A house tells us about family and wealth. A temple tells us about belief. A street tells us how people moved. A harbour tells us where they came from. And Empúries tells us that this corner of the Empordà has never really been peripheral.

For the Greeks who sailed westwards across the Mediterranean, it was a gateway. For Rome, it became an entry point into the Iberian Peninsula. For medieval Catalunya, nearby Sant Martí became the centre of a county. And for the archaeologists of the twentieth century, Empúries became a place where the country's ancient Mediterranean past could literally be brought back into the light.

More than a century after Puig i Cadafalch began directing the excavations, archaeological research continues here. There is something wonderfully appropriate about that. Because Empúries is still unfinished. There are still questions beneath the earth.

Perhaps the Greeks chose the perfect name. Emporion. A meeting place. Because this has always been a place of encounters. Between Greeks and Iberians. Between Greece and Rome. Between land and sea. Between archaeology and memory. Between the ancient world and modern Catalunya.

And walking today along the Camí de Ronda, past the old house that once welcomed Puig i Cadafalch's archaeologists, towards the ruins with the Mediterranean glittering beside them, those different periods of history seem strangely close to one another.

Today, in Sant Martí d'Empúries, we have stand where medieval Catalunya began to take shape. We only have needed to walk a few hundred metres to travel much further back. To a time when ships appeared on the horizon carrying merchants from the other side of the Mediterranean. They came looking for a place to trade. They founded Emporion. And more than 2,500 years later, we are still walking through its streets.

More information: Patrimoni Cultural. Generalitat de Catalunya

Empúries és una immensa interrogant 
dreçada davant la consciència dels estudiosos, 
i sols ella mateixa i en ella mateixa es tanca la resposta.

Empúries is an immense question
standing before the minds of scholars,
and only within Empúries itself lies the answer.

Caterina Albert