La guerra de la paella: identidad, autenticidad y orgullo en el plato

Es el mismo principio.

Same principle.

But I want to push back slightly, because here's the thing: Jamie Oliver has also made a lot of people curious about Spanish food who wouldn't have been otherwise.

Is there a version of this where the outrage is actually somewhat counterproductive?

Es que ahí está la trampa del argumento, Fletcher.

That's exactly the trap in that argument, Fletcher.

Que alguien difunda una versión incorrecta de algo no es mejor que el silencio.

Someone spreading an incorrect version of something is not better than silence.

Si yo te enseñara inglés con un acento terrible y una gramática inventada, no estaría haciéndote un favor aunque consiguiera que más gente se interesara por el inglés.

If I taught you English with a terrible accent and invented grammar, I wouldn't be doing you a favor even if I got more people interested in English.

La curiosidad que genera la desinformación no es una virtud.

Curiosity generated by misinformation is not a virtue.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

I take the point.

Look, I think what I'm circling around is this question of who owns a dish.

And that's not a simple question at all.

Because the obvious answer, the people who invented it, gets complicated very fast.

Mira, la pregunta de quién es dueño de un plato es fascinante porque en realidad nadie lo es legalmente, y sin embargo todo el mundo lo siente como suyo emocionalmente.

Look, the question of who owns a dish is fascinating because in reality no one does legally, and yet everyone feels it is theirs emotionally.

La Comunidad Valenciana tiene su receta oficial de la paella, pero no puede impedirte que pongas chorizo en tu sartén en tu casa.

The Valencian Community has its official paella recipe, but it can't stop you from putting chorizo in your pan at home.

Lo que pueden hacer es decirte que eso no es paella.

What they can do is tell you that is not paella.

Y tienen razón.

And they're right.

Which is actually the more sophisticated position.

It's not prohibition, it's nomenclature.

Call it something else and everyone can relax.

The issue is when you call the modified version by the original name.

That's the act of erasure.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y esto es algo que se entiende mejor cuando uno lo piensa en términos de idioma.

And this is something you understand better when you think of it in terms of language.

Si yo escribo en español palabras inglesas y digo que estoy escribiendo en español, tú me dirás que no.

If I write English words in Spanish and say I'm writing in Spanish, you'll tell me I'm not.

No porque odie el inglés, sino porque las palabras tienen un significado, y los platos también.

Not because you hate English, but because words have meaning, and dishes do too.

La autenticidad no es nostalgia.

Authenticity is not nostalgia.

Es precisión.

It's precision.

I love that framing.

And it brings me to Mexico, because this exact debate plays out there with an intensity that is, if anything, even more charged.

Because you have the added dimension of a former colonial power, the United States, essentially remaking and then exporting back a version of Mexican food that Mexicans barely recognize.

Bueno, eso es un nivel de complejidad completamente distinto.

Well, that's a completely different level of complexity.

En el caso de la paella, hablamos de orgullo regional dentro de un mismo país.

In the case of paella, we're talking about regional pride within the same country.

En el caso de México y Estados Unidos, estamos hablando de una relación histórica marcada por la conquista, la pérdida de territorio y siglos de subordinación cultural.

In the case of Mexico and the United States, we're talking about a historical relationship marked by conquest, territorial loss, and centuries of cultural subordination.

Que encima te roben la comida y la llamen igual tiene otra carga completamente diferente.

Having your food stolen on top of all that, and called by the same name, carries a completely different weight.

So let me set the scene for listeners.

Tex-Mex is a cuisine that developed among Mexican Americans in Texas, particularly from the late nineteenth century onward.

Hard taco shells, yellow shredded cheese, ground beef with cumin, flour tortillas.

Delicious.

I grew up with it.

But it's genuinely a distinct thing from the regional cuisines of Oaxaca, or Veracruz, or Mexico City.

A ver, y lo interesante es que el Tex-Mex nació de una necesidad real.

Look, and what's interesting is that Tex-Mex was born from a real necessity.

Los mexicoamericanos que vivían en Texas después de la guerra del cuarenta y siete, cuando México perdió la mitad de su territorio, tenían que cocinar con lo que encontraban en los mercados estadounidenses.

The Mexican Americans who lived in Texas after the war of 1847, when Mexico lost half its territory, had to cook with what they found in American markets.

El cheddar existe porque el queso fresco no existía.

The cheddar exists because fresh cheese didn't.

No es una traición.

It's not a betrayal.

Es una adaptación de supervivencia.

It's a survival adaptation.

Right, and that's the wrinkle that complicates any simple story about authenticity.

These adaptations often happen under conditions of poverty, displacement, scarcity.

The dish changes because the people making it are in a different context.

So to dismiss the adapted version is, in a way, to dismiss the experience of the people who made it.

Sí, aunque habría que distinguir entre la adaptación que surge de la diáspora y la apropiación que surge del mercado.

Yes, although you have to distinguish between the adaptation that comes from the diaspora and the appropriation that comes from the market.

Una cosa es que una familia mexicana en Chicago adapte sus recetas porque no encuentra ciertos ingredientes.

It's one thing for a Mexican family in Chicago to adapt their recipes because they can't find certain ingredients.

Otra cosa muy distinta es que una cadena de comida rápida americana venda burritos de fusión y se presente como auténtica cocina mexicana.

It's quite another for an American fast food chain to sell fusion burritos and present itself as authentic Mexican cuisine.

Eso sí es una falsificación.

That is a forgery.

The Mexican government took this seriously enough that when Taco Bell tried to expand into Mexico in the nineteen nineties, it was largely rejected.

Not by legislation, but by consumers.

Mexicans looked at it and said, essentially, no thank you, that is not a taco.

The market itself enforced the authenticity standard.

Eso me parece absolutamente fascinante, y guarda un paralelismo directo con lo que pasó en España cuando llegaron las primeras cadenas de comida rápida en los años ochenta.

I find that absolutely fascinating, and it has a direct parallel with what happened in Spain when the first fast food chains arrived in the eighties.

Los españoles no rechazamos la hamburguesa, la adoptamos.

Spaniards didn't reject the hamburger, we adopted it.

Pero nunca confundimos una hamburguesa con una tortilla española.

But we never confused a hamburger with a Spanish omelette.

Los dos productos pueden coexistir en el mismo país sin que uno borre al otro, siempre que estén bien etiquetados.

Both products can coexist in the same country without one erasing the other, as long as they're properly labeled.

Which brings us to UNESCO.

In 2010, Mexican cuisine was inscribed on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list.

The first national cuisine to receive that recognition.

And I think that's the moment where food identity goes from being a cultural conversation to being an international legal and political framework.

Bueno, y no fue casualidad que México lo solicitara en ese momento.

Well, and it was no coincidence that Mexico applied for it at that moment.

Había una presión creciente sobre la cocina mexicana tradicional por parte de la industria alimentaria globalizada, y el gobierno mexicano buscaba un instrumento internacional que pudiera, al menos simbólicamente, blindar ese patrimonio.

There was growing pressure on traditional Mexican cuisine from the globalized food industry, and the Mexican government was looking for an international instrument that could, at least symbolically, protect that heritage.

La dieta mediterránea recibió su propio reconocimiento de la UNESCO en el mismo año, y España fue uno de los países impulsores.

The Mediterranean diet received its own UNESCO recognition that same year, and Spain was one of the driving countries.

But here's the problem with that: UNESCO recognition is essentially a certificate.

It doesn't stop anything.

It doesn't prevent Taco Bell from opening.

It doesn't prevent Jamie Oliver from making chorizo paella.

What it does is give you a language to complain with, officially.

Which matters, but only up to a point.

La verdad es que tienes razón en que la UNESCO no tiene dientes.

Honestly, you're right that UNESCO has no teeth.

Pero creo que subestimas el poder del reconocimiento simbólico.

But I think you underestimate the power of symbolic recognition.

Cuando un organismo internacional dice que algo tiene valor patrimonial, cambia la conversación.

When an international body says that something has heritage value, it changes the conversation.

Ya no estás discutiendo si la paella valenciana merece respeto.

You're no longer arguing about whether Valencian paella deserves respect.

Ese punto está resuelto.

That point is settled.

Ahora estás discutiendo cómo protegerla.

Now you're arguing about how to protect it.

Es un cambio de terreno importante.

That's an important shift in terrain.

Fair point.

And the EU's Denominación de Origen system actually does have teeth.

If you want to sell a product as Champagne, it has to come from Champagne.

Parmesan has to come from Parma.

There's a legal framework that protects geographic food identity with real commercial consequences for violations.

Mira, y la Denominación de Origen es uno de los grandes logros de la integración europea, aunque nadie lo diga así.

Look, and the Denominación de Origen is one of the great achievements of European integration, even if no one puts it that way.

Protege a los productores pequeños de la competencia desleal de las imitaciones industriales.

It protects small producers from the unfair competition of industrial imitations.

Un jamón ibérico de bellota tiene que cumplir una serie de requisitos que no tienen nada que ver con el marketing, sino con la crianza, la alimentación del cerdo, la curación.

An acorn-fed Iberian ham has to meet a series of requirements that have nothing to do with marketing, but with breeding, how the pig is fed, the curing process.

Eso es proteger una forma de vida, no solo un sabor.

That's protecting a way of life, not just a flavor.

Now I want to throw a genuinely difficult question into this.

Because there's a version of the authenticity argument that can become, if you're not careful, a kind of culinary nationalism that is actually pretty exclusionary.

If only Valencians can make paella, what does that mean for the Valencian family who emigrated to Argentina fifty years ago and has been making it there ever since?

Es que esa familia valenciana en Argentina puede hacer la mejor paella del mundo y nadie se lo va a discutir.

That Valencian family in Argentina can make the best paella in the world and nobody is going to argue with them about it.

La autenticidad no es una cuestión de pasaporte.

Authenticity is not a matter of passport.

Es una cuestión de proceso, de ingredientes, de técnica.

It's a matter of process, of ingredients, of technique.

Si respetan la receta original, el plato es auténtico aunque lo estén cocinando en Buenos Aires.

If they respect the original recipe, the dish is authentic even if they're cooking it in Buenos Aires.

Lo que no puedes hacer es cambiar la receta y seguir llamándolo igual.

What you can't do is change the recipe and keep calling it the same thing.

El problema no es la geografía.

The problem is not geography.

Es la honestidad.

It's honesty.

Okay, but now I want to stress-test this from the other direction.

Because the tomato is not native to Europe.

The potato is not Irish.

Chili peppers are not originally Indian.

Almost every cuisine we consider authentic today is built on ingredients that were cultural imports at some point.

Doesn't that undermine the whole authenticity framework?

No, no, espera.

No, no, wait.

Esa objeción es válida pero no llega tan lejos como parece.

That objection is valid but it doesn't go as far as it seems.

La diferencia es el tiempo y la integración.

The difference is time and integration.

El tomate lleva en la cocina mediterránea cuatrocientos años.

The tomato has been in Mediterranean cooking for four hundred years.

Ha sido transformado, hibridado, incorporado en un ecosistema culinario completo.

It has been transformed, hybridized, incorporated into a complete culinary ecosystem.

No es un ingrediente extranjero que convive con la cultura local: es parte constitutiva de esa cultura.

It's not a foreign ingredient coexisting alongside the local culture.

No es lo mismo que meter cheddar en un taco y decir que es auténtico.

It's a constitutive part of that culture.

So the metric is depth of integration, not origin.

That's actually a really useful distinction.

An ingredient can be immigrant and still become native over enough time and transformation.

It's almost like naturalization, isn't it.

The tomato earned its citizenship in Italian cooking.

Me gusta esa imagen.

I like that image.

La naturalización culinaria.

Culinary naturalization.

Y si lo pensamos así, también entendemos por qué el Tex-Mex puede considerarse una cocina auténtica en sí misma, siempre que no se presente como cocina mexicana.

And if we think of it that way, we also understand why Tex-Mex can be considered an authentic cuisine in its own right, as long as it doesn't present itself as Mexican cuisine.

Es la cocina de los mexicoamericanos del suroeste de Estados Unidos.

It's the cuisine of Mexican Americans in the American Southwest.

Eso es real, eso tiene historia, eso merece respeto.

That's real, that has history, that deserves respect.

Simplemente es otra cosa.

It's just a different thing.

Which raises the diaspora question more broadly.

Because immigrant communities around the world are constantly negotiating this: how much do you adapt to where you are, and how much do you preserve what you brought?

And food is often the last thing to change.

People will learn the language, adopt the customs, but they'll still cook the way their grandmother cooked.

La comida es el último reducto de la identidad porque es el más íntimo.

Food is the last refuge of identity because it's the most intimate.

Puedes cambiar de idioma, puedes cambiar de ropa, puedes aprender nuevas costumbres.

You can change language, you can change clothes, you can learn new customs.

Pero el olor de lo que cocinaba tu madre activa una memoria que no tiene traducción.

But the smell of what your mother cooked activates a memory that has no translation.

Eso es por qué los inmigrantes defienden sus platos con tanta ferocidad: no están defendiendo una receta.

That's why immigrants defend their dishes with such ferocity: they're not defending a recipe.

Están defendiendo una conexión con quienes son.

They're defending a connection to who they are.

I've seen this in war zones, actually.

I spent time in Beirut in the late nineties, and even during periods of enormous tension, the debate about whose hummus is better, Lebanese or Israeli, was somehow more heated than most of the political conversations.

Which initially struck me as absurd.

But I came to understand it wasn't absurd at all.

Es que el hummus en ese contexto no es hummus.

In that context, hummus is not hummus.

Es territorio.

It's territory.

Es antigüedad.

It's antiquity.

Es el derecho a existir en un lugar.

It's the right to exist in a place.

Cuando disputas la propiedad de un plato, estás disputando la propiedad de una historia, de una presencia en el mundo.

When you dispute ownership of a dish, you're disputing ownership of a history, of a presence in the world.

A ver, que suene trivial no significa que lo sea.

Look, the fact that it sounds trivial doesn't mean it is.

A veces lo más concreto es lo que contiene las preguntas más grandes.

Sometimes the most concrete things are the ones that contain the biggest questions.

So who actually gets to police this?

Because in the end, there's no global food court.

There's UNESCO, there's the Denominación de Origen, there are food critics and social media mobs and angry Valencian councillors.

But ultimately, it's a conversation without a referee.

And I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Nadie puede policiarlo, y está bien que así sea.

No one can police it, and that's fine.

Pero eso no significa que todo vale.

But that doesn't mean anything goes.

Significa que la responsabilidad recae en cada persona.

It means the responsibility falls on each person.

En cada cocinero que presenta un plato, en cada restaurante que escribe un menú, en cada periodista gastronómico que escribe una reseña.

On every cook who presents a dish, every restaurant that writes a menu, every food journalist who writes a review.

La ausencia de árbitro no suprime la obligación de ser honesto.

The absence of a referee doesn't remove the obligation to be honest.

La suprime de la ley y la traslada a la ética.

It removes it from the law and moves it to ethics.

I think what this conversation keeps circling back to is that food is doing a huge amount of cultural work that we rarely stop to examine.

It carries history, it carries identity, it carries trauma and memory and belonging.

And precisely because it seems like a small thing, a casual thing, a pleasurable thing, it tends to sneak those larger arguments past our defenses.

La comida es un lenguaje, Fletcher.

Food is a language, Fletcher.

Y como cualquier lenguaje, puede usarse para incluir o para excluir, para preservar o para borrar, para contar la verdad o para mentir.

And like any language, it can be used to include or exclude, to preserve or to erase, to tell the truth or to lie.

El problema no es que hablemos de paella o de tacos.

The problem is not that we talk about paella or tacos.

El problema es cuando usamos ese lenguaje sin entenderlo, sin respetarlo, sin siquiera reconocer que tiene una gramática y una historia que anteceden a nuestra hambre del momento.

The problem is when we use that language without understanding it, without respecting it, without even recognizing that it has a grammar and a history that predate our momentary hunger.

I mean, that is a more elegant way of putting it than anything I've managed today.

Food as language.

The dish as a sentence in a language you either know or you don't.

And putting chorizo in your paella is not just a culinary choice.

It's a grammatical error in someone else's mother tongue.

La verdad es que me alegra que lo hayas comprendido.

Honestly, I'm glad you've understood it.

Aunque llevas tres años.

Though it's taken three years.

Espero que en los próximos tres hayas aprendido también a no pedir paella con chorizo, porque si vuelves a hacerlo en una mesa valenciana, no me hago responsable de las consecuencias.

I hope in the next three you'll also have learned not to ask for paella with chorizo, because if you do it again at a Valencian table, I take no responsibility for the consequences.

Y eso incluye las cenas de tu familia política en Madrid, donde ya tienes suficiente historial.

And that includes your in-laws' dinners in Madrid, where you already have quite the track record.

On that note, and with my dignity largely intact, which is more than I can say for most of my visits to Spain, thank you for listening to Twilingua.

We've been talking about food as cultural identity, the paella wars, taco authenticity, and why the question of who owns a dish turns out to be one of the more interesting questions you can ask about who we are.

Gracias a todos por escucharnos.

Thank you all for listening.

Y recuerden: la próxima vez que estén en un restaurante y vean paella con chorizo en el menú, ya saben lo que está pasando.

And remember: the next time you're in a restaurant and see paella with chorizo on the menu, you now know what's happening.

No es solo una receta equivocada.

It's not just a wrong recipe.

Es toda una conversación sobre identidad, memoria e historia que alguien decidió ignorar.

It's an entire conversation about identity, memory, and history that someone decided to ignore.

Cómanla si quieren, pero háganlo con conciencia.

Eat it if you want, but do it consciously.

Hasta la próxima.

Until next time.