Column by Javier Cercas: Confessions of a greedy | EL PAÍS Weekly

Well yes: I am a glutton. At best, haphazardly and totally unhealthy. It’s always been like this: my gastronomic education is catastrophic, like that of most people of my generation. Now it has become fashionable to speak badly of us; Believe me: they are much inferior. The so-called boomers We are a calamity, not because we have had everything easier than subsequent generations (it is the typical falsely Manriqueño mirage of “every-time-it-was-better”: Manrique never said such nonsense), but because no one has prepared us for the two fundamental revolutions of our time, so internalized by young people that many even allow themselves the luxury of rebelling against them: nor have they educated us to equality – the boomers we left the sexist factory—nor for the preservation of the planet—the boomers we grew up without the slightest ecological awareness—; I don’t deny that some are making efforts to catch up, but this is the reality. It is also a fact that, unlike young people, no one taught us to eat in a healthy, rational and sustainable way: in our time there was a lack of dieticians and nutritionists, gastronomy supplements in newspapers, starred chefs on TV, even Karlos Arguiñano; Many of us continue to eat unhealthy, irrational and unsustainable ways. So later we can give lessons there.

I write these lines in a hotel in Buenos Aires. Some time ago, after running along the avenues of Puerto Madero, I put on my boots to have breakfast, but I’m already thinking about the midday barbecue. Even though I only travel for work, traveling has become an excuse to eat; even the morning run: I don’t run every day because it’s healthy (why lie: I don’t do anything because it’s healthy); I run for two reasons: first, because running is a drug (if I don’t run for a day, I feel bad; if I don’t run for two days, I feel terrible; if I don’t run for three days, I feel like I’m invading Ukraine); and, secondly, because nothing makes you hungrier than physical exercise: every morning, when I finish running, I would eat a cow. The day before yesterday, in Lisbon, I ate baccalhau à Brás; two weeks ago, in Paris, snails and pork stew; Three years ago, in Arequipa, spicy rice with shrimp and lima sigh, Borges’ favorite dessert. mine is the cannoli Sicilians, the same ones with whom Michael Corleone poisons Don Altobello, aided by his sister Connie, in the ambiguous operatic finale of the third part of The godfather. I often wonder why dessert seems like a pleasure especially for children and the elderly, or why it seems like it to me, who as a teenager gave up alcohol and who, now that I had stopped alcohol (I had already drunk everything I had to drink), after meals my mother would sell it to a network of slave traffickers for a Roman ice cream. Speaking of my mother: that woman hated cooking so much that she would have set fire to the kitchen, but, since love works miracles, she cooked like no one else: Extremaduran stew, cannelloni au gratin, Biscay-style cod, eggs. My favorite dishes are fabada asturiana, russian salad, patatas bravas and lentils anyway. At mealtime I respect only one rule and that is the total absence of rules; If you prefer: my only rule is to forbid me to repress any desire, because it is proven that there is nothing more harmful to the soul and body than repressed desires. For the rest I confess that I don’t like people who don’t like to eat, for the same reason that I don’t like people who don’t like to fuck or read; I honestly don’t think you can expect anything good from someone who despises life’s greatest pleasures.

Having said this, one wonders how it is possible that they allow a gastronomically illiterate and indiscriminate stornelli eater to write in an issue dedicated to gastronomy. Perhaps the reason is that we learn as much from a bad example as from a good one. This is what we are for boomersguys: do the opposite of us and everything will be fine.