Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain - Hardcover

JOHN BARLOW studied English literature at Cambridge. He is the author of a collection of novellas, Eating Mammals, which won a Paris Review Discovery Prize, and the novel Intoxicated, which has been translated into four languages. He lives in Spain with his wife and son.

  Everything but the SquealJanuary, and we’re in Spain. But this is not the Spain most people know. The rain is incessant, it’s freezing cold, and the wind sounds like a jet engine playing the bagpipes. We’re driving slowly along the side of a broad, sweeping valley that stretches way into the distance, a crazy quilt of lush green pastureland, any greener and it wouldn’t seem natural. Above us the steel gray sky is cram-packed with fast-moving rain clouds that spit and snarl down at us as we peer ahead. With that familiar sinking feeling, we realize we’ve been on this stretch of road before. We don’t know where we are, the clock is ticking, and we’re hungry.Then, quite by chance, we find it. Pulling up at the side of the road, we sit for a moment and look out across the valley. Stone-built farms crop up here amid the potent grassy greens, but now, on a rainy lunchtime, there’s no one in sight. And lunch is exactly why we’re here. I dash out of the car and struggle to erect the stroller. A wheezing blast of wind slaps me hard in the face. On purpose. We’re in Galicia, and it’s time to eat.We scurry across the road toward a large old tavern that stands right on the road’s edge. There is no sign, no nameplate. Is it in fact the place we’ve been looking for? We’ve lost the directions, so we’ll never really know. For a moment the thought depresses me. Yet this sense of doubt, of not knowing for sure, is a very Galician state of mind. In any case, it definitely looks like the place we thought we were looking for. We go in, already soaked.Inside is an old rustic bar, probably the center of local activity: social club, general store, domino school. The walls boast a few stuffed animal heads and one or two hunting rifles, as well as faded sepia photographs of a nearby monastery that we’ve just driven past twice in a state of mild confusion. A notice board carries snippets of parish news, and pinned there, right in the middle, is a small, computer-printed poster in vivid colors. A bristly face stares out at us: two glossy eyes, pert little snout, a real sweetheart. It’s the kind of shot you might see on an animal welfare ad. XABARÍN! the poster announces in big red letters: WILD BOAR!Boars are not uncommon in the remoter, wooded parts of Galicia, although their numbers are not huge. Perhaps the poster is part of an awareness-raising campaign, I tell myself, a scheme to help the native animal survive the incursion of modernity on its habitat. But I must be getting confused with campaigns to save the Iberian lynx or the brown bears of the Pyrenees. Because as I read on, it becomes clear that the poster is in fact a warning: Boars in the area! Apart from the suggestion that you get your shotgun oiled and loaded, there are a number of useful tips on repelling the evil lettuce-munchers before they trample your market garden to bits. Sprinkling the ground with clippings of human hair, it suggests, will convince these extremely unsociable creatures to stay away. I imagine long queues at the village barbershop, the hair of local farmers getting shorter by the week as the siege of the boars intensifies; then their wives surrender to the scissors, followed by the old folk and the children, until the entire village is bald, but boar-free.We turn to the bar itself. The proprietor dithers, almost avoiding our stare. He is not pleased to see us. Two parents and a sleeping baby in a stroller, all windswept and disheveled and dripping onto the stone floor. Have we booked? No. He rubs his chin, and says that he’ll see what he can do. But it does not look good. A wash of pure negativity overwhelms him. He shakes his head and seems pained and deflated on our behalf.Galicians enjoy their negatives like no one else. There’s nothing vindictive about it, and neither is it the act of refusal itself that they so enjoy. Rather, it’s the indulgence in a sort of constitutional pessimism, an ever-present doubt, a looming complication, something that must be resolved. Or not. Sometimes this seeming negativity might even be a sort of strange friendliness. A straightforward “yes” is just too curt, too bland. A =) egation, on the other hand, is an invitation to explore the topic further, to muse, to ponder, to seek a solution, or to bemoan the lack of one. Here, in the rain-swept north-western corner of Spain, “no” has many shades of meaning. Straightforwardness is simply anathema to the Galician character. Meet a Galician halfway up the stairs, it is said, and he’ll be unable to tell you which way he’s going: Well, that depends ... , he’ll ruminate, dodging the affirmative as if it’s a ball of shit flying straight at him. And trying to insist on a straight yes-no answer from a Galician is just asking for trouble. I know; I’m married to one.The proprietor decides it is necessary for him to go talk with his wife. We really should have booked, he says as he slouches off, shaking his head and tugging on his saggy cardigan.Making a reservation has never been strictly necessary in Galicia, especially in less formal places. Eating out, like much else, is a relaxed affair. You turn up, and you eat. However, things are changing. Restaurants of all kinds are booming, and this particular one, though by rights it’s a cantina, a kind of rustic eatery, is full. There’s a move in this part of Spain toward a greater appreciation of traditional cuisine. Not that the old dishes have ever gone out of fashion, but the rustic is becoming more and more valued, especially by city folk, a process that perhaps has something to do with a gradual rise in Galician nationalism. Food and nationhood are nowhere more closely related than in this small, soggy bit of the Iberian Peninsula.The boss returns with his far bossier wife. She has a look of redoubtability to her, extra-thick-set in her kitchen apron, her eyes never showing the least sign of amiability when they flick over you. But it’s all part of the act, the mentality of suspicion, that initial where-are-you-from glance, the same as you’ll find in rural villages everywhere. Whenever I stop at a bar or a shop in some out-of-the-way place, and the person in question shows not the least sign of appreciating my friendly visitor smile, it kind of hurts. There I am, miles from the nearest cell phone signal, gallantly ignoring the smell of manure ... and I can never understand why on earth these people do not give a toss that I have arrived, eager to take in their quaint ways, and are not immediately won over by my inanely deferent grin.The redoubtable one reminds us that we haven’t booked, making it sound like an illness that might get a lot worse before it gets better. She and her husband breathe long sighs, as if they’re standing above the open grave of our dearly departed lunch. We plead silently with our eyes, knowing that we’ve done wrong: if this place is full, all the other cantinas in the area will be full too. She actually seems to suck in the air, chew on it, then let it out again, shaking her head slowly. Were this Hollywood, I would simply draw a twenty-dollar bill from my wallet and tuck it into the man’s palm with a knowing squeeze. But we are in Galicia, and I suspect that a deft bribe would be greeted with a scornful chuckle, but no table.A reservations list is examined, and opinions are exchanged in low voices. In the stroller, Nico sleeps on, oblivious to the concern that his arrival has caused. I let Susana do the talking. She was born into this culture of pathological uhming and ahing, and is capable of smothering the most insistently negative person with wave after wave of angelic patience. I have absolutely no doubt that she will get us a table. If you really want to eat somewhere but have no reservation—whether it’s got three Michelin stars on the wall or spit and sawdust on the floor—take my wife along; she’ll get you in. Considering that I myself am a very, very impatient food writer, I think I chose well.As negotiations continue, I look around. The room where we are standing is spacious. It has a high ceiling and perhaps nine or ten tables. The bar itself is a long one, running the length of two of the walls. As our fate hangs in the balance, it strikes me that every single table is empty. It is just coming up to three o’clock, prime Spanish lunchtime. There is not one other person here. Yet it is full.We are finally granted lunching rights, and reminded to book next time. It is only now, with relief and humility making me light-headed, that I detect something on the air. Below the musty-yet-fresh smell of a place where mud-encrusted boots are the accepted footwear (the stuffed animal heads no doubt add a backnote), a familiar aroma is wafting toward us, and it seems to be coming from a curtained doorway in the corner. A familiar smell, sweet and meaty, pungently savory, a smell that, at its strongest, actually drapes itself across the membranes of your nostrils and dares you to inhale: hot hog. It is, in this case, the smell of a specific dish, pot-boiled pork with turnip greens. And we’ve driven all the way out here to eat it.We are led through the curtains into an antechamber. To our surprise, we find seven or eight tables there occupied by people happily at lunch. Since becoming a cantina, it seems, the owners have fitted out a back room especially for the new class of customer: smarter chairs, curtains that match the tablecloths and napkins (a loud orange and yellow check), the well-scrubbed stone walls adding to the bucolic charm, unlike the old bar through the curtains, where they were just stone walls with a pleasant accumulation of grime. There are several pieces of colorful, primitivist artwork on the wa...