Nation, state, and cuisine

Catalan cuisine's bid for inscription on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in the 2010s offers a privileged vantage point from which to analyse heritage-making processes and the tensions raised by recognising food as cultural heritage, especially when campaigns fail to meet their goals. This chapter situates the campaign within a broader context in which cuisine is already mobilised as heritage in the Catalan Autonomous Community in northeast Spain and reviews key debates on heritage and national identity relevant to the Catalan case. It then examines the initiative led by several Catalan institutions to secure UNESCO recognition for Catalan cuisine, before analysing reactions to the campaign within Catalonia. The chapter draws on a wider research project on how Catalans use food to express national identity against a backdrop of growing support for political independence from Spain. Ethnographic interviews, participant observation, group interviews, photo elicitation, and the study of books and print media were conducted over 15 months of fieldwork (2012–2013) and subsequent visits up to 2018. Adopting UNESCO's definition of intangible cultural heritage, with its emphasis on continuity with the past, the chapter also discusses how ‘nation’ is understood in Catalonia as a community grounded in shared culture, territory, history, and mutual recognition.