José Polo published on Sunday in this newspaper that, in 2010, a poster by Claret Serrahima for the Mercè festivities was rejected by Mayor Hereu's advisors. The story is juicy. From what Serrahima explains, he wanted – linked to the Mercè poster of that year – a new cake to be created in honor of that virgin. If Saint John has a coke, La Mercè would have a cake with his name on it. What would be a fig?
So, after a call from the designer, the Barcelona Pastry School started working on the new cake. Meanwhile, Serrahima made sketches. On Sunday, La Vanguardia published one: a large fig cut in half, with a maroon and appetizing interior. But, when it seemed that everything was going in the right direction and the poster would soon go to press, the mayor's advisors went into action and detected a snag. The sexual connotation of the word fig? Not quite. They were malicious that there would be perverse people who would say that the mayor was a figaflor, or that Barcelona was ugly.
Thirteen years later, Hereu is no longer in the mayor's office. Its trace has been forgotten to the point that, although it held a consultation for citizens to decide if we wanted a tram along Diagonal (and the no won, let's remember), they are now building the tram as if the consultation had never been done. After Hereu we have had Trias, Colau and Collboni. From this perspective, how would that fig that was not have been perceived now? Would they have considered it a display of feminist empowerment or a heteropatriarchal insult?
Meanwhile, in Figueres, on Sunday they closed the annual gastronomic campaign dedicated to the fig, which is produced by the cream of the Empordà restaurants. They started in 2016 with the name Menja't la Figa, but now it is called Enfiga't, which is more ambiguous. The fig always brings problems.
