WE DON'T TALK ABOUT POLITICS AT THE TABLE

WE DON'T TALK ABOUT POLITICS AT THE TABLE

Violeta Chouciño Veiga

Autonomous Context  2022-2023

Spanish nationalism has been using different ways of indoctrination for centuries, in order to build a sense of pride among the country's population. Since gastronomy played a significant role in shaping the national identity, being used as a means of control, I focus on the propaganda campaign that made Tortilla an agent for national Spanish unification.

Spanish nationalism has been using ways of indoctrination in many different forms for centuries, in order to build a sense of pride and success among the country's population. In late XIX century, a nation-building campaign started with three main goals:

  • Neutralize peripheral nationalisms and give an idea of unity.
  • Stop foreign influence from getting mixed with Spanish traditions, to create a brand.
  • Promote tourism as an attempt to modernize the nation.

Gastronomy constitutes one of the main pillars of Spanish international recognition and therefore played a significant role in shaping the national identity of Spain, used as a means of control. The Francoist dictatorship built the idea of tortilla as THE national dish by, for instance, commissioning food texts that defended that statement, or making mandatory for restaurants all over the country to have it in its menu.

This project is a revision on the propaganda that made tortilla an agent for national Spanish unification. I confront the image of tortilla as a positive element (nurturing, agreeable, familiar) with certain Spanish francoist memorabilia like the No-Do, the portrait of the dictator, or the spanish flag itself, to create contrast and explain the rebranding of Tortilla as a project upon banal nationalistic pride and tool for unity.

The project arises from feeling the tortilla as part of my Galician identity, and so the future aim is to reclaim and re-appropriate tortilla as a Spanish-less and working class symbol.

A cookbook with the tortilla's recipes from my family and my own ones is included in the installation as part of the more personal side of the project, the origin and connection to it.