Gastronomy nourishes Spain’s gourmet city

SPAIN: Ham with brie, wild mushroom croquettes, cured-meat ravioli: gourmet cooking has put this Basque town on the gastronomic map, drawing visitors from around the world. Now its culinary assets -- which include more Michelin stars per square metre than anywhere else in the world, and the world’s first university of gastronomy -- are nourishing it in the economic crisis.

“Gastronomy is a tourist attraction of growing importance” for the region, said the director of the Basque Culinary Center gourmet university, Joxe Mari Aizega. “We are looking to become part of the economic attraction.” In a 2011 survey by the Basque Country regional government, seven out of 10 visitors said they were drawn there by the food.

More than 1.5 million tourists visited the region this year up to August -- its second best year on record -- but the number of Spaniards among them fell compared to previous years while the number of foreigners rose.

Many of them come to the bars of San Sebastian’s old town, where Japanese and US tourists sample “pintxos”, the region’s trademark bite-sized canapes.

The foreign visitors are helping keep the restaurants in business while Spaniards are spending less at a time of high unemployment and budget cuts.

“Visitors from the rest of Spain have got slightly fewer, but at the same time we are making up for it with foreigners,” said Amaiur Martinez, a joint owner of the Ganbara bar. “A lot of them come from France, as well as from Asia, the United States and Britain,” he told AFP, standing behind a counter piled with mushrooms, seafood and various pintxos.

AFP