Manoteras Community Allotment, the allotment for parties

There is something very special about food. It connects us with the land but also with each other. And when a group of people has managed to grow food thanks to their collective efforts and then shares it, lasting bonds are formed, and everything seems to taste better. It is the satisfaction of doing something vital with your hands and effort which convinces you of your abilities, and trust in the strength of the group, because together there are no limits.

Eating together outdoors, surrounded by the vegetables, flowers and trees whose birth and growth we have witnessed is such a strange experience in our urban surroundings that it becomes magical. It is a part of village life, sometimes idealised, which urban allotments are somehow recovering. In the middle of the tarmac, areas of communal living appear, which give us back our habits of the past.

Just as the concept of «mother tongue» exists, we should invent one for food. One of the things you miss most when you go to live in another country is «home food». The tastes of childhood are linked in our memory to our home, what is ours.

It is moments such as this at our allotment —see photo— that have taken us back to all our homes. Stews, paella, the food each of us brings from home… They also create a collective memory and leave a permanent mark beyond our palate.