Barcelona´s bakeries deserve a special chapter. They are very, very good. At times they may be confusing, but they are good nonetheless. I mean, who would not get confused with all the kind of breads that they actually sell? Plain baggetes, Galician bars, water bread (???), “xapates”, ecological bread (whatever that means), quarter bar, farmer´s bread, nut bread, nut and almonds bread, nut and almonds and raisins bread, sunflower seeds bread...Not to mention the Christmas bread, the Catalan National Day bread, the St. Jordi bread, the Castanyada Day bread...
The have other products, like Galician empanadas (tuna empanadas basically), pseudo pizzas in different flavors, “gypsy man´s arm” (do not ask me why it´s called that way)...and croissants of course. Croissants in every possible size and flavor: stuffed with chocolate, stuffed with ham and cheese, in tiny sizes for the calory-councious (but then you eat ten of them), stuffed with sobrasada, stuffed with tuna, stuffed with nutela, stuffed with spinaches...Catalans are obsessed with croissants.
I only have one complaint about bakeries. The more authentic the bakery is, the highest the likelihood that they willl sell you the bread wrapped only in a 3 by 3 napkind that covers, at most, 5% of the surface of the bread. And then you are supposed to walk home exposing your bread to the elements. Also, they use the same napkins to wrap the croissants in a complicated manuever that I´m still trying to master. Here it goes: They place the croissant in the center of the napkin (legs stay out of course) and then take the two right corners and the two left corners and hold them together with their thumbs and index fingers. Then they swing the product around once or twice, somehow without rupturing the napkin, leaving the croissant semi wrapped and looking more like a baby walking around with his/her diapper hanging loosely. Why, for God´s sake, do they refuse to use a plain paper bag?
