The Story of a Vegetarian in Spain

As I walked through the streets of Spain, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment. A few words from the cashier at the supermarket had left me feeling underwhelmed, "How much would this story have been covered in Spain?" she asked, shrugging her shoulders. "Nothing at all. Nothing do you care about this? I don't. I don't want poison food. No, sure, you want healthy animals to eat yeah sure." Her indifference only seemed to echo my own feelings of disillusionment with the country's attitude towards animal welfare.

I must admit, I had come to Spain expecting a very different experience. A vegetarian, I was eager to immerse myself in the culture and find out if the Spanish way of life was compatible with my dietary choices. "We we are we can't we can do this," I thought to myself, but it seemed that I was sadly mistaken. The Spanish, as far as I could tell, were a carnivore's paradise. "You are carnivores," I overheard someone say. "How would this story have gone down in Spain?" The idea of changing the country's attitude towards vegetarianism and animal welfare seemed like a daunting task.

As I continued my journey through the Spanish countryside, I stumbled upon a small fishing village where I discovered that even barnacles were not safe from the wrath of Spanish fishermen. "They've worked out how they can be cruel to barnacles," I read in a newspaper article. The Spanish had even developed ways to kill these tiny creatures, but at what cost? The coastline was littered with the graves of barnacle fishermen, and it seemed that their industry came at a terrible price.

I decided to spend my days exploring the rock pools along the coast, hoping to wash away the stench of rotting subsidized tomatoes from my shoes. Meanwhile, the "barnacle boys" were still hard at work, risking their lives to harvest these tiny crustaceans. It was hard to imagine who would have thought that someone would walk 900 feet down a cliff through gloss bushes and then risk their life to pop a barnacle into their mouth.

As I sat in a small café, enjoying a beer and watching the sun set over the sea, I realized that I needed to do something. The recipe for cooking barnacles was surprisingly simple: boil them in water until they're ready. But what about the millions of euros paid out in fishing subsidies to Spanish trawlermen? It seemed that their industry came at a terrible cost to the environment and to the people who depended on it.

I decided to take matters into my own hands. I would redress the balance by introducing some sustainable fish into their diets. But how to do it? That was the question. As I sat in the playground of Europe, sipping coffee with fellow travelers, I couldn't help but feel a sense of solidarity. We were all in this together, fighting for a more sustainable and compassionate way of life.

And so, I set out on my mission, armed with nothing but a determination to make a difference. The journey ahead would be long and difficult, but I was ready for the challenge. Who knew that a small act of defiance could spark a movement? Only time would tell, but one thing was certain: Spain would never be the same again.

As I looked out over the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, I couldn't help but feel a sense of wonder. The fish heist had been a turning point in my journey, and now I was determined to make a difference. Next week, I invited fellow travelers to join me on this new adventure, one that would take us from the rock pools of Spain to the playgrounds of Europe. Together, we would challenge the status quo and fight for a more sustainable way of life. The revolution had begun, and it was only just starting.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni've been on the road in my old e-tight now for four weeks meeting our european neighbors and now i've arrived in a corner of the continent that has no name this may look like the swiss alps but there are no swiss people here and then speakers we're in south west france but there are no french people here either welcome therefore to my favorite part of europe basque country today the three million basks are split in two some live in south west france most over the border in northern spain but whatever the passport says it's not hard to spot one look for a long straight nose and gigantic earlobes so what is going on here well the basques were the first humans ever to live in europe tests on bones found in these caves in the pyrenees have shown that they didn't migrate here from somewhere else they're actually direct descendants of paleolithic man that means they survive the ice age and this has given them another unique characteristic extraordinary strength to find out just how strong they are i've come to the basque games held every year in the town of san pallais in france this cart weighs a third of a ton and the idea is to pick one end up and see how many times you can carry it round in a circle jeremy cartson anyway how do i left it so let's see how i get on sir right are we ready the record is 14 circuits i managed a quarter of a circuit i think i lived up to my uh family motto there how many meters why are the bars i'm just in training now for the uh for the next event no more i was due to take part in the sac carrying race but unfortunately i was a little delayed at the start right the damn thing was so heavy it completely squashed my sense of direction oh oh look at this that's astonishing here's a tip in a basketball right don't spill anyone's pipe and don't think that you could do this i tried it thinking that nothing could possibly go wrong but it did uh hello hello uh could he let me down hello could somebody get me down please clearly to beat the basks i needed to find a game that needs brain rather than brawn so i popped over the border into spain for a spot of moose the most complicated card game in the entire world cut it yeah the problem we have here is that we're playing this game but there are actually four games going on within the one game grande chica perez you're betting on each of them with the same hand of cards and all the numbering is different in each one which is spectacularly complicated i mean that for instance is a 10 that's a 10. that's right and that's right but if that were a two then that would be one and then we've got and i'm now thinking i'm playing four games with this one hand at the same time and betting on it in spanish using counters that are numbered in basque i may lose i may lose badly right what are we doing musk three seven three two things is that to confuse matters still further you play in pairs and you make subtle signals with your tongue and eyes to let your partner know whether you've got a good hand or a bad one but we have to wait for them not to be looking we get 31 i'm going to go okay to be perfectly honest i didn't have the first clue what i was doing but at least my translator was a useful spotter he's got two aces he just did the signal two aces now who did it it's my first green one look at my green mountain here that was a complete lie i have the world's worst to work the next day i went to explore basque country hugging the spectacular coastline along the bay of biscay until i wound up in the most northerly basque city beer ritz i've been extremely fortunate over the years i've been all over the world and barrett's is the nicest place i've ever been to it's it's santa pay with a bit of space it's havana with a bit of cooking it's brighton with a bit of sunshine it was the world's first seaside resort built by the british it's all very traditional and victorian but when the sun goes down it's just a 40-minute drive to the spanish-basque town of san sebastian which has more bars per square foot than anywhere else in the world this is the basque way of going out it's a normal bar except on it you have these little snacks called pinchos and then every time you take one you take a cocktail stick put it in your pocket and settle up later that's quite clever right where's the next one oh brilliant excuse me beard this black pudding in there that was like warm and another couple of wines you would say san sebastian is the best place in the world are you from san sebastian yes i am what time is it hey i know i know it uh one one o'clock one o'clock you know come on so let's just recap this area has got slightly iffy weather i admit but it's got great food great wine great beaches great mountains it's a little bit of france it's a little bit of space it's a little bit of basketball absolutely awesome however behind the pretty facade this part of the world does have a problem i've just pulled off the motorway and i'm heading now for a town called lightsaber because i've just heard in fact we're coming into it here that a car bomb has gone off so one has to assume that eta have been busy etta is a terrorist organization which says that because basques have their own language they should have their own state and today they've killed a local councillor because he disagreed with them so how can a language be worth a life well to find out i went to meet etta's version of jerry adams fundamentals we believe that human life is absolutely fundamental at the same time we reject outright the idea that if we want to live in peace we have to give up being basque and just accept being known as spanish or french spanish what i don't understand is that you've got all the road signs in two languages one of them being basque you can learn basque in school there are bus television stations what more could you possibly want it's not about having too much it's about having the power to decide we want our situation to be clean and democratic so that it is the basques who decide what's right for the basque people we don't want madrid or paris telling us whether we've got too little or too much yeah but etta they're just murderers i'm completely against condemning it because it is always used as an excuse by the spanish government to start repression campaigns and instead of providing answers they just make the situation even worse that's why i'm against condemning them and calling them criminals basks talk a lot about spanish repression to understand what they're on about you need to go back in time it's 1937. and adolf hitler is drawing up plans for his blitzkrieg across europe he's developed a new type of warfare which he wants to try out see if it works so he calls general franco who was leading a right-wing military coup here in spain it was the spanish civil war and franco said well look i'm having terrible trouble with the basques if you want to try it out try it out on them so picture the scene it's april the 26th market day here in the town of guernica the sun's shining the square is full of people the children are all at school and then at four o'clock in the afternoon the first wave of german bombers arrived from just over that hill over there this was the world's first air raid on a civilian target and in two hours two and a half thousand people were killed the scene was immortalized by picasso in his masterpiece called simply guernica it's weird the basques have survived the ice age the vandals the visigoths the romans napoleon wellington franco and hitler but they can't live with the spain of today so to find out what's wrong with it i pointed the e-type south and went to madrid it all seems fine it's a wonderful city in fact but then it would be because you paid for it you paid for the whole damn country the fact is that it costs the british taxpayer three and a half thousand million pounds every year to be a member of the eu and that's pretty much exactly the same amount that the spanish take out of the eu every year spain tells the world it's a poor country full of walnut-faced peasants on donkeys but everywhere you go you trip over enormous building projects and even more enormous signs saying they're all being funded by the eu ever wondered why we can't afford new roads well it's because all our money is being spent on their new roads and then they have the bare-faced cheek to charges for going on them hi there's i'm british i paid already yeah now i paid already i play i built the road it's silly to pay to go on it after i've built it and eventually i realized the barrier would stay down until i coughed up and to think the basks have a beef with this lot it's nothing like as big as mine this is daylight robbery are either there till of course this policy of using our money to build things does mean the spanish have more time to indulge in their national sport resting the biggest problem with meeting the neighbours here is finding someone who's awake this man is luckily he's spain's terry hogan morning dj on the biggest breakfast show let's zfm is idleness a feature here or would you just call it spanish no spanish spanish how big is manana still you know this is a word that's in the english language now we actually are magnanimous to tell you truth is not a reality i mean i don't think many people can afford to have a siesta unless you're on vacation but if something is in your mind so give me a minimal excuse and i'll go for it okay so it jumps here maybe it's not a reality but if i can do it i'll do it okay yeah so it's it's in the culture in the genes so is there a pressure now for spain to be more modern to be you know part of the eu and get cracking a bit we're modern enough and we're more on our way saying that okay we work in a better building with more you know sophisticated telephones but still we want to break up three hours to go for lunch and that kills americans when they come here with big multinationals and they don't understand what's going on you know what is people when they have a sandwich and a coffee and we're having like you know big piece of chicken with wine they go crazy we stopped off we've come down from from basque country to madrid here stopped off in little towns on the way and they're all beautiful and the squares are all perfect and the street lighting's lovely and all the buildings are nicely renovated don't you think you've kind of had enough money that this is now a modern country i think it's a modern country now you never had enough but uh the thing is we already were told that we have enough because the east countries are joining so money is going to go there but the spanish you voted against the eastern european countries coming into the eu didn't you well that was a trick because still we want the money from europe right we want to be subsidized because we need it we're poor that's that's what we're playing no no no that's it's not true but we're playing the we're playing the role man it's like give me something maybe you you ask for 10 maybe you get two so it's we're playing that game we're not poor thank god but we're playing the game so but now europe is saying forget it these countries are coming that and they need it more than you so we say okay don't let it come we're closing the door to the to the guys so we get the money it's a little you know yeah it's the fact is that today there is a buzz to spain especially among the young obviously none of them have bothered going to work or anything no they're having a big dance and a water fight what's this the eu cash lorry no it's full of subsidized tomatoes which they're throwing at one another uh i think it's safe to say that if bob geldart had gone to africa after live aid to see what they were doing with his grain we might have been a little cross to find that they were all being spanish it didn't take them long to have the shirt off my back but that was the least of my worries being tall i got hit a lot and these tomatoes are not right so they hurt when they hit and they're not clean either so most people leave with an eye infection well i'm thinking with this guys we get some time some basil check them in a frying pan make a delicious supper they have this tomato festival every year and i suppose it's not the end of the world at least they're not throwing subsidised wine oh wait a minute yes they are throwing subsidized wine this is the annual ryoka festival where they pour the wine that we paid for over each other's heads marvelous i shouldn't be at all surprised to find this fountain is running on gin or that you're charged for going into their museums i paid already i'm british so we paid i don't know it seems a bit silly to play again it's unbelievable ah here's a bull so what do they do with that throw tomatoes at it no they give it a thatched cottage and a pet rabbit and then they stab it what i've always liked about bull fighting is that after it's all over the crowd gets to take the loser home and eat him but with the vegetarian plague that's sweeping across europe it is a surprise to find that young inner city kids in madrid are still being taught how to stick a sword deep into a passing wheelbarrow one day of course the better children here will graduate to stabbing passing lawnmowers maybe even small tractors and then if they're really good they'll go on to become that most spanish of things a professional cow killer is to try and understand the spanish attitude toward animals i brought along this uh story about phoenix the calf remember the little cow that didn't die in the foot and mouth crisis massive coverage in britain and what i want to know is how much of a story would this have made in spain so i've come to madrid's business district to uh to ask passersby you probably think uh we probably think we're cheating this filming on a sunday i promise faithfully it's a wednesday at quarter to two so so someone will come by in a minute that's for sure and when they do i'm gonna say what do you think of this excuse me do you speak english yes you're spanish you're not spanish predictable you're at work okay the tourist excuse me he's can't be bothered at all no that's fair enough on his way to the cash dispenser for some of my money eventually at way past four they went back to work and i got a few words how much would this story have been covered in spain nothing at all nothing do you care about this i don't i don't want poison food no sure you want healthy animals to eat yeah sure no i think i think in spain we we are we can't we can do this you wouldn't do no i must come and live here it's the wrong country to be vegetarian here right yeah let me tell you that it is you are carnivores how would this story have gone down in spain as far as the newspapers are concerned oh maybe maybe in the last page maybe here in the last page maybe in this building square i think we're more concerned about people than about uh animals because this is the british version of free willy you know the big whale i mean the whole country wanted to free willy and so stupid but now you guys want to free whatever tony's player friend is called phoenix the car here next the cow the spanish have even worked out how they can be cruel to barnacles and i'm on my way now across the vast dust bowl that is the center of spain to the atlantic coast to find out what it is so the trouble is that barnacles are even harder to kill and surprisingly even more dangerous than a ton and a half of prime spanish beef you see this is where mr barnacle lives in this wild place and you've got to chisel him off the rocks while you're being pounded by the sort of waves that can smash cliffs fall off and you're in real trouble so is it worth it that's more than a quid apiece for a barnacle and they're getting half a million barnacles a year off these rocks small wonder their little village now seems to have its own wind farm no no no is very dangerous the coastline is littered with the graves of barnacle fishermen which is why i elected to spend the day messing around in rock pools trying to wash the stench of rotting subsidized tomatoes out of my shoes the barnacle boys meanwhile were still hard at it risking it all for the ultimate shellfish this is it and it makes you wonder doesn't it who who walked 900 feet down a cliff through gloss bushes and then risked his life and the huge atlantic rollers chiseling this off a rock and then thought hmm i know what i'll do i'll pop it in my mouth it looks like a hippo's toenail still someone did and now it's my turn the recipe is very simple you uh a pan of boiling water pop your barnacles in and then when the water comes back to the ball again they're ready so while we're waiting for that to happen i'll uh have some beer and um enjoy the view right they um should be about done now yep right now what you do is you um you make a little nick in its sock here twiddle it round oh dear no better naked is it but uh here we go oh and at number five behind the fat sparrow in france oh they're fantastic eat barnacles everybody whatever you've got planned for supper tomorrow night cancel it put it in the bin get a barnacle right everybody i need more i need a lot more can't get sizzling it'd be nice if spanish fishermen stuck to barnacles wouldn't it but of course they don't these spanish trawlers cruise the oceans like aquatic black holes sucking up everything they can find and guess what fuels them what they've got here is a list of fishing subsidies that were paid to various eu member states over the last five years we got 106 million euros the greeks got 135 million the germans 151 million the danes 132 million all in the same kind of ballpark but the spanish got a thousand million euros so let me see if i've got that straight the cornish fisherman pays his taxes to the british government who then give them to brussels who then send them to the spanish trawlerman who then go and fish off cornwall thus pushing the cornish fisherman out of work now i'm not a politician but i don't i don't really see how that that's fair nope it just seems rotten somehow plainly since i was here i needed to do something so i spent the evening working on a plan that was a very simple plan i thought i'd redress the balance mix some of their fish see how they like it i've got loads i've got loads after the great fish heist i made a break for the border on the costa brava i was expecting trouble at the customs post but predictably they couldn't be bothered to man it so i escaped and next week you can join me here in the playground of europe on the french riviera you\n"