Gastronomic dominance but biocultural decline

Mike Redwood

Columnist

International Leather Maker

For the last week, I have been eating my way through the culinary geography of Northern Spain. While some of us from north of the Scotland-England border like to accept the Scots invented everything, as actor Stephen Fry’s monologue claimed, in reality it looks like the Basque people of northern Spain and southwest France are the true winners of any such contest. OK, I have to accept Scotland is No.2, or at least in the top five.

The Smithsonian apparently noted that it was only “marginally ironical” that “almost everything worth having” came from the Basques. This was in response to the claim which Mark Kurlansky, in The Basque History of the World (1999), argues half-seriously but with substantial evidence.

For a people who occupy a sliver of land around the Pyrenees and the Bay of Biscay — never becoming a country — the list is genuinely staggering. A large amount is food related. Salted cod, whaling, peppers, cocoa, cereals and much more came because they were a great long distance sailing nation with skills in shipbuilding, fishing, fighting and navigation. While obviously most prevalent in the Basque states, their influence across the whole of northern Spain is obvious, only added to by foods, wines and beers from more fertile lands to the Atlantic west.

This culinary expertise is notable not only for its survival but its continued adaptation as tastes evolve. Traditional dishes remain unchanged while there are even competitions to successfully add a twist of modernity to food or other heritage skills. There is true continuity here, just as there is building continuity in the Parador hotels retaining vital memory in their conservation and renewal. The interest in not letting ancient customs die sits with this determined stewardship of buildings, gastronomy and agriculture.

Biocultural system

Historically, much of inland Spain operated through what we might now call a biocultural system. In this, there was a notable intertwining of agriculture, culinary and religious practices, the latter increasing a thousand years ago as the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage, known as the Camino de Santiago, the ancient network of walking routes across Europe that converge at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain became more significant. This involved grazing animals, local breeds, transhumance, shepherds, muleteers, wine growers, markets, monasteries, bark producers, tanners, parchment makers, markets and many more types of artisans. These skills survived because the whole system survived.

If livestock numbers fall, villages empty and agricultural activity becomes more industrialised or concentrated, the craft traditions can become detached from their original economic base. Today we are seeing them all at once.

Take glove manufacture in Burgos, a major Cathedral City on the primary pilgrim route. Until the mid-20^th century, the industry appears quite strong but casualisation of fashion quickly reduced the societal requirement to wear formal dress gloves daily. Mass production and globalisation meant hand-cutting and hand-stitching leather could not compete with cheap, mass-produced products imported from overseas and a major generational shift saw the meticulous training required to cut leather and produce gloves correctly fall out of favour. This is a scenario that is familiar in much of Europe in many sectors.

Today, we see climate change already worsening these problems. Studies on Spain’s climate show a clear warming trend, with average daily highs up by nearly 2°C nationally in the last 50 years and an increase in heatwaves and droughts. It has been well over 30°C while we have been here. Inland regions dependent on rain‑fed agriculture, livestock and forest resources are facing more frequent summer drought, higher wildfire risk and stress on traditional crops and grazing systems. These shifts put pressure on rural economies in the north and northwest of Spain even if they are still cooler and wetter than the central plateau or Mediterranean south. Adaptation debates now regularly highlight the risk that climate stress accelerates, including depopulation and loss of traditional land uses in already fragile rural areas.

Youth employment and prospects have long been structurally difficult in Spain and young people remain one of the groups with most difficulty accessing stable, well‑paid work. In large areas of Northwest Spain, too many jobs rely on logistics and the seasonal tourism that runs from Easter to October.

With it, the old biocultural system is under pressure. Tanners, parchment makers, glovers and even local shoemakers are non-existent or very rare. León was a once major centre for the production of books with local monasteries keeping sheep, building parchment units and “scriptoria” where calligraphers and illustrators would work away intensely. While there are many good bookshops, there is only one remaining scriptorium to be found.

The owner showed us the parchment he uses from sheep and goat, with his sole source now coming from Valencia. He is skilled and content, but he is alone.

Leather is part of the counter-argument

Researchers and rural development organisations point out that premium agriculture, wine, food tourism, heritage tourism and specialist crafts should become increasingly important as sources of rural value precisely because mass production is becoming harder to sustain in marginal regions. Castilla y León is still recognised for high-quality beef, wine and rural heritage economies. Money is being found to support it.

In other words, the future may not be a return to the old world of thousands of small workshops. But there may still be a future for highly skilled specialist makers if they can become connected to heritage, tourism, conservation, cultural identity and luxury markets. Along with strong educational opportunities. But the community of makers must somehow survive.

A skill only survives if somebody is still practising it

The danger is that there is a threshold below which skills are simply lost because there are no apprentices. A cathedral can survive for centuries with little maintenance and a manuscript can sit safely in an archive, but a skill only survives if somebody is still practising it.

Just how interconnected crafts such as leather are with agriculture, forestry and other activities like basket making, thatching, coppicing, glove making and coracle making is now recognised in the UK but is not yet being supported by local, regional or national funding. Opportunities to retain communities such as that involved in saddlery in Walsall, or building new ones, are largely ignored.

One of the most revealing points currently is how often whenever we have found living knowledge, such as the calligrapher in León, it has usually been attached to a particular individual rather than an entire visible industry.

Encouraging and worrying

This is encouraging because the knowledge still exists but worrying because it may now depend on surprisingly few people. One sector being retained in northern Spain is the local abattoir structure with many products only being designated ‘local’ if the animal has lived and been slaughtered locally. British “efficiency” seems largely to mean pruning and reducing, rather than maintaining and improving.

In northern Spain, they have the hides and skins, the forests for oak and chestnut tanbark and the abattoirs. What is missing are the tanners and the parchment makers. We read of microtanners elsewhere in the world from Columbia to the UK. This is the sector that we must support to ensure new artisans can find local, traditional leather.

mike@internationalleathermaker.com

You can find Dr Mike Redwood across social media at @michaelredwood.

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