Spain Wants World-Heritage Status for its Food

Do tapas and gazpacho need UNESCO recognition? Spain thinks so -- and is campaigning for "Mediterranean cuisine" to be added to the list.

The UNESCO world heritage list for Spain includes the Roman aqueduct in Segovia and, of course, the Alhambra. Now the Spanish government wants to add "Mediterranean cuisine" -- a recommendation that raised a few smiles in Brussels on Monday.

It's not a completely absurd idea: Elena Espinosa, Spain's Minister of Agriculture and Fishing, suggested at an EU meeting on Monday that Mediterranean food should be added to UNESCO's list of "intangible" world-heritage contributions, which would lift the international profile of paella and gazpacho to the level of pygmy dances in Africa or death rituals in Mexico.

But the suggestion did cause a minor rift between southern and northern EU delegates. Germany's agricultural minister, Horst Seehofer -- a known fan of Schweinshaxe, or Bavarian pig's knuckle -- reportedly couldn't restrain a smirk. But his Portuguese colleague, Jaime Silva, whose government assumed the EU presidency from Berlin on July 1, called Spain's suggestion a "good idea."

Rieks Smeets, head of the Intangible Heritage Section at UNESCO, told SPIEGEL ONLINE that his office has so far not listed any diets or cuisines. He also hadn't seen the Spanish proposal. He said Madrid may be trying to drum up international support in Brussels before making a formal pitch to UNESCO. Spain's written bid calls the Mediterranean diet "rich, varied, balanced, healthy and delicious." It wants to promote the cuisine as a contribution to world nutrition, and it bucks up its case with evidence from a US researcher, Ancel Keys, who published a study in the 1950s making the now-conventional claim that a diet rich in olive oil, fruit, vegetables and fruit -- plus measured doses of wine -- could lower the risk of heart disease. Keys died in 2004, at the age of 100.

Smeets didn't think the Spanish idea was so strange. "Some states do have culinary traditions, especially traditions that are linked to rituals," so he expected more such proposals to cross his desk.

Der Spiegel