The establishment prepares the celebration of its 90th anniversary
S’AGARÓ (GIRONA), 21 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The La Gavina hostel in S’Agaró (Girona) has remembered this weekend the writer Josep Pla for the 125th anniversary of his birth, with a dinner-tribute to Empordà cuisine.
Pla spent many days of the Empordà winters outside his country house in Llofriu (Girona) to warm himself in the warmth of room 113, which preserves the decoration that the writer lived in.
Two of the daughters of the owner of the hostel and friend of Pla, Josep Ensesa Montsalvatge, have evoked during dinner the writer’s friendship with the family until he died in 1981.
Júlia Ensesa and Carina Ensesa have recalled the author’s stay for years at the hotel and at the family home, Senya Blanca, including the library, and they have also recalled the visits they made to Llofriu in his old age, accompanying him.
Lawyer Gonzalo Valero Canales has highlighted, as a friend of the Ensesa family and a connoisseur of the Planian work, that this family library contributed to Pla’s documentation for writing, and has also highlighted the writer’s taste for simple cooking, as reflected in his book ‘The one who hem menjat’ (Destiny, 1971).
Joan Sagrera, who was a friend of Pla and accompanied him as a young man on many of his trips when leaving his farmhouse, has also attended, since the writer increasingly depended on friends and acquaintances for his outings, as well as the director of La Gavina Albert Depau.
70 YEARS OF ‘LOBSTER AND CHICKEN’
The main course of this Friday’s dinner was lobster and chicken, evoking the cookbook of Pla ‘Llagosta i pollastre. On Catalan cuisine ‘(Selecta, 1952).
The menu is the work of Jaume Subirós, from El Motel Empordà (an establishment in Figueres that Pla also frequented), and Lluís Planas, from La Taverna del Mar, a restaurant near La Gavina and also owned by the Ensesa family, with Jaume Solé as sommelier. and the collaboration of Romain Fornell, gastronomic manager of La Gavina.
The dinner has included among its dishes the anchovy bones in batter, a creation of El Motel; pumpkin flowers with recuit; peas with black sausage; mint sherbet; ‘taps’ from Cadaqués, and the Johnnie Walker whiskey that accompanied Pla until the end of his life.
ALMOST A CENTURY OF LA GAVINA
This is one of the events of the year at the La Gavina de S’Agaró hostel in which it reaches its 90th anniversary, so it is preparing a celebration and the inauguration of new gardens.
Since opening in 1932, many famous people have passed through the venue, including actors such as John Wayne, Ava Gardner, Sean Connery, Peter Sellers, Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles.
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