Snail tales - Celebrating the annual Catalan Snail Gathering

Filling the Sink

Since 1980, at the end of May, the western Catalan city of Lleida becomes the snail center of Catalonia, where hundreds of people get together to celebrate the annual Catalan Snail Gathering, or l’Aplec del cargol in Catalan.

Fans of the tiny molluscs unite for a weekend of gastronomy, but also of competitions, concerts, and the Catalan human towers, castells.

For this last edition of the festival, a whopping 15 tons of snails were devoured by hungry participants, many of whom washed down the delicacy with cold beer.

Oriol Escudé Macià and Ona Van Dyck join the festivities at the world’s largest snail-eating fest and return to Barcelona to talk about the experience with host Lea Beliaeva Bander.

We talk to different colles and attendees at the Aplec and get deep into all things snail, from how to cook and eat them to their health benefits and snail farming, and we answer pressing questions such as what do snails taste like, and are Catalans the world’s biggest snail eaters?

The Catalan phrase of the week is, fittingly, ‘enganyar com als cargols’, which literally translates to ‘to deceive like snails’ and means to betray someone’s trust.

Tune in to find out how the phrase relates to this week’s podcast.