“Our industry has felt helpless and criminalised”

Covid-19 has made it eas­ier to enjoy the Miche­lin-starred Ca l’Enric restau­rant in the Vall de Bianya. Dur­ing the first lock­down, the Juncà broth­ers, who are in charge of the venue, con­verted one of the wed­ding rooms into a new restau­rant, of­fer­ing tra­di­tional dishes that there was no space for on their tast­ing menus. “With the pan­demic, most of our wed­dings were can­celled; we had sixty of them sched­uled, and did only three. We lost a large part of our turnover, which is why we started this new restau­rant line “, ex­plains Jordi Juncà, one of the chefs.

“It’s funny be­cause it was an idea that the three of us had had for years, but that we hadn’t told each other about, due to a lack of time and the daily work. And with the lock­down we held a proper meet­ing and the pro­posal came up. One of the ban­quet halls is the Hostal, which of­fers tra­di­tional cui­sine at half price: we do a daily set menu for 18 euros. This so­lu­tion has given us a lot of oxy­gen to cope with the loss of wed­ding ban­quets. At first it was sup­posed to be tem­po­rary but, in view of how well it has been re­ceived, it’s now here to stay. De­spite his en­thu­si­asm for the new pro­ject, Jordi has lived with an­guish and the un­cer­tainty caused by the pan­demic, with the the hos­pi­tal­ity sec­tor one of the most af­fected, ac­cord­ing to him: “We have felt com­pletely help­less and aban­doned, and we’re one of the sec­tors that sus­tains the coun­try’s econ­omy. The worst part is this un­cer­tainty. You don’t know how you will be able to open, if cus­tomers will have the con­fi­dence to come back, if they will close us down again, ac­tu­ally I am con­vinced that they will do it again in Jan­u­ary... And if this leisure net­work is closed, that of hostelry, then men­tally the pop­u­la­tion will also be af­fected“. The re­open­ing con­firms this as, since they have come back, they have been very much wel­comed: “peo­ple have a great de­sire to go out and enjoy them­selves and dine out, be­cause in the end we’re a so­ci­ety with a great gas­tro­nomic cul­ture“.

He also does not un­der­stand why they had to be closed down: “The way the new clo­sure has been im­ple­mented has been very dras­tic. We did every­thing we were asked to do, re­forms, se­cu­rity mea­sures, we rein­vented our­selves and in the end they closed us down any­way. They didn’t pay any at­ten­tion to the ef­fort some of us made. If the rules are re­spected, restau­rants are safe. There was also a lack of in­spec­tions. Lots of dif­fi­cult rules to in­ter­pret and no con­trol what­so­ever en­forc­ing them. If some­one does things wrong, then fine them or lock them up, but let the rest of us work... there’s no need to crim­i­nalise the whole sec­tor.”

He also com­plains about the lit­tle help they have re­ceived: “It’s in­signif­i­cant and I don’t know if it will even reach us any­way. The of­fi­cial loans (ICOs), which put peo­ple in debt, and the sus­pen­sion of con­tracts (ERTOs) haven’t helped. If we were in Switzer­land or Ger­many, which are strong, pow­er­ful coun­tries, they would give us 70% of last year’s turnover. And here, al­most noth­ing. We will all move for­ward, but our in­dus­try has suf­fered greatly. Restau­rants with a his­tory that have been around for many years will be able to make it this time, but many restau­rants that are just start­ing out or have made big in­vest­ments will have to close. It’s a bru­tal blow and in the end it takes away your en­thu­si­asm, which is the worst thing they can do to you.”

The perime­ter lock­down has also been a prob­lem for the restau­rant, which is lo­cated in the Vall de Bianya: “We have a pop­u­la­tion of 1,200 in­hab­i­tants and we couldn’t make take­away meals, we were lucky with the Hostal“. De­spite every­thing, Juncà is op­ti­mistic: “We hope that next year we can do the planned and can­celled wed­dings, and now is the high sea­son for gas­tro­nomic restau­rants. Au­tumn and win­ter are the great times for restau­rant dishes, when the for­est is in full splen­dor. “ When asked about the day-to-day lock­down, he replies, “I per­son­ally had a great time be­cause I was able to enjoy the fam­ily like never be­fore. Also, on April 10, I be­came a fa­ther for the sec­ond time and was able to fully enjoy the ex­pe­ri­ence. We also thought up some new dishes, we did re­search on the menus, we started an or­ganic gar­den pro­ject with local prod­ucts from around here... “