Nobody remembers who was the first to sell smoothies at the Boqueria. Or if they do remember, nobody seems eager to take credit for it.The idea, undoubtedly, came from a very simple realization: Tourists don’t buy vegetables. They don’t buy fish or pork chops, snails or mushrooms. They sure as shit don’t buy monkfish or mollusks, chicken or chickpeas or chicory. They need something they can hold in their hands, consume in the moment before they move on to the Sagrada Familia or the sands of Barceloneta. Sure, savvy travelers know that a market is the perfect place to build a picnic of local products, and an ideal spot to find gifts for friends and family, but most visitors aren’t thinking beyond their next bite. For them, smoothies gave them a simple way to connect to the Boqueria.
Today, much of the Boqueria runs on liquefied fruit—an ever-growing army of plastic cups that paint the market a psychedelic swirl of orange and green, pink and purple. At Sprimfruit, near the market’s main entrance, they sell so many smoothies that they run them through giant plastic tubes like some marginally-healthier version of the Wonka factory. Some have bet the entire farm on pulverized produce; others have tried to keep selling fresh apples and bananas and strawberries alongside their fluid counterparts, but with diminishing returns. I’ve watched over the years as the fruit itself is subsumed by its byproduct.
More than replace much of the market’s supply of fresh fruit, the smoothies set off a chain reaction across the market. Vendors, already suffering from a lack of local clientele, looked for ways to transform their raw staples into processed profit. At first it happened in small doses: charcuterie stands sold skewers of jamón and chorizo, a few fish stalls offered oysters ready to be shucked and slurped. But the economics are such now that if you don’t have something to offer the tourist, your days in the Boqueria are probably numbered.
― Yerac, Wednesday, 23 October 2019 14:19 (four years ago) link