Coiled like thick ropes, aromatic garlands of dark sausages dangle from hooks in Catalonia’s meat markets. Few sights are more appetizing to a Catalan, or to anyone who knows the area’s reputation for superb pork products. The region has 17 officially recognized sausage types, a symbol of how seriously the locals take this craft.

In the days before refrigeration, rural people timed their sausage making to coincide with cold weather. Beginning in mid-December, the local matador (not a bullfighter but an itinerant butcher) would begin making the rounds of the local farms to dispatch each household’s carefully fattened pig. Friends and family would have been summoned to await the matador and then partake in the day-long ritual of sausage making.
Catalonian sausages and cured meats
Prize cuts like the loin and ribs would be set aside for eating fresh over the next few days. The rest would be ground with fat, seasoned and stuffed into the well-cleaned intestines for long keeping. Some of the assembled workers would mix the pork blood with bread and seasonings to make botifarra negra, or blood sausage. Others would pack the legs in salt to make jamón. All told, the team might produce five or six different types of sausages—varying by size, fat content and spicing—to cure in the cold mountain air and eat over the next few months.

In the vivid words of Colman Andrews, author of Catalan Cuisine, the day’s work produced “the beast inverted, her outsides packed into her insides.”

If you travel to Catalonia, you will find these regional specialties for sale in the village markets, especially in the area north and northwest of Barcelona. Every village has its own recipes for these sausages and, sometimes, its own names. If you love sausage, don’t miss the sausage museum in La Garrotxa, established by a family in the business for more than 150 years. Another must-stop: the town of Vic, where the llonganissa has the EU’s prestigious PGI (name-protected) status.

Here are some other sausages to watch for in Catalonia:

Bisbe (“the bishop”): a fat blood sausage

Botifarra (or butifarra): Catalonia’s predominant sausage, a medium-coarse pork sausage contains no pimentón (paprika), which is why it is considered a “white” sausage.

Botifarra dolça: a specialty of Empordà; a lean pork sausage cured with sugar, seasoned with cinnamon and eaten as dessert

Botifarra negra: pork-blood sausage thickened with bread and sometimes seasoned with mint.

Botifarra de Vic (Salchichón de Vic): a cured pork sausage sliced thin and eaten raw, similar to Italian salami

Fuet (“the whip”): a long, thin sausage made with pork and air dried

Girella: a lamb sausage made with giblets, rice, bread, egg and cinnamon; a specialty of El Pallars

Pans de fetge: pork liver pâté

Sobrassada: A soft, spreadable, almost pâté-like pork sausage seasoned with garlic

Xoriço: a mild or spicy pork sausage, known as chorizo in other regions; it is a cured sausage, unlike the fresh Mexican chorizo

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