Pilar Martin |
Madrid (EFE).- Long before the first hamburgers arrived in Spain as we eat them today, 2,500 years ago Roman merchants were already selling these flattened meatballs on the streets of Hispania, which were part of their daily diet and which This Sunday, May 28, they celebrate their international day.
This is how the historian Almudena Villegas, an expert in the evolution of gastronomy over the years, maintains it in statements to EFE, who locates the origin of the hamburger in our country when the Romans dominated it: “One of the things they ate were meatballs of all kinds, squid, fish, shellfish and meat, and they sold them on the street. They were a round mass that they flattened and stewed”.
An “absolutely simple” idea because -he adds- “it is done with the hands and it is crushed”.
the german origin
But finding out the origin of the current concept of hamburger, whose root is “amazing”, he qualifies, is something “much more complex”, when what is being talked about is that flattened meat between two buns that came to us from the United States “more or least in the 1950s”, long after the Americans versioned this recipe that came to them in the 17th century from the port of Hamburg (Germany), where its bakers created that juicy dough roll.
And it is from this German city that the name of such an distinguished dish comes from.
“In the 1950s -continues Villegas- there were already some hamburger restaurants in Madrid and Barcelona. In that decade there is a fascination for American food because they were two very different cultures, and the American one was that of wealth and abundance, which was highly admired by the Spanish public through the cinema”.
It refers to the 1950s because it is when American soldiers arrived at the Torrejón Air Base (Madrid), a fact that caused the production of hamburgers to begin in the capital at the hands of the American based in Madrid Alfred Gradus, the founder of Alfredo’s Barbacoa, after working in the kitchens of this place.
Burgers for Ava Gardner in Madrid
But glamor came to this dish at the Castellana Hilton Hotel which, after its opening in 1953, served hamburgers on its menu, albeit at prices only within the reach of the clients of this accommodation, among whom were celluloid stars, such as Ava Gardner.
The years passed and the hamburger gave rise to the creation of businesses specialized in it, according to what the gastronomic journalist Víctor de la Serna reminds EFE, who points to the Madrid chain Foster’s Hollywood, which opened its first store in the Arapiles neighborhood, promoted by officials from the US air base in Torrejón.
This was followed, already in the 1970s, by other openings in Madrid such as “Don Oso” or those of the Burger King (1975) and McDonalds (1981) chains, those in charge of popularizing this dish throughout the world.
Another landmark outside the Spanish capital takes us to Barcelona, where, according to the writer Romulo Brotons in his book “Things of modern life, 58 inventions that have transformed Barcelona”, in 1965 he opened “Whimpy’s”.
“This dish was not strange to Spain,” Villegas points out, “because here they already ate Russian steaks, which have been found in all Spanish literature for 200 years. The weird thing was the mix of sweet, sour and salty, and that kind of pastry. That was the big ‘shock’”.
Currently, the hamburger is one of the most consumed so-called “fast food” dishes in the world and its variations are endless, because if this recipe can boast of anything, it is its versatility.