Did Francisco Goya eat paella?

Are Popes infallible? Do Presidents shit in their hats?

I missed my Sunday appearance in these pixels because last Saturday, as Bastille Day was beginning to grind through its governmentless gears in France and a projectile in Pennsylvania was van-gogh-ing its way through the right-ear gristle of the 45th and 47th president of the Excited Snakes®, I was at the bow of a boat on the west coast of Canada, contemplating, by means of the Photos app on the iPhone 8 in my right hand, the pan in the video below.

It, paellaphiles the world over will recognise, is a paella or paellera. Boaty types—drawn from the elite 32-of-4,000 Hexagoners who bother to click on my carefully curated video links—will recognise the bow as belonging to a self-bailing and unsinkable Boston Whaler, and the surrounding body of water as Barkley Sound, which is part of the traditional and unceded territory of the Huu-ay-aht of the Nuučaan̓ułʔatḥ and named after Charles Barkley—not the basketball player-pundit but the then 28-year-old fur-trading sea captain of Imperial Eagle, who, along with his 17-year-old bride, Frances Barkley—the first European woman to visit what is now British Columbia—explored the sound and named it after himself in 1787, two years almost to the day before the Bastille storming.

Those truly in the know will know the boat in the video’s name, Pesca-Jumba, and of that name’s origins, as revealed by Tom Waits at the press conference announcing his 2008 “Glitter & Doom” tour.

Let’s unpack this further. In 1787, Francisco Goya was 41 and transitioning from a lowly tapestry cartoon painter for royal residences to the newly named Painter to the King. He was by then the top portraitist in Spain. Among his best customers were the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, who built a cottage and studio for him on the grounds of their estate in Andalusia. In 1787-88 alone, his income from paintings they commissioned was 22,000 reales, more than four times his annual salary.

Goya portraits of the Osuna family

While Valencia is universally acknowledged to be the birthplace of paella—made, traditionally, with rabbit, chicken or duck, snails, various beans, maybe a seasonal artichoke heart y nada más—Andalusia, with its direct access to the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts, has been home to the better, lighter, more sunlit-infused and delicious seafood versions since before the Caliphate of Córdoba.

(Argue with this all you want, Nina Caplan, it’s true).

Arab trade introduced the Iberian peninsula to the dish’s essential elements: olive oil, rice, saffron, paprika, lemons—even the orange tree wood used to aromatise the fire on which it was cooked. The fish and shellfish were already abundant, including shrimp and prawns from the Bay of Cádiz.

Goya visited Cádiz many times. In 1793, he convalesced there.

Three overdoor paintings (Mujer dormida, Mujeres conversando, El sueño) and portrait by Goya commissioned Sebastián Martínez y Pérez (1790-93)

In 1797, newly named Director of Painting at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, Goya abruptly left his post and family and moved into a guest cottage on the estate of the 35-year-old, recently widowed María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba, in Sanlucar in Andalusia.

Francisco Goya, The Black Duchess, 1797. She is pointing at the words "solo Goya" in the sand. On the pointing hand are two rings, one engraved with the word "Alba" and the other with "Goya."

The following 11 months were among his most prolific. Among the paintings from that period were three self-portraits, portraits of the matador Pedro Romero and the toreador José Romero, Martín Zapater, Don Bernardo de Iriarte and Juan Meléndez Valdés; the parable of the wedding guests, the miracle of the loaves and fishes, and the Last Supper for the Oratorio Santa Cueva in Cádiz; Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory; La Maja Desnuda;—

—and six bizarre parlour paintings commissioned by the Osunas.

Witches Sabbath, Witches' Flight, The Incantation, The Devil's Lamp, The Witches' Kitchen, and Don Juan and the Commendatore

Meanwhile, in 1791, over on this coast, the Spanish navy sailed the British schooner, North West America, which it captured during the Nootka crisis of 1789 and renamed Santa Saturnina, into Barkley Sound, where Nuu-chah-nulth war parties twice attacked it.

Reconstruction of Santa Cruz de Nuca, a Spanish fort and settlement up the coast from Barkley Sound. The first European colony in what we for now still call British Columbia, it was founded in 1789 and abandoned in 1795.

Did the Nuca settlers have paelleras? Probably. Rice, saffron, paprika, olive oil and lemons? Most assuredly. No orange wood, probably, but something the Muslims of Al-Andalus didn’t have: tomatoes, which the conquistadores introduced after the capture of Tenochtitlan by Hernán Cortés in 1521. Sofrito, anyone?

I, on the other hand, what did I have? Tomatoes, yes, but out of a can. Arborio, not bomba or senia rice. (Don’t say anything, Nina). Smoked paprika that had been lying in a tote since before Covid. Frozen peas… A red pepper from California… Quick-made sofrito stepped on with Pico de Gallo salsa from Costco….

Saffron? No, but our Port Desire —

hosts—

—found some…

…along with a couple of kilos of—

—Pandalus platyceros, aka spot prawns, the world’s most delicious shrimp, certainly much better than any Cadizian caridea crustacean—caught a month or two ago by Canadian Coast Guards during rescue training—hauling those traps out of the water prepares them to haul you out one day—and flash frozen.

In Andalucia, the prawns are put in whole, but I needed to make a stock—

—and pretty soon—

—and then—

And that was that.

I won’t burden this with a recipe. There are millions online.

Just don’t stir if you want a properly scorched socarrat. DM me if you want other tips.

Off to the beach. Ta.