Spain’s celebrity chefs debate: offer exclusives or the Species protection support? It’s about the glass eel, a delicacy that is threatened with extinction. This is found in Spain’s luxury restaurants, especially during the Christmas season Eels on the menu. These are very young eels. They are almost transparent, hence their name. Their occurrence has declined by 90 percent since the 1980s. They live in the lower reaches of rivers and migrate from there to the sea.
“Tradition cannot justify extinction,” says a manifesto entitled “Angulas, no gracias” (Glass eels, no thanks) from the Euro-Toques cooking association. One of its key speakers is Andoni Luis Aduriz, head of the two-Michelin-star Mugaritz restaurant in northern Spain’s Basque Country.
It is precisely “respect for the environment, natural cycles and species” that makes “gastronomy possible,” it continues. “We ask the relevant authorities to ban capture and sale until scientists confirm that the species has recovered,” the appeal ends.
The chefs at Euro-Toques are doing without what is probably their most expensive dish. Shortly before Christmas, one kilogram fetched 13,000 euros at an auction in northern Spain. This is more than just an incentive to catch elvers despite the increasingly difficult conditions.
While some regions such as Andalusia in southern Spain and the Basque Country in northern Spain have already banned the fishing of glass eels, other regional governments, for example in Catalonia, Valencia, Asturias and Cantabria, are taking no action.
Committee could protect eels
A fishing ban would harm fishing and gastronomy, these regions defend their stance. The Overfishing be in addition to increasing warming seas and the blocking of the rivers is only one of the reasons for the decline in deposits, it says there, as if it were a justification for doing nothing.
“We don’t want to be used as an excuse,” explains chef Aduriz. He and his colleagues from Euro-Toques have now contacted the Spanish Ministry of the Environment. “We are committed to working together,” says the chef.
Sara Aagesen, Minister for Ecological Transformation, as it is officially called, wants to put glass eels on the list of endangered species. To do this, she will convene the Committee for Wild Flora and Fauna. The representatives of the 17 Spanish regions and two autonomous cities sit there. A simple majority is enough to protect the glass eel. This would then be mandatory for all regions.