Bodega Bartolí opened in 1939 as a little bulk wine shop in Barcelona’s Sants neighborhood. Then everything changed for the bodega some 20 years later when a local client arrived with a stomachache. He asked a young Marina Dolz, who was minding the wine shop with her husband, if she could prepare some soup for him. It was the first dish she cooked there and, since then, Bodega Bartolí has moved far beyond simply being a wine store. At the time Bodega Bartolí opened, Sants was still an industrial quarter with several factories and thousands of workers. During the 1940s, the bodega sold both bulk wine to the neighbors and factory employees and barreja (a very traditional drink made of Muscat wine and anise liquor) to the wheelwrights passed by everyday.

Sants is a working neighborhood with an industrial past and a communal present, both of which it proudly flaunts. There are the street names – like L’Espanya Industrial, Carrer Wat (dedicated to the engineer James Watt) and Vapor Vell (Old Steam) – that tell the story of industrialization in Catalonia, and the two buzzing municipal markets and the many bodegas and restaurants, like Terra de Escudella or Bodega Salvat, that serve as meeting points for an engaged community. Although shaped by a diverse set of international influences, the neighborhood’s sophisticated culinary scene is tied together by something more local: vermut culture.

Some sociologists say that Spanish society and culture can’t be properly understood without spending time in its bars. You can find bars in mountain refuges, subway stations, on the beach and by the highway. In Barcelona, there are as many bars as taxis and ten times more bars than bookshops. In fact, a recent study by Coca-Cola found that in Spain there’s a bar for every 132 Spaniards. The same study points out that a third of Spaniards wouldn’t hesitate to leave their house keys at their local bar and that two-thirds of them are on a first-name basis with the employees there.

Barcelona continued to thrill this year with its seemingly never-ending possibilities for great eating, from ambitious family-run eateries to neighborhood restaurants steeped in Catalan traditions to world-renowned temples of gastronomy. Granja Elena With its great gastronomic aspirations and a solid foundation in farm-to-table cooking and traditional Catalan recipes, this small Zona Franca granja (literally “farm”), which was been passed down through three generations, has gone from a simple shop serving breakfast and snacks to a full-blown restaurant and total culinary wonder. Run by the Sierra-Calvo family since 1974, Granja Elena is now helmed by the third generation, who are all industry professionals: Borja runs the kitchen, Patricia the wines and Guillermo the dining room.

As the legend goes, a 19th-century Catalan farmer was out experimenting in his fields when he came up with a new kind of longer, juicier green onion, the calçot. In creating the onion, the farmer produced much more than a new vegetable; he also paved the way for the rise of an idiosyncratic, and distinctly Catalan, cultural event.

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ll be in Spain during the December holidays and I’m wondering if Barcelonans eat any special meal on Christmas? If so, what is it and where in the city could I try it?