Butchers: a job without unemployment, but without generational change

There are only two people in the universe who have permission to call me darling: my tame one, which is what in Catalonia we call the male who allows himself to be caressed and ridden, and my butcher.

“Honey,” “queen,” “beautiful,” young man!”, “look what a steak I have! It falls apart because it is so tender,” “if you take the whole steak, I will weigh it for nine,” “have one.” slice of this week's ham, you will see that it melts in your mouth!

You won't notice even a hint of salt!”

I try the ham that comes to me and it's a little salty, yes, but I have to take a hundred grams, cut finely, because I'm in tremendous trouble when he treats me with gifts—whether a slice of this new mortadella, or a small slice. of chorizo—and then leave without having bought anything.

What an art and what a job!, that of feeling, knowing and selling the genre, ladies and gentlemen.

One hundred grams of this, one hundred of that, and every Saturday morning I leave the store like a mule, loaded with bags.

And I land from the cloud of praise on a little table in the cafeteria in the square with my chest puffed out like a peacock ready to eat a cream bun, having bought much more than I had planned, but feeling like the Queen of Sheba, deserving of each and every one of the euros that I have just invested in present and future gastronomic pleasure.

In the current situation of runaway inflation, in which fifty euros seem to be the new twenty, if they have to hit me, at least it comes wrapped in a good dose of flattery.

We had been in town for a month with our hearts in our fists, since Conchita retired and her muscular, expansive and chicken-like presence behind the refrigerated meat counter, at the back of the general grocery store, was replaced by a sad assortment of Styrofoam trays

with cut and packaged meat and a little sign where you could read: “Butcher wanted.”

Three out of ten butcher shops have closed their doors permanently in Spain in the last decade, not because of financial problems - it is estimated that each butcher shop business generates, on average, 170,000 gross euros per year - but because of lack of generational change.

Delicatessens, polleros, casqueros and butchers are in danger of extinction, despite being professions in which there is zero percent unemployment and where the monthly salary of an employee is around 1,500 net in the beginning and exceeds 3,000 euros in the case of experienced officers.

Small companies in the sector, 60% in the hands of self-employed workers over 45 years of age, see nearly 60,000 jobs in danger.

Beef buttocks have no one to rub them.

More information

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There are regulated and approved Professional Training courses to be a DJ, Pilates instructor, train conductor, wild cat specialist, ham cutter, tattoo artist or pyrotechnician.

The Government claims to be working to modernize the National Catalog of Professional Qualifications in order to guarantee professional training connected to the reality of work.

As of today, the catalog has 775 references, among which there is no approved professional training to be a butcher or delicatessen in any vocational training center in any autonomous community.

Last Saturday morning I went to the grocery store to get my weekly shopping, and when I looked up and directed it to the back of the store, to the butcher counter, I fell to my knees, with my heart pierced by a flash of light, at the sight of which seemed like a miracle to me.

Her name is Marina, she is 34 years old (I asked her, I am the most rude person on the face of the earth), she is a butcher, and she is here to stay.

I looked at her for a while, letting the rest of the clientele pass, I watched her cut steaks, debone ribs and fillet scallops with surgeon's precision, and I knew that I was not in front of a saleswoman, but a young woman who knew the job: a unicorn .

Marina has dedicated her entire life to sport.

She has competed in artistic gymnastics and swimming since she was six years old, she has studied Physical Education and has been a teacher of martial arts and fitness activities.

Until four years ago she ran her own gym.

In an unexpected turn of events, in March 2019, while she was pregnant, her partner had a serious stroke, which destroyed both of their lives.

He couldn't continue working.

She closed the gym and took the first job she could get her hands on, pulling the car.

She ended up as an apprentice butcher in the workshop of Albert Codina, winner of silver in 2019 in the contest for the best artisan sausage in Catalonia, who runs a butcher shop in Cantonigròs, a small town of 336 inhabitants.

He is another unicorn: he is 43 years old.

He tells Marina that he fell madly in love with the job, and that she has no intention of leaving it to return to the world of gyms.

At the end of the day, I tell myself, it's all about working the muscles, whether above or below the skin;

whether before or after death.

I also tell myself that perhaps it would be a good idea to consider establishing public vocational training in Spain to train butchers and delicatessens, as they have in France or Germany - in case it were necessary to cite civilized countries as an example to support a truism of this caliber, in case someone thinks this is a crazy idea—, before the trade and the network of artisan delicatessens and butcher shops in the country die definitively.

Do the plastic trays call you “honey” or do they fillet your breasts in that very specific way that you like?

How is it possible that we go so late?

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