José Andrés, in an August 2019 image in Washington.Cliff Owen / AP
The prestigious chef José Andrés, born in Mieres (Asturias) 51 years ago and living in Maryland, outside Washington DC, celebrates the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord, which has been awarded this Wednesday, but considers it a reason to return even more to the pragmatism that characterizes the trajectory of his NGO World Central Kitchen.
“We are seeing what is happening in so many parts of the world, such as Syria and Gaza, where there are real problems not only created directly by hurricanes or earthquakes, but also by the negative effects of government decisions that generate problems where there shouldn't be any. ”, He comments.
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Chef José Andrés and his organization World Central Kitchen, 2021 Princess of Asturias Award for Concord
Food is equality, social justice, immigration, climate change. They are the dirty kitchens in which women cook and get sick, and die from inhaling those fumes, because they do not have clean and efficient energy to feed their families. Food is also defense, national security, it is wars for lack of water, it is obesity, it is wasting food when in the other part of the city there are people starving. This is how José Andrés defines, on the other end of the phone, his vision of how an apparently minor issue cuts across almost every aspect of life. "Instead of building higher walls, let's build longer tables," says the chef.
One of the main problems for José Andrés is that the leaders of the richest countries in the world, like those of the poorest, do not have food experts by their side. "Many of the food policies are carried out through the Ministry of Agriculture and, without detracting anything from those departments, food is much more," he points out. "We have to have a much more joint action," he continues.
Solidarity springs up in him naturally. His parents were nurses at the Bellvitge University Hospital, in Barcelona, and he assures that he has grown up surrounded by that empathy that pushes him to want to create a better place. "We have seen it in this pandemic, where millions of health workers around the world have fought in this war to save as many lives as they could, hospital to hospital, sick to sick," he declares. He does not lose faith that it is possible to turn the script around. “I have seen it every day, empathy exists. What we need are leaders who want to bring out the best in each one of us and not leaders who take advantage of bringing out the worst, ”he continues.
José Andrés, in the center of the image, participating in a distribution of menus due to the economic and social crisis derived from the coronavirus pandemic in Valencia in June 2020.Kai Försterling / EFE
Despite having been on the side of the most disadvantaged and having come to the aid in fires, earthquakes and other natural disasters, José Andrés believes that the situations are very different, but they are all essentially the same. “The least we can do is stand by these people at their worst or at least prevent them from suffering more than necessary. In a time where people talk about building higher walls, I talk about building longer tables. The way I'm going to protect my daughters is by working to offer someone else's daughters what I strive to give mine. I do not want to be part of those walls because the only thing they are going to do is that little by little our societies degrade ”, he affirms.
The chef and World Central Kitchen have been recognized by the jury of the Princess of Asturias Award for their "various cooperation projects with the kitchen as a central element" and for turning their experience in the gastronomic field "to develop exemplary, attentive forms of humanitarian assistance to help the most disadvantaged in the most extreme situations ”. The entity, which has developed an effective and innovative disaster response tool by recruiting chefs to feed those affected, has already acted in Spain in the pandemic and with the storm Filomena. José Andrés believes that in this process of helping they continue to learn to act faster and more intelligently. "Who was going to tell us that having been here with the covid, respond to Filomena with the help of the army,distributing food to the different hospitals that could not activate their kitchens, it was going to serve us as training in the Texas snowfall a week later ”, he explains.
Its objective is to cover basic needs that governments sometimes do not reach.
He acknowledges that it is not an easy task: “You have to leave it to the people who know how to do their thing.
When you have to rebuild you take engineers, and the ones who will help you feed faster are the cooks.
The only thing we say is that we are here to improve the systems and to do it in a more efficient and economical way ”.
The final request that José Andrés launches is that there be more committed actions, with money behind the ideas, and where the easy speeches that are applauded are put aside and are forgotten.
“That these people put on their backpack and boots and go to the side of those families who have a bad time, that is the only way to solve the problems.
Less speeches and more action ”, he concludes.