Foodies on Menorca proposes naming the new Integrated Vocational Training Centre after Ramon Cavaller Triay

The new Integrated Vocational Training Centre in Ciutadella, where future generations of professionals in cuisine, restaurant service and hospitality will be trained, needs a name that represents what Menorca seeks to preserve while, at the same time, projecting it towards the future.

In our view, that name should be Ramon Cavaller Triay.

His figure deserves to be recognised, above all, for the work he carried out to recover and promote traditional Menorcan cuisine.

At a time when popular culinary heritage had not yet received the recognition it enjoys today, Cavaller understood that behind recipes, products and ways of cooking lay an essential part of the island’s identity.

The publication of La cuina de Menorca, in the two volumes of the Quaderns de Folklore published in 1984 and 1985, represents a fundamental contribution. In them, he documented fishing, hunting and rural cuisine, as well as traditional Menorcan pastries and confectionery.

He committed to writing a heritage that, without initiatives such as his, might have been lost or remained confined to the memories of older generations.

But Cavaller was also a man of tourism. His professional period in Bilbao, at the head of Viajes Iberia and later as the company’s manager for northern Spain, placed him at the forefront of the beginnings of organised tourism. He promoted Menorca, launched the Menorca Week in Bilbao, contributed to the arrival of the first Basque tourists and took part in efforts to improve the island’s transport links with mainland Spain.

He understood earlier than many others that tourism and identity did not have to be incompatible.

Today, when Menorca needs qualified professionals for the tourism and gastronomic sectors, placing the name of Ramon Cavaller Triay at the head of the new centre would be an act of justice and, above all, a declaration of principles.

For this reason, Foodies on Menorca calls on Ciutadella Town Council and the Consell de Menorca to urge the Government of the Balearic Islands to name the new CIFP in Ciutadella after Ramon Cavaller.