The summers? –answers Otilia with a gesture of slight surprise, sitting on a bench at the tremendously historic nougat and horchata shop Planelles Donat in Barcelona–, well, the summers were always like the winters, working, attending to customers. Yes, well, in winter you mainly sell nougats and in summer mainly horchatas, but…”.
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“But did you never go on vacation?”, this reporter raised on the privileges of the welfare state asks her. “Vacation? In summer? Well, sometimes you went to the village, when you could, now and then –answers Otilia–. This is a family business always, and in family businesses you always have to be there, behind the counter, attending to people, taking care of them… The secret is in loving people, making everyone feel good. Have they already offered you a horchata?”.
“Vacation? Well, sometimes you went a few days to the village… That’s what family businesses are like”
Otilia Donet is from Xixona, and she is 99 years old, and in a couple of weeks she will turn a century, and every morning she comes every other day to this business on Portal de l’Àngel to check that her grandchildren and other workers have the shop windows well arranged, attend customers with the usual kindness and, above all, continue making the little packages as God commands, with those little bows that let you carry them happily without needing any plastic bag. Quite a few have been coming to this business for decades.
And here they refer to Otilia as the boss, and also as the mestressa . And everyone agrees that the little packages, and also the obligatory good mornings and thank yous religiously addressed to everyone who enters the shop, are no nonsense, that these little details are the secret that allows you to treasure so many lifelong customers who already brought their children, so many regular customers who first stepped into this store very small holding their grandparents’ hands. People from the neighborhood, from the rest of the city, from the entire metropolitan area, and also from Andorra, from Mallorca… People who, if they pass by here, always stop by. “Otilia always taught us how to treat people. In that sense, she taught us everything”.
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Apparently the customer looking for nougat requires more advice, attention and time. The details are fundamental. After all, they come to get a main element of the table they will offer their family at Christmas. It is a very important decision. The summer customer, however, is always in more of a hurry, more overheated, needing to quench their thirst as soon as possible. This is how people who spent so many decades behind these counters feel the different seasons of the year.
Once upon a time, long ago, the nougat makers from Xixona came to Barcelona on Christmas Eve to sell their products in doorways until Candlemas. Until the authorities forced them to have a fixed location. Otilia was one year old when her family set up what came to be their first shop. She grew up there. She was an only child and was destined to take the reins of the business. At 14 the counter was already hers. “I wasn’t bad at school, but…”.
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And back then, on Portal de l’Àngel, other nougat makers from Xixona also worked, the Planelles. Otilia and Pepe Planelles fell in love, and with their marriage the two families and their businesses also joined, until today. At that time, many women were pushed out of the workforce as soon as they got married. But in this story no one doubted that Otilia’s place was behind this counter, where she continues to meet lifelong customers.
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