The best xuixo in the world is from Banyoles

The Can Padrés bakery in Banyoles (located 4 km from El Solei) has won the prize for the best xuixo ​​in the world in the gastronomic competition and in the Xuixo Year.

The "Best Xuixo in the World" competition has been organized for the first time in 2018, coinciding with the centenary of these Girona desserts, which have become a symbol of the city and the province of Girona.

The Xuixo is a typical pastry from the Girona region. It’s a deep-fried, sugar-coated cylindrical pastry filled with "crema catalana" (the Catalan cream is made with milk and thickened with cornflour). Commonly eaten for breakfast or tea. It’s assumed that this pastry originated in 1920s Girona.

The legend of Tarlà

According to a legend, the invention of the Xuixo has to be credited to El Tarlà, a very sympathetic person that was very present in the Girona area:

This acrobat that entertained the citizens in a quarantine during an epidemic, fell in love with the daughter of a pastry chef. Once when he visited his beloved girl her father appeared and he hid in a bag of flour. Unfortunately, he sneezed (which sounds like xui-xui) and he was discovered. Before the pastry chef could get angry, he promised to marry his daughter and give him the recipe of a special pastry: the Xuixo. He named it after the sneeze that betrayed him.

To preserve the tradition, every year, during the spring festivals (around Sant George's day), you can see the figure of El Tarlà in the place where he had entertained the Girona people, in Argenteria street of Girona. It is a doll with a wooden head and a cloth body (stuffed with sawdust) and it spins.