What color is paella? The answer, from a Barcelona chef

Camprodon tosses finely diced onion into a pan of hot olive oil and has one student stir it.

[...] before we tackled the paella, we spent a few hours on the history, gathering food for thought on a group walking tour about the Spanish Civil War.

Here in the 1930s, he explained, followers of "Karl Marx, Adam Smith and the anarchists" joined forces in a revolutionary government in Catalonia, to fight against the fascists led by Gen. Francisco Franco — before turning on each other.

Lloyd pointed out a building once occupied by anarchists, across the plaza from another occupied by communists, and down La Ramba to the hotel where George Orwell stayed when he joined other volunteers who came to Spain from around the world to fight Franco.

Franco crushed Barcelona's revolutionary government when his forces took the city in 1939, and he ruled the country with an iron fist until his death in 1975.

The menu at Cook and Taste was gazpacho, roasted vegetables and cod over flatbread, seafood paella and, for dessert, crema Catalana.

The ham must be room temperature so the fat melts over the meat to bring out the flavor.

The mussels, well, "they are very sociable, you know," so you must remove the thin beard-like membrane they use to cling to each other and to rocks.

Another group diced and blended gazpacho, using the traditional tomato, cucumber, green pepper and garlic along with unusual ingredients: watermelon and beets.

[...] the paella.