The donut that smiles back in Barcelona

There are donuts, and then there is Boldúman. One wears sprinkles like confetti or a glaze sticky as the night and waits under hard light at an airport coffee counter. The other has eyes. And a chocolate smirk. And a soul. Or at least, you think he does—until you eat him.

I called Barcelona home for a spell, and I feel the draw to cap this visit by seeing an old doughy friend. I stand outside Boldú’s flagship shop in Eixample to take it all in. One window houses all manner of ads for what they’re trying to push. The barbecue chicken sandwich notwithstanding, behind the next window is the object of my affection. A phalanx of Boldúmen, lined up ready to sacrifice themselves for the good. Boldúman was born to make people happy. Stay Sweet is the motto. The sight of the full battalion brings grins to every passerby.

Boldú Bakery opened in Barcelona in 1939. It was a good year for bread, and a bad year for everything else. Spain had just finished beating itself in civil war. Franco was consolidating power. Rationing made food scarce. But in the neighborhood of Gràcia, the Boldú family kept baking.

At first, it was the basics: crusty rounds, lean baguettes, rustic grainy loaves, the kind of bread that made a meal stretch. Later, the counter began to crowd with flaky croissants, sticky pastry, brioches with amber sheen. They made flatbreads in spring and almond cookies in fall. You could tell the season by the craft. But donuts? Those came later.

Fried dough has scratched guilty pleasure for millennia. The ancient Greeks did it with honey and wine. Romans fried theirs in pork fat. In Spain, fritter-like buñuelos showed up with the Moors, and by some reports, churros were a Chinese idea that was later dragged through molten chocolate by hungry Madrileños or wandering shepherds or both. But the donut –the real donut– has more than one lineage.

In Germany, the berliner was a round, jam-filled ball with no hole — fluffy, sweet, capped in sugar. Austrian cousins called it Krapfen. In France, booule de Berlin. They crept across the border and Spain met them as berlinas by the mid-20th century, mostly in quiet corners of Catalonia and the Basque country. Then beyond. They landed like stowaways. Never known enough to replace buñuelos or churros, but too good to ignore.

In America, some say the round one with the hole was born aboard a ship. In 1847, a sailor named Hanson Gregory had a genius of a mother. She punched out a hole in the traditional berliner and yes, it cooked more evenly, but notably, young Hanson could store them on the helm spokes. Just keep a steady course, Captain! Donut destiny and by the 1970s, Spain saw the hole-y truth.

Boldú took these seriously and blended the two pastry technologies. Their dough, slow-fermented, eggy, kissed with citrus, closer to brioche than sponge. Then ring-cut, fried, and glazed. And those donut holes? They got a little candy star and a dollop of filling, plump and honest like their German ancestor. But in 2012, something changed.

They cut the dough into people. Think gingerbread men, only soft, chubby, and less fearful.

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Nobody quite knows who decided to give them icing eyes and smirks. The family is tight-lipped, the bakers even more so. The story goes quiet in the telling, which only adds to the magic. But suddenly, there they were. Men of dough. Some smiling, some drowsy, some lopsided. All irresistible. Their visceral cream of pistachio, hazelnut, dark or white chocolate, lemon, raspberry, cinnamon apple, caramel, or speculous. The occasional candy and nut coating to match the goop hidden inside. Their holiday attire celebrating Pride month or Saint George’s dragon kill, or Jesus’s birthday. Their custom lettering, expression in sugar, or giant-sized for parties. Indeed, there is also a Boldúgirl.

There are shining temples to baking in this city, to be sure. Places where glazes gleam like car paint, espumas suspend among dough sheets, croissants of a million layers. But Boldú feels lived-in. Human-scale. No Boldúman is perfect. Coating cools while dripping from an arm, smiles askew send mixed signals, smeared eyes like they’d been up late partying with the tarts, blemishes, cracked sugary skin. We all relate. And that appeals.

There’s always a place to rest your angst here and a staffer who pours a coffee better than the barrista nextdoor. I belly up to the counter and call for my usual. One classic glazed, or “naked” Boldúman. The name makes me giggle like a kid. One original capped with white chocolate and footed with dark. Both unfilled. The truest to buttery brioche in flavor and texture, and through its lightness, one could almost convince oneself this is breakfast. I appease the meal gods by adding a ham and cheese bocadillo to my order, a little salty with my sweet. And a café con leche.

My donut dealer for the morning, Karla, places my Boldúmen in a box with a kind of reverence. “Buen provecho,” she says, and I nod, thanking her for being my enabler. I carry my fix to a street side table facing Carrer de Provença and sit quietly, sip my café con leche and nibble my bocadillo, and watch more passersby point and smile. Go ahead. Buy donuts. I could grab another espresso to cruelly dunk my Boldúmen, but I have a better idea.

To my increasingly normal perch atop an NH Collection hotel, this time the Calderón high above Rambla de Catalunya, I take Boldúman on a journey. Not for a glass of Rioja with a view. Not to mingle with the Gen Z crowd making this skybar their personal VIP section. But to snap a portrait of one delicious little donut dude with a backdrop of the city that embraces him. Then I bite his head off.

Food ties you to place. Marks a moment. Tells a story without subtitles. Boldúman –a German doughboy with Catalan flair, ridiculous and adorable– is one of Barcelona’s best stories, seldom heard beyond its borders. Food gives shape to memory. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, it gives that memory crooked eyes and a weird smile.

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