Jordi Marquet — Andorra’s gourmeterie keeper and storyteller

Jordi Marquet was born in 1942 in Cal Ton de Borró, Canillo. In a recent interview he comes across as a man with a prodigious memory: he recalls names of people, singers, records, books, wines and delicatessen products with precision, linking them to specific places and dates. He downplays this as mere anecdote, but his ability to reconstruct scenes, reproduce dialogue and evoke scent and flavour makes him a natural storyteller.

Marquet runs the Gourmeterie Marquet on Plaça Coprínceps in Escaldes, though meetings with him are not confined to that shop. He greets people with a smile, shows a careful elegance and a practiced savoir‑faire; customers and suppliers often give him preferential treatment. He knows when to accept advice and when to choose a bottle or a cheese himself. Ask him about a particular cheese, the house salmon or a French wine and he will sketch settings, characters and conversations that bring the product to life.

His anecdotes frequently involve well‑known figures — Joselito, Modest Cuixart, the bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez, and writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán — and when the stories concern lesser‑known people he paints them in vivid, precise strokes. One memory he tells often: when the artist Sergi Mas brought the first sign for the new Carlemany Avenue shop, he refused payment, blessing the venture with a smiling “good luck,” and left the poster as a gift.

Marquet attributes much of his outlook to three formative influences. His padrí, the founder of the family house, instilled what Marquet describes as the values of ancestral Andorra. His mother, a noted cook whose dishes were widely enjoyed, combined culinary skill with a keen commercial and political sense. And Pierre Aliot, a French resistance member he met while studying in Foix and Toulouse, taught him to consider good food and wine as works of art for the palate.

By vocation Marquet wanted to devote himself to music, but family expectations led him to study Commerce and Political Science. After a youthful episode in the United Kingdom, he returned to Andorra and joined a small team led by Toni Ubach that created the country’s social security system (CASS) from scratch. After five years managing CASS finances with solid results, he became the first manager of the Meritxell Clinic in January 1971, the first public hospital centre in Andorra.

Those roles placed Marquet at the heart of two foundational public services: social security and health care. Colleagues and contemporaries credit people like him with helping Andorra move toward modern public provision without severing links to its past. Beyond his public‑service work, Marquet opened a delicatessen that helped shape a quality clientele and an early form of quality tourism in Andorra. His tasting evenings and festive food events became well known and contributed to the local culinary scene.

Despite his optimism and energetic conversation, signs of age are visible — a watery eye, the trace of years in his face — but his memory and storytelling remain sharp. Whether recounting encounters with famous figures, recalling the first poster for his shop, or describing a bottle of wine, Marquet presents a continuous link between Andorra’s past and the tastes that helped define its more recent identity.