A CATALAN restaurateur and independence supporter has come up with a novel idea to support politicians and public figures who have been imprisoned awaiting trial for more than seven months.

Since last year, Ada Parellada, owner of Restaurant Semproniana, in Barcelona, which is a favourite haunt of the indy lobby, has been organising “yellow dinners” where each course is the colour that has come to symbolise solidarity with the political prisoners detained after the October referendum.

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Now she has put together a book of yellow recipes, proceeds from which will support those in jail.

“I’m a cook and I always use different ingredients and I thought ‘why don’t we cook yellow dinners to earn money for the prisoners’, and we did”, said Parellada.

“It is more of a solidarity dinner – we wondered what we could do to help them.

“Yellow dinners have been popping up all over Catalonia for the prisoners because we need to have a lot of money for the day when Spain lets them free for an exchange of money.”

When The National went along to Semproniana, the night ended up like one of our roadshows.

As well as the yellow courses – which included a haggis starter – there were readings of Burns’ and Sir Walter Scott works and discussions comparing the Scottish and Catalan independence causes with an audience who came from all walks of life.

“This winter the dinners have been really popular, and we were astonished in January, February and March because it was always full, said Parellada.

“People come from Barcelona obviously, but also from all over Catalonia, especially at weekends.

“The recipe book is the best seller in Catalonia since it was released and it started just as another idea to earn money for the prisoners.

“Everybody was coming here asking for the yellow recipes to replicate our dinners and I was having to write out the details and it was hard work.

“So, I wrote my recipes and spoke to other restaurants who do yellow dinners and contacted [cultural organisation] Omnium and they supported the idea. Then we found a printer and here we are now.”

More than 300 copies of the book have been sold in the restaurant, with more than 5000 from shops and other outlets in the past month.

Parellada said her fund-raising ideas will continue into the summer with a yellow picnic – at Montjuic, known as the Jewish mountain, where even the food baskets will be yellow.

And a solidarity dinner will be held next month at the now-closed El Modelo Prison in Barcelona, which became a symbol of repression over its century of use.

She said: “It will be a solidarity dinner where we will eat a meal that is similar to what the prisoners eat.

“We will be eating in the gallery where prisoners came down from their cells to show how hard life is for them.”