Calçot festival opens in Catalonia

The city of Valls, in Spain's autonomous region of Catalonia, held a popular festival Sunday to open the season to eat 'calçot', a native spring onion. With it came its 37th 'calçot' eating contest, where people compete to see who can eat the most in 45 minutes.

The winner on Sunday was Adrià Wegrzyn, who ate 222 onions, followed by runner-up Ramon Caballero, who ate 215, and third place winner Jordi Oller, who has eaten 375. While participants were lauded for the number they ate, the winner is the person who has eaten the greatest weight of onions, not the greatest number of onions.

Winner Adrià Wegrzyn, is a regular participant and has already won 14 times. This food is an elongated onion that is usually eaten cooked on the grill and accompanied with a special sauce of toasted almonds, toasted hazelnuts, green tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, vinegar, pepper, parsley and salt.