The old cliché says that the beach is hungry, and in all parts of the world there are street vendors who enrich themselves by offering swimmers those cravings that so satisfy in long days at the seashore. On the Spanish coast you can get paper cones full of shrimp or bags with chopped fruit ; in Italy they pass with paninis di prosciutto , while in Turkey the vendors carry baskets full of simit , a typical bread covered with sesame seeds.

Although the bet is on the salty on the beaches of half the world, on the Portuguese coast the sweet dominates, because for most of the Portuguese one day at sea inevitably implies the purchase of a ball of Berlím , that sweet dough filled with cream which in Spain we call Berlin. For decades, this typical candy from northern Germany has been sold, which is also known in German lands as pfannkuchen or berliner .

The balls of Berlím arrived in Portuguese lands by a coincidence of history. Throughout World War II, Portugal, at that time under the command of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar , maintained its neutrality, and cities such as Lisbon and Porto became important free ports for hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing the Nazis and sought to escape to the Americas. Many Jewish families from Germany chose to take the Lusitanian escape route, but upon arriving in Portugal they often spent months waiting for the necessary papers to embark on transatlantic vessels.

During that waiting time many Jews went to work for small Portuguese entrepreneurs, and in this way typical German sweets began to appear in the bakeries of Lisbon and Porto. As expected, in the end the pastry chefs of the neighboring country created their own variation of the cake, which in its original version is made with cream or jam, but that in Portugal is filled with the egg cream so ubiquitous in the Portuguese cakes, which They come from the conventual sweets of yesteryear.

Panic at a possible ban

Given its small size and ease of handling, the cake was ideal for eating on foot, and perhaps that's why it started selling on the streets of certain Portuguese cities and, over time, also on the Portuguese beaches. Over the decades, nutritionists have pointed out that the sweet cream filling - already a sugar and fat pump - is not particularly appropriate for street sales on hot days, but despite this it is still a classic.

There was great confusion a decade ago, when there was a rumor that the Government proposed to ban them on the beach, but finally the State limited itself to supervise the sale, to ensure that what was sold was suitable for popular consumption.

Today on any beach in Portugal the arrival of the cake is announced with the " Olha a bolinha !" shouted by street vendors, who charge between 1.20 and 1.50 euros for each ball of Berlím. While the classic version of the candy predominates in the north and center of the neighboring country, innovative variations can be found in the Algarve , including some made with carob , beet and spirulina microalgae , supposedly healthy versions of the summer excess.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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