Post Camino: Pigs in Spain

Okay, okay.  I said in a post long ago that you might easily get the impression that this big adventure was all serious devotional stuff.  Friends, we did not march across Spain flagellating ourselves.  I was intent on trying the marvelous foods, cheese, and wines of Spain.  I did too.
Let me start with that most trayf (yiddish for unclean, forbidden, non-kosher) of foods: the pig.  As I have written, my wife is Jewish.  My children are thus Jewish and were raised that way.  My wife is a Reformed Jew.  We do not keep a kosher home. Nevertheless, even though trayf seafoods often make an appearance on our family menu (shrimp, crab--most non-fish seafood--Thanks to my Aunt Patsy for introducing Ketl to the wonder that was her crab gumbo), that most potent of symbols of unclean food; the humble pig just does not make an appearance at our table.  Now,I'm not fit to judge the Almighty, but I can't figure why in the world the Chosen, bound to God for all time with an unbreakable Covenant, People were denied the rich pleasures of juicy, drippy, oh so good swine.  I mean come on.  Is there anything much better than smoking a giant swine shoulder for hours and hours, pulling it to shreds and then dipping it into a North Carolina vinegar based sauce. After years of bacon deprivation at home in Spain I went wild for hog.
Now the Spaniards are the kings and queens of swine as far as I can see.  They make Serrano and Iberico hams that surpass anything the Italians or Germans do.  They serve ham with just about everything.  The basic sandwich here is 'bocadillo jamon': a couple of thin slices of rich cured pig between the halves of a baguette.  A leg of the top quality black footed ham can go for hundreds of Euro.  I'm actually quite done eating that ham (or any other cured meat--especially chirizo) as I've had it and that ever present white bread (don't they know about whole wheat, rye, barley, millet etc?) Till it threatens to come out my ears.  
The wonder of it is, in all my walk across Spain, I never once saw a pig (well, I did see some Vietnamese potbelly pigs, but I think those were pets not meat.  Where all those pigs are raised and slaughtered is simply a mystery.
What is not a mystery is pig in Spanish cuisine.  They eat it all: nose to tail.  In one bar I had the ears.  My traveling partner, Pete, called it beer and an ear since the boiled ear was a bar food.  Yesterday I had roasted pig cheek in a neighborhood Catalan restaurant.  The menu called the dish 'Pigs Face in his own Sauce'.  Who could resist a line like that? Not me, face in sauce, especially 'his own'?  I was all over that. I ate hearty.  Meat from around the face of most animals is often the tenderest of all.  Pigs cheek meat certainly fell off the jaw with luscious goodness.  In another bar I had slices of boiled pig intestine with my beer.  Again, Pete won the naming contest: beer gut.  I have to admit that I didn't eat my whole, a bit too barnyard flavored, portion on that one, but as I tell my Sunday School class when I introduce a new food, "the worst thing that can happen is that you won't like it and will never eat it again."  Tonight in a fancy Barcelona restaurant (think turn of the last century brass and wood decor, white linens, three glasses, 3 forks fancy) I had 'Pig Trotters Catalan Style": pigs feet with pine nuts and raisins in a tomato sauce.  Oh my!  Fatty, fatty skin to grow delirious over, knuckle bones to suck on, and toes to avoid.  What a dish!
This Protestant boy lives in a house of the Jews and loves them.  Yet I wnt bonkers for oinkers over here.  These folks know their swine, every bit of it.