The residents of Kranevo, in the past a small village between Varna and Balchik on the northern Black Sea coast and now one of those over-constructed holiday resorts, have risen up in arms, metaphorically, because they felt their sprat was under threat
The immediate reason for their civil disobedience was a plan to relocate the local festival of tsatsa, as the small fry is called in the vernacular, to Balchik, which is the regional centre.
One fine day in May the Kranevo people symbolically went over the zebra crossing across the main road and ended up at the local service station. For years the locals have expressed their dissatisfaction that the authorities ignore their problems. Their ultimate aim is to call a referendum to sever their links with Balchik and become a part of the greater Varna city council, which is of course much bigger.
A Kranevo woman was furious: "We have had our sprat festival for so many years. We had just that, and now they took it away from us!"
A hotel owner intoned: "Kranevo was robbed again, if only of a festival. I personally do not think it was being organised in the best way possible, but it was after all an attraction, a part of our cultural life."
Sprat is looked down upon by the bigger restaurants because it is just cheap small fry. But many Bulgarians, especially those originating from the areas near the Black Sea, swear by it. In the past tsatsa was sold by peddlers who fried it in situ and put it in brown paper bags, a convenient way to take off the oil.
One of the best recipes for Black Sea sprat requires a bit of an effort, however. Each individual tsatsa has to be disembowelled with a knife and then washed, so that there is no contamination from the tiny guts, which may be slightly bitter in taste. Then a dozen or so fishes have to be pierced through the heads, usually with a straw. In this way they will not touch each other while being fried. If anything like that occurs, the fishes will stick together, a shameful calamity to old-time Black Sea housewives.
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