Super RobotMV

I had recently lived in Arbúcies during the Christmas pandemic and wanted to cook some pig's trotters with turnips. When I was preparing the sauce, the blender wasn't working. Those were those strange days when the stores were half-closed, and I had no way to chop the tomatoes, onions, celery, and minced meat. In a kitchen cabinet, in its original box, I found a red and white Taurus Super Robot MV, which belonged to my grandmother.

Pepita Robert Cullaré was a great cook, both at home and at the hostel during the years we ran it, and she had chopped thousands of tomatoes and onions, and pulverized hundreds of ñora peppers, almonds, and toasted hazelnuts. Taurus launched the Super Robot MV in 1974. My grandmother died in 1985. She had plenty of time to use that blender. In the last years of her life, she went to live alone in Arbúcies, against her children's wishes. On weekends, my brother and I would visit her—and keep a tight rein on her—and she would cook all sorts of delicious dishes for us. Perhaps because she had bought a more modern or lighter blender—the Super Robot MV was 35.5 cm high by 7.5 cm wide and weighed 900 grams. She had had breast surgery, her lymph nodes removed, and she couldn't lift weights. But I think she thought Super Robot MV was so beautiful that she kept it. It used to happen a lot in homes. A set of dishes, embroidered sheets, a blender would come in. The lady of the house thought they were beautiful and would store them so they wouldn't get ruined. After a few years, that precious object had gone out of fashion; more functional, more functional items were on the market, and it remained unused, or almost unused.

Lluelles invented the minipimer, designed coffee grinders and the Braun Citromatic

That's why, that Christmas, I was able to plug the Super Robot MV into the power supply, and it worked like the first day. Because, in reality, it was the first day—or the second, or the third. Being a 1974 appliance, it had a 125- and 220-volt switch, so I was able to plug it in without any problems. One time, I had a green and cream-colored 125-volt Númax fan, and to make it work, I bought a transformer. When I learned that Joaquim Jordà had filmed a legendary movie about the self-management experience of the Númax factory in 1977, I was even more excited to plug it in.

Now at the Terrassa Museum of Science and Technology , Gabriel Lluelles, an industrial designer, finds a red and white MV Super Robot like my grandmother's, among the wonders designed by Lluelles, one of the country's great industrial designers. Andreu Alfaro Hoffmann has assembled a fabulous collection of the utensils he designed: Lluelles invented the hand blender, designed coffee grinders, vacuum cleaners, and the Braun Citromatic.

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It arrived in Arbúcies. I went to look for my Super Robot MV, but I couldn't find it there. Cris's caregiver, thinking it was junk, threw it away a couple of years ago. It's like I've been stabbed seven times.