Messaging app has been asked to add traditional drinking vessel to its emoji list, with group arguing it warrants recognition

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Beaming pile of poo? Check. Sexually suggestive aubergine? Check. Enduring symbol of Catalan community and conviviality? Hmmm.

A cultural association based near Barcelona is asking the mobile messaging service WhatsApp to add the porrón to its list of emojis, claiming the spouted glass pitcher possesses a “cultural and social meaning” that warrants recognition.

In a petition at Change.org, the Blaus de Granollers argue that the wine flask – beloved of locals and feared and abused in equal measure by tourists who struggle to master its vinous stream – is “a symbol of our land” that occupies a unique place in Catalan culture.

“[It] is much more than a kitchen tool,” the group says in a letter to WhatsApp’s CEO, Jan Koum. “It helps to create community, to strengthen bonds during meals.”

The porrón, it adds, is passed from hand to hand, allowing many people to drink from the vessel, thereby creating a sense of cohesion and equality.

“It makes you feel part of a team. Besides, it helps us Catalans remember our roots – and you already know that if you lose your roots, you lose your identity.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jan Koum, CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp . Photograph: Tobias Hase/AFP/Getty Images

Given the proliferation of WhatsApp food and drink emojis, the group says, the porrón merits representation.

“How can there be emojis for ice cream, vintage style jugs and a glass of some unknown drink - but not one for the porrón?” the letter asks. “It’s a symbol that represents the most essential thing in society and it doesn’t even exist as a WhatsApp emoticon. How can this be?”

However, not everyone has shared the Catalan love of the vessel. Five pages into Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell writes less than admiringly about it and the associations it stirred.

“[We] drank out of a dreadful thing called a porrón. A porrón is a sort of glass bottle with a pointed spout from which a thin jet of wine spurts out whenever you tip it up; you can thus drink from a distance, without touching it with your lips, and it can be passed from hand to hand,” Orwell wrote.

“I went on strike and demanded a drinking-cup as soon as I saw a porrón in use. To my eye the things were altogether too like bed-bottles, especially when they were filled with white wine.”

A week after the petition was launched, more than 700 people have signed it. “I think it’s a universal symbol that millions of people can identify with if they’ve ever shared jokes and laughed with a porrón in their hand,” wrote one supporter.

A similar campaign waged by paella lovers resulted in the rice dish winning its own emoji in June this year.

WhatsApp said it did not create emojis, which are agreed by an industry consortium. It added: “While we appreciate feedback from our users, we do not have the ability to make any changes to the current list of emojis.”