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I have been living in Spain now for 4 months and I can conclude the following; Spain is a country of opposites. Everything is and everything will be made political whether you like it or not. You are either in Camp A or in Camp B and you have to die on that hill.
I live in Barcelona, on the Plaça Saint Jaume Square. This important square is made out of two big building that oppose one another. One of the buildings is Palau de la Generalitat
The other is the Council of Barcelona
One stands for the autonomy of Catalonia with as highlight the illegal referendum in 2017 where Catalonia looked for independence from Spain in 2017. Two opposites on one square, one for the monarchy and one for the republic.
The Onion
One of the most heated debates in Spain is the inclusion of the onion in the country's signature dish; Tortilla de Patata
During one of my breaks in university I was sitting outside on a bench, enjoying the late summer sun. When one of my classmates came sitting next to me and asked...
"So Stefan, sin or con (with or without)?"
I was confused.. and ask her to clarify
"Sigh, do you prefer your tortilla with onion or without"
I had to laugh and replied: "Of Course I do"
"Good, you pass"
I wonder what happened if I have had said sin (without), in her eyes probably the biggest sin you can commit
Concebollistas vs. Sincebollistas
The stage has been set, on the left side the group that prefers the tortilla with onion: concebollistas and on the right side the group that prefers it without: the sincebollilstas.
I browsed through reddit to see if I can find some opinions on the debate from either side.
One sincebollista said: "The onion is for people who can't cook a tortilla properly, the onion is there to add juiciness for their mistakes of cooking the eggs too long
The concebollista said: "People who eat it without onion are psychopaths"
The diplomatic answer on reddit: "A good tortilla with onion is better than a good tortilla without onion. But a bad tortilla with onion is worse than a bad tortilla without onion."
And another weird addition where one Redditor prefers his omelette with onion but without egg, mildly interesting
"With onion, of course. And no egg."
The Statistics
The Spanish newspaper, El Mundo published the results of a self-conducted poll o settle the debate once and for all.
The results: 72.7% of those surveyed favoured onion; 25.3% were against, and 1.9% didn’t answer.
In this poll, political parties were included. The Spanish Socialist Party had the highest pro-onion voters with 73,2% in favour of the onion, the lowest was to be found in the Unidas Podemos (United We Can) party at 65,2%. Unfortunately it's hard to conclude a reason between the difference in opinion as they are both a leftist party.
Women prefer with onion over men by just 1%.
The Preparation Matters
With onion or without onion, we get it. The real challenge comes in the preparation. Do you like the tortilla wet ike a French Omelette
or do you prefer a more dry one, which I see is more common especially if you google a Spanish Tortilla
Personally, the skill is to get the perfect wetness without destroying the tortilla. Keeping the tortilla moist from the inside, dense on the inside and the texture of the onion and potato
The Spanish Allegiance
The Spanish can't agree on a lot of things inside of Spain but one thing they can all agree on; the foreigner that cooks Spanish. Reminding me of the time Jamie Oliver made an attempt at Paella from Valencia. This iconic dish is prepared with a combination of rabbit, chicken thigh and green beans. The Brit instead chose chorizo over the rabbit. An intensely paprika spiced sausage, that is absolutely not intended for the holy Paella.
Chorizo had a remarkable surge in popularity in the last few years. None of it paying respect to Spain with its lowest point, chorizo jam
Another quite famous Englishman that embarrassed himself was none other than Gordon Ramsay. He too decided to make Paella but he even made a bigger mess of it by using chorizo, chicken, shrimp, squid and clams and to finish it off he added a bunch of peppers to it. Spanish newspaper El Pais concluded: because it’s never too late to confuse Spain with Mexico.
Watch Gordon's Masterclass here
The Spanish Way
However the Spanish are not completely free of blame for butchering dishes from other cultures. The amount of times I have been to a restaurant in Barcelona and saw carbonara on the menu with as main ingredient "cream", is uncountable. Or a 4 cheeses pasta overloaded with cheese that makes my stomach turn upside down. For how fractured Spain is in terms of politics and preferences they do find allegiance in firing away at foreigners or butchering the Italian cuisine