Meat and two veg or just veg?

Don't hold your breath but I have read that the number of vegetarian restaurants, and even vegan restaurants, in Spain has doubled. I would love to see the statistics and find out where these increased numbers of vegetarian and vegan restaurants are. I'm betting that they are in Barcelona or maybe Madrid, although Barcelona is more likely as it has more of a really cosmopolitan reputation. Madrid always feels more "small town Spain" than Barcelona to me. I bet there are still precious few vegetarian/vegan restaurants in the whole of Galicia. 

I have often been slightly amused watching vegetarians trying to find a menú that suits then in Spain, and then frustrated on behalf of those vegetarians and rather guilty about finding it amusing. One of the things that happens is that the restaurateurs offer fish. Well, it's not meat!!! And then they fall back on "ensalada mixta". You shouldn't be able to go wrong with a mixed salad. Except that "ensalada mixta" in Spain usually comes with a large dollop of tinned tuna fish. If you speak Spanish you can get round it but you do get a lot of pitying, mystified looks. Vegans have it even harder because all the options involving eggs disappear. Personally I don't have a problem. My veggie days are behind me. I happily eat fish and shellfish. I eat chicken. I just avoid visits to "churrasquerías" as far as possible as I still won't eat huge plates of red meat. When people invite us to barbecues and churrascadas we find ourselves eating lots of tortilla and green salad and pushing around the barbecued ribs that are forced on us. Apparently Lonely Planet's World Food Guide to Spain once warned vegetarians that many Spaniards "consider a dead pig to be a vegetable". I love that! But I now read that the Happy Cow Vegetarian website (yes, that IS its name) listed 353 vegetarian or vegan restaurants in Spain in 2011 whereas this year's figure is 686. Similar figures for the UK show an increase from 842 in 2011 to 1344 this year. Mind you, if you compare population figures I don't think the UK can really congratulate itself on providing all that well for the veggies. In fact, Spain is improving faster. The main difference is that most restaurants in the UK regularly offer a vegetarian choice rather than blank looks and the suggestion that you are rather mad not to want a huge steak on your plate. An acknowledgement of the Spanish attitude comes from a famous Spanish chef, who says he is all in favour of cooking with vegetables and said,: “If I could get away with it I wouldn’t cook with fish or meat at all.” I think that probably says it all. He knows he wouldn't get away with it, not if he wanted his restaurant to stay open. 

He went on to say, "The bad thing about vegetarianism is that it’s negative. It’s more about the maltreatment of animals than it is the love of vegetables. I’m somebody who loves vegetables because I like eating them, not because I worry that animals suffer when we kill them.” I thought we had got beyond sentimental vegetarianism. I know people who are vegetarian for health reasons. But apparently not everyone agrees. Laura Jiménez, a journalism student in Alicante who organised something called the Vegan Fest isn't pleased with the "trendiness" of vegan/vegetarianism. 

“Things have definitely improved,” she says. “Three years ago we didn’t have any vegan restaurants here in Alicante. Now we have a vegan bakery, a tapas bar, and there’s another vegan restaurant opening in October. But I think a lot of people are becoming vegan for health reasons, when it should be about defending the rights of animals. What should really worry people is that there are still animals being maltreated. Fundamentally that’s the issue we should be dealing with, not the flavour of the food.” So, there's still a lot of argument going on. 

As usual, the article I read about all this was accompanied by a photo of colourful vegetables on sale, in the Boquería market in Barcelona in this case. Very pretty. Now, I am one of a whole load of people who wonder what happens to all those colourful vegetables. Very few restaurants serve many of them. And in Galicia, the standard thing seems to be that you serve excellent fish (and probably meat) with potatoes and possible greens. With "excellent" fish (and probably meat) you don't need to serve fancy stuff; that seems to be the attitude. 

I'm not complaining about the food I eat in Galicia. In fact I really appreciate it. And I have eaten some wonderfully imaginative dishes with fish and shellfish. I'm just commenting on the gap that exists there. 

And I have come across restaurants in various places that serve very interesting and imaginative salads. However, in general, they can say what they like, the Spanish remain largely a nation of meat eaters. My Spanglish nephew doesn't really consider himself well fed if he has not been served meat. There was a famous occasion when the Spanglish family ate at our house and he prowled around the table declaring, "Pero ¡no hay carne! ¿Dónde está la carne?" 

That says it all.