For those of you who have lived in Spain of some time will be familiar with one of Spain’s bitterest battles, a long-festering confrontation that predates the national and international skirmishes over paella . The Spanish omelette -Tortilla de patata.
The town council of Betanzos, the Galician municipality whose tortillas de patatas, or Spanish omelettes, are regularly hailed as the finest in the land, has spoken out. And the message to those entering this year’s tortilla competition is simple: forget the onions!
The issue of whether cebollas belong in the emblematic dish runs like a faultline under the nation’s bar stools and dining tables, dividing families and communities and pitting ‘con-cebollistas’ (with-onionists) against ‘sin-cebollistas’ (without-onionists).
Authorities in the town claim they are only staying true to their roots with the competition rules. They want to be faithful to the Betanzos tradition of potatoes, oil, egg and salt - Nothing more, they say…
However, local bars taking part in Tortilla Week but not entering the annual contest are free to deploy onions. “That’s fine on the route but not in the competition,” the council said. “We brought it up with the bar owners and the vast majority of them were behind the idea.”
Alberto García, a local chef who has twice won the prize for Betanzos’s best tortilla, knows his onions – and when to leave them out. His recipe also triumphed in national tortilla competitions in 2011 and 2017.
“When it comes to onion, the cookbooks say a Spanish omelette’s ingredients are egg, potato, olive oil, salt and onion, but to be honest, Betanzos has become famous for its omelettes because of a local woman, Señora Angelita, who cooked them without onion more than a century ago.”
For García, who runs the Mesón O’Pote restaurant in the town, thinks it is all something of a baseless controversy. “I think the council’s just trying to make Betanzos stand out by not including onion,” he said,
“What makes our omelette different and delicious is having properly fried potatoes and really juicy, runny eggs. If it doesn’t have onion, it doesn’t have onion. If it has onion, it has onion. Look, I’m not saying onion is good or bad. But there is a correct way of cooking, cutting and serving tortilla: the egg has to be really, really runny and the potato has to be perfectly golden – properly fried. It doesn’t really matter if it’s got a bit of onion in.”
Does it? What do you think? Do you prefer your Spanish omelette with onions or without onions? Please cast your vote!