I like Spanish food very much. Put a plate of Iberico de Bellota in front of me and I'm in heaven. That's free-range cured ham fed on acorns. You don't eat it, it melts on your tongue. Seeing brick red ribbons of it bring tears to my eyes.
Still, there are nagging questions. Take yesterday. I ate a pile of food, but most of it was meat. Maybe the healthiest thing I ate, by American standards at least, was the morcilla. Morcilla is a black pudding made primarily of pig blood and rice. Mostly they form it into a log and fry it. I won't describe it as a Spaniard would, because this is a family web site. Suffice it to say that if you noticed a morcilla floating in a punch bowl you would turn and run like hell.
If you calculate all the animal fat and oil consumed by Spaniards, then applied American standards of eating healthy, you'd think the streets of Spain would be piled ten deep in Spaniards with clogged arteries. But still, they eat in restaurants from 2-4 pm and crawl the tapas bars from 8-10, then eat a proper dinner. And they're carnivores first and foremost.
So what's a vegetarian to do? Well, you can get yourself invited to someone's house, where vegetables are more common on the dinner table than in restaurants. Or you can go to Barcelona, which contains maybe half of Spain's vegetarian restaurants. You can look for lentil or bean dishes in tapas bars, but read below first. And the setas, oyster mushrooms grilled with olive oil and garlic, are wonderful everywhere.
If you're a vegetarian going to Spain, check the internet for restaurants in your destinations. It's the only way, some say.
Thanks
http://www.ecigarette.org/