Spain Explained

What is San Fermín? (EP 18)

Six fighting bulls. 849 meters. Under three minutes. Every morning for nine days straight, Pamplona does this during the fiesta of San Fermín. That's the part everyone knows. This episode covers that and all the rest. San Fermín is one of the oldest continuously celebrated fiestas in Spain, running every July 6th through 14th in Pamplona, the capital of Navarra. It is a Catholic feast day honoring a third-century saint born in Roman Pamplona and martyred in France, a commercial fair dating to 1381, eight centuries of Navarrese identity, and one American novel that turned all of it into a global phenomenon. It is also one of the most complex and layered festivals in Europe, and most outside coverage only understands a small percentage of what it's all about. This episode covers the history of the saint, how the July date came to exist, how the encierro actually works and what it costs, the religious procession on July 7th that Pamploneses consider the emotional heart of the fiestas, the vocabulary you need, the Hemingway connection, and the closing song at midnight on July 14th that makes people who haven't slept in nine days weep into their red scarves. If you want more about Spain: ∙ Subscribe to Marti's Substack at https://substack.com/@martibuckley [https://substack.com/@martibuckley] ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley [http://instagram.com/martibuckley] ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com [http://travelcookeat.com]

What is a Tapa? (EP 17)

While the word tapas may have gotten loose in the world, from London to Hong Kong, it is distinctly Spanish and distinctly different than what it has come to mean globally. Going out for tapas has its own verb in Spanish, tapear, and the full practice of drinking, eating tapas, and moving around has its own noun: el tapeo. Spain opened a formal UNESCO nomination file for the tradition in 2018. In other words, tapas are serious. This episode covers what tapas actually are, beyond the obvious answer. What constitutes a tapa? How does one enjoy them? Are they free? The real regional differences that make any single definition nearly useless: in parts of Andalucía a drink arrives with food automatically, no asking, no paying, while in the north the concept shifts into something with a completely different name and its own distinct rules. There's the ongoing and genuinely heated argument about whether the free tapa tradition is economically viable, with Spanish mayors publicly taking opposite sides. And there's the origin of the tapa, much disputed and with four royal origin legends, all set in Andalucía, that food historians are fairly skeptical of, alongside the 1904 travel memoir from Seville that gives us the most solid documentary evidence for how the word got attached to food in the first place. If you want more about Spain: ∙ Subscribe to Marti's Substack at https://substack.com/@martibuckley [https://substack.com/@martibuckley] ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley [https://www.instagram.com/martibuckley/] ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com [https://www.travelcookeat.com]

What is Gazpacho? (EP 16)

Gazpacho looks like the simplest thing in the world. Blended vegetables, tomatoes, olive oil, vinegar. But did you know it spent centuries with no tomato, no red color, and no place in any serious cookbook? This episode gets into all of it. In this episode learn what gazpacho actually is and how it varies across Spain, from the classic andaluz to gazpacho manchego, which is a completely different dish that Sancho Panza was eating in Don Quixote and bears almost no resemblance to what we know today. We go deep into the history, including how the dish spent centuries being considered too humble to write down, how the tomato entered the picture later than most people think, and how one of the earliest recognizable written recipes for tomato gazpacho turned up not in Spain but in a Virginia cookbook in 1824. We talk about the 1880s Madrid trend cycle that accidentally saved the recipe from obscurity, the Real Academia Española's definition that still fuels arguments today, and how to actually make a good one, including why the olive oil is structural, not decorative, and why bad tomatoes are the one thing you cannot work around. If you want more Spain content: ∙ Subscribe to Marti's Substack at https://substack.com/@martibuckley [https://substack.com/@martibuckley] ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley [https://www.instagram.com/martibuckley/] ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com. [https://www.travelcookeat.com]

What is the Camino? (EP 15)

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people walk across Spain to reach a single cathedral in the far northwest corner of the country. Some of them are religious. Some of them just want a really, really long walk. The Camino de Santiago has been pulling people across Europe for over a thousand years, and right now more people are doing it than at any point in recorded history. What's the deal with the scallop shell? What are the major routes? What is it actually like to walk over 500 miles across Spain? In this episode, Marti talks about her experience on the Camino Francés in 2006, from the boots, the blisters, and the pilgrim hostels to the strangers who become friends by nightfall. This episode also goes into the history. Legend says it starts in 813 AD, when a hermit noticed strange lights in a forest in Galicia and a king traveled from Oviedo to investigate, becoming the first recorded Camino pilgrim. It covers the medieval golden age when 250,000 people a year were crossing the continent on foot, the plague and the Reformation that nearly ended the whole thing, and the bishop who in 1589 secretly removed the relics of Saint James from the cathedral crypt to protect them from English attack, died without telling anyone where he'd hidden them, and left the mystery unsolved for three hundred years. If you want more Spain content: ∙ Subscribe to Marti's Substack at https://substack.com/@martibuckley [https://substack.com/@martibuckley] ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley [https://www.instagram.com/martibuckley/] ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com [https://www.travelcookeat.com]

What is a Churro? (EP 14)

Churros are another one of those foods that reveals everything about Spain's regionality. This episode breaks down what churros actually are, where they come from, and why a food this simple produces this much regional passion. You'll learn the differences between churros, porras, and tejeringos, how oil temperature and dough technique make or break the whole thing, when people actually eat them across Spain, and why one of the country's most beloved foods almost never appears in a Spanish cookbook. If you want more Spain content: ∙ Subscribe to Marti's Substack at https://substack.com/@martibuckley [https://substack.com/@martibuckley] ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley [https://www.instagram.com/martibuckley/] ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com [https://www.travelcookeat.com].