Ten Iconic Moments in the Tortillaverse

Private jet tortilla, tortilla fails, flippers and a specimen that looks like dessert

The Tortilla is Spain

Tortilla or Spanish Omelette is a bit like the country itself: a messy mound of potatoes (the regions), loosely bound by a thin skin of egg (the state government). Spanish gastronomy, like its politics, suffers from an identity crisis compared to our better known French and Italian neighbors. Its branding continually challenged by regions promoting their products with different strategies. And don’t even get me started on the Tourism Board, now moonlighting as the nouveau riche deputy ambassador of Spanish gastronomy.

And yet, amid all the dialects, flags, and food and wine rivalries, there is one thing we can agree on: we all love tortilla. From the Basques to the Castillians, it’s a shared staple, perhaps because its ingredients are so basic they escape regional claims. One has to wonder what would happen if eggs were Catalan or potatoes Asturian. Would we even speak of tortilla as a national dish?

Still, the humble tortilla de bar, which is eaten daily in cafés and bares across the country, is an edible admission of Spain’s fragile unity.

Within the tortillaverse there are two essential schools:

1. The Juicy One or Poco Cuajada: Favored by the culinary elite. This self-saucing version can be luscious if served warm with pan de barra and a chilled drink: think beer, cava, albariño, or a young tempranillo.

2. The Firm One or Cuajada: The main tortilla of picnic-goers, commuters, and those wary of salmonella. This normally cold, well-cooked version slices cleanly into bocadillos and can be eaten alongside a cafe con leche. While not legally required, many hospitality venues now use pasteurised eggs for safety.

Another divide is “with onion” or “without” – Concebollistas or Sincebollistas. Not such a great rift when 71% of Spaniards (according to CIS, the Centre for Sociological Investigations) are the former.

Cooking an actual tortilla is easy – that is, until you get to the moment of truth: the flip. Admittedly, watching someone fail at this can be amusing (see Belen Esteban’s effort below). A little drama is part of the fun, but trust me, disaster is avoidable if you have the right equipment:

• A lightweight, nonstick sartén or pan reserved just for tortillas. A smaller one is better.

• A plastic tortilla flipper (not Instagram reel sexy, but cool on Youtube). Using pan lids and (worse), ceramic plates sold at tourist stores does not work.

And if you plan on making lots:

• A double-hinged pan (I won’t tell if you won’t).
  
  

Steer clear of heavy pans unless you're a bodybuilder. It's a bad match for flashy tortilla flips and poco cuajada ones. All that heavy metal will inevitably overcook the tortilla.

Another great tip: flip it over a clean cutting board, not the stove. That way, if disaster strikes, you can rescue the tortilla by reassembling it (Frankenstein style) in the pan and putting it on the stove again.

Iconic Tortilla Moments

1. Singer Julio Iglesias’ Private Jet Tortilla 1980s

No one has ever rocked tortilla quite like the overly tanned, 1980s-era singer/ playboy Julio Iglesias. Only he could pull off a combo of tortilla, Bordeaux Château Lafite Rothschild, and KFC on a private jet and make it look effortlessly cool. With over 300 million records sold, Julio Iglesias remains the most successful Spanish singer of all time – an artist so famous that even the Chinese know him.

2. Chef Karlos Arguiñano's Russian Roulette tortilla Airbag (1997)

As seen in the gloriously unhinged Spanish cult classic Airbag (think The Hangover with even less restraint). Spain’s most famous TV chef (on-screen since the '90s) steals the show in a game of Russian roulette featuring a poisonous mushroom tortilla. Not only does he survive the bite, he calmly orders wine and bread to pair with it, winning in turn sixty million pesetas.

3. Ferran Adrià's Potato Crisps Tortilla (2003)

In 2003, Ferran Adrià published a cookbook with Caprabo, a not-very exciting Catalan supermarket, featuring his now-famous tortilla, made with a bag of plain crisps instead of fresh potatoes. Before he shot to worldwide fame Adrìa published several home cookbooks (including one for El Corte Inglés in 1996) that paired surprisingly brilliant ideas with some of the worst layouts and photography ever committed to print.

4. Almodóvar's Tortilla in Parallel Mothers (2021)

Film maker Almodóvar adores tortilla and uses it possibly as a nod to his Spanish identity. His overly complex characters have surprisingly pedestrian tastes: tortilla, gazpacho and gloriously overcooked flans.

Is it only me that thinks his movies could do with a culinary makeover? Perhaps a sexy Bardem making paella? Or a nod to Spain’s favorite foreign cuisine: Peruvian?

Nevertheless the tortilla scene in Parallel Mothers, where the older Penelope Cruz teaches the younger and clueless Milena Smit, takes you through the whole recipe for making tortilla which, if we are to judge by the final results, cranks the proportion of potatoes to eggs way too high.

5. Domènech's Wartime Tortilla (1941)

A truly singular tortilla from the Spanish post–Civil War era: the hopeful “tortilla sin huevos ni patatas”, a tortilla without eggs or potatoes.

Pulled from the 1941 survival cookbook, Cocina de recursos or Cooking without resources by the Catalan food writer and chef Ignasi Domènech, this recipe reflects a time of deep scarcity and, in this case, creative desperation. The ingredients? Three thick orange skins, one onion, a garlic clove, salt, olive oil, four tablespoons of wheat flour, a teaspoon of baking soda, white pepper, and water.

6. Marc Singla's elBulli Deconstructed Tortilla (1998)

A disciple of Ferran Adrià, Singla’s high-concept tortilla features caramelised onions, an egg sabayon, and potato espuma or foam with truffles. It ticks all the boxes of early-2000s culinary avant-garde – expensive, foam-heavy, and a more than passing resemblance to dessert. You’ll need a siphon loaded with CO₂, some truffles, and a pretentious audience.

Back in the early 2000s, it was the ultimate show-off recipe, especially if your dinner guests were nerdy cooks, single, and male. (Yes, foam cooking classes were a thing. Yes, they were mostly filled with men.)

7. Belén Esteban's Grotesque Tortilla Flip (2024)

Before influencers, Spain had Belén Esteban, famous for marrying a bullfighter and somehow exploiting that in an endless stream of TV gigs. Programas de cotilleo – painfully trashy Spanish gossip shows – have plagued TV for decades. They're all descendants of the mythic Tómbola from Valencia TV in the mid-90s.

En fin this tortilla-flip disaster is a perfect metaphor for what I think of these shows.

8. Tortilla with Txapela or Basque hat

A Baroque (or Rococo) tortilla with a cover of egg, called txapela (a basque beret). While Basques are enormously charming, this txapela business is questionable.

9. Lay's Potato Crisps "Échale Huevos" Campaign (2025)

Because it has only taken patatas fritas manufacturers 22 years to capitalize on this clever tortilla hack you have to wonder what crisps creatives have been up to all this time. The slogan is a play on the English phrase “have balls”. Essentially a Lay’s ad explains how Spaniards have to echarle huevos to make tortilla (a now considered difficult dish).

10. José Andrés' Blended Tortilla (2025)

In his autobiographical book Change the Recipe, José Andrés shares an unexpected solution to tortilla fail: blend it into a dip!

Surprising advice from a chef whose restaurants are the gold standard of precision and polish, but it makes perfect sense coming from the founder of World Central Kitchen – a not-for-profit that feeds millions in humanitarian crises and where resourcefulness is everything.

The union of eggs, olive oil, potatoes and salt inadvertently created a national dish that has the backing of every Spaniard, whether they are famous or not. While it is laborious to make, with the right implements you can cook one in no time. And the dreaded flip will bring you closer to the drama at which Spaniards are so adept.