A restaurant in Segovia has spent nearly a century proving the tenderness of its roast suckling pig by carving it with the edge of a plate instead of a knife. That gesture made the dish famous, and it is just one piece of a much older story: the Spanish asador, the institution that turned roasting meat and fish over fire into one of the country's defining culinary traditions.

So what is an asador? What are the different types? Which ones are the best? This episode traces that history from the medieval migrations that built Castilla's roasting culture, through the Argentine influence behind Basque and Galician grilling, into the very different paths each region took with fire. It closes with the restaurants keeping the tradition alive today, from a 124-year-old asador still in operation to one of the most influential grill kitchens in the world.

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This episode is devoted to a single, four-letter word that you'll hear a LOT in Spain: vale. What does it mean, when is it used, and why is the answer … just about all the time for anything? This episode traces the full arc of vale, from its Latin roots meaning "be well," through its centuries as a formal Spanish farewell, and into its modern role as the Spanish equivalent of "okay."

Along the way: the mid-20th century shift in meaning, the furious linguist who called out its "coarsened, repetitive hammering," and the moment the Real Academia Española made the deliberate choice to formalize vale over the English import. Plus the geographic divide between Spain and Latin America, the mechanics of ¿vale?, ya vale, and the three-word phone goodbye that compresses an entire conversation into six syllables.

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Forget sangria...tinto de verano is Spain's true summer drink. In this episode, we break down tinto de verano: what it actually is, the correct ratio of ice and the mixer, where it came from, and why it's THE drink. Literally "summer red wine." And it does exactly what it says. Red wine, carbonated mixer, a lot of ice, and usually a slice of lemon. That's the whole thing. We go into the origin story, which leads us to Córdoba in the 1920s, a roadside flamenco tavern, a man named Federico Vargas Madero, and a second, competing theory. Find out what gaseosa actually is and why La Casera's 1960s advertising slogan became a phrase people still use in everyday Spanish conversation.

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Chorizo shows up everywhere in Spain: sliced on a cutting board, tucked into a bocadillo, cooking down in a pot of lentils, skewered at a bar. It belongs to no single meal or occasion. It's daily, constant, and deeply woven into Spanish food culture.

This episode covers everything you wanted to know about chorizo, hopefully ever! What chorizo is and how it's made, why fresh, cured, and smoked varieties demand different treatment, what ibérico de bellota means in real terms in the chorizo world, the matanza tradition that built chorizo culture from the ground up and still survives in some communities today, the regional varieties from La Rioja to Galicia to the Basque Country, the essential dishes that use chorizo as an ingredient, and how a 16th-century pepper from the New World became the ingredient that makes Spanish chorizo what it is.

If you want more about Spain: ∙ Subscribe to Marti's Substack at https://substack.com/@martibuckley ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com

Manchego is Spain's most exported cheese ... and its most copied. Nearly 60 percent of all Spanish DOP cheese sold abroad carries that name, which makes the imitation market significant and the label worth reading carefully. This episode covers the cheese from the ground up: what the DOP designation actually requires, the Manchega breed and why their low milk yield is baked into every price tag, the three completely different flavor profiles that emerge across the aging stages, and how to identify the real thing at the counter.

There's also a full breakdown of pairings from Rioja to fino sherry, a dive into why the zigzag rind, a case for drinking La Mancha's own wines alongside the cheese, and the story of Dehesa de los Llanos, a quesería near Albacete whose Gran Reserva Manchego was named the best cheese in the world in 2012.

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In Spain, when a public holiday falls on a Thursday or Tuesday, taking the working day in between as leave turns it into a four-day weekend. The country plans around this. The calendar gets studied. There is a specific word for it: puente, a bridge, because you are bridging the gap between the festivo and the weekend.

This episode covers how the puente works, what technically qualifies as one versus just a long weekend, the most important puentes in the Spanish calendar, where the word came from, and what the whole tradition says about how Spain thinks about rest.

If you want more about Spain: ∙ Subscribe to Marti's Substack at https://substack.com/@martibuckley ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com

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.

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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 ∙ Follow her on Instagram @martibuckley ∙ Visit her blog at travelcookeat.com