TWITTER’S VIRAL TORTILLA

The result looked rather unappetising (although as my Spanish wife will attest, it did taste pretty good).

As I watched it cooking, the cogs of my mischievous mind began to turn. I snapped a picture, and posted it on Twitter with the caption: ‘Made a lovely Spanish tortilla this morning, yum.’ When I hit publish, I had an unnerving feeling I was lighting a blue touchpaper and it was time to stand well back.

The reaction was almost immediate: ‘Gastronomic terrorism’, read one response.

‘What an aberration!’ read another.

‘My dog’s vomit’ was a particularly graphic comment, while there was no shortage of Spanish Twitter users insisting I be deported.

DID YOU KNOW?

One pointed out that ‘wars have started for less’.

It was reminiscent of that other infamous culinary row, when Jamie Oliver - horror of horrors - put chorizo in a paella recipe back in 2016.

The British celebrity chef found out the hard way you don’t mess with a traditional Spanish dish like that one, and even re ceived death threats, ‘all because of a bit of sausage’, as he later told Graham Nor ton’s chat show.

HERE TO HELP!

THE Olive Press is always on the hunt for top talent and our latest employee hits the mark for his experience and professionalism.

Matt Jones not only brings his experience from a Who’s Who of the UK media - the Mail, Metro and Birmingham Evening News - but also over a decade in Spain working for the likes of Spectrum FM and Costa Blanca News

An extremely popular and well known local expat, he brings his friendly, sunny personality, not just to the Olive Press sales team, but also to our clients. While some newspapers in Spain go for a time-share style hard sell - which can be very aggressive - Matt and his fellow team are always happy to listen to their potential clients and make genuine friends among many of them.

Our clients are not just numbers to us, they are real people who deserve to be treated with real respect. We are the genuine community newspaper, after all.

This is something that defines the approach of Matt’s new commercial colleagues, Sam, Tina and Charlie.

Sam Adams has been with us for many years and is genuinely the smiling face of the Olive Press totelian Christianity’.

When he is not out and about grafting and chatting to clients, the father-of-one brings his sense of humour and infectious laugh to the office.

As does Tina Brace, who is very well known around her home turf of Sabinillas and nearby Estepona. A loyal and hard-working woman, she is extremely kind to friends and family.

Not so often in the office, but larger than life, is Charlie Bamber - the Godfather of the team. Another, never without a smile, Charlie handles sales along the Costa Blanca and Mallorca with aplomb, bringing in some of our biggest contracts. The reason? He takes the time to get to know his customers, finds out what they want and arranges the advertising campaigns they need.

All in all, the Olive Press is very proud of its highly professional team - and there is room for more if you want to join the Olive Press family.

Along with personal, life-long associations with many of the great thinkers of his time, Vives directly influenced many of the great scholars in the centuries that followed.

Most influential philosophers (Rousseau, Sartre etc.) and psychologists (Freud, Jung, etc.) made references to his works and his beliefs on the soul and the human psyche, plus emotions, memory and learning are key tenets in how modern psychology is perceived today. Indeed, Luis Vives, who died in 1540, is often highlighted as ‘the father of modern psychology and the grandfather of psychoanalysis’.

● Princess Mary, Vives’s pre- cocious pupil while in Eng- land, would later become known as Bloody Mary or Mary Tudor. She ruled as Queen of England from 1553 to 1558. In a complicated turn of events, Mary would also rule as Queen of Spain with her marriage to King Phillip II.

● There are monuments to Luis Vives in many centres of learning throughout Eu- rope. Statues can be found in Bruges, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, Heidelberg, Rot- terdam and perhaps most meaningful, in the library courtyard at the University of Valencia.

To ensure I defused my own personal on slaught as soon as possible, as is tradi tion, at 12pm I put out another tweet mak ing clear that this was an April Fools’ joke. However, not only did that message get very little traction, I had clearly overesti mated Spaniards’ awareness of the day, despite it being celebrated not just in the UK and the US, but in Italy, Poland, Germany and even Turkey.

Mistake

In Spain and Latin America, of course, the time for pranks is December 28, the Day of the Holy Innocents.

Not only is this the day for practical jokes to be played out between friends and family, but a time when fake news stories make their way into the press and foreign journalists have to be particularly careful not to be duped.

One of the most recurrent comments I received was that I had made a big mistake by making the joke on April 1 and not December 28. I responded by saying the idea was to troll as much of Spain as possible.

And with nearly three million views for the original tweet, and thousands of comments and retweets, I think it’s fair to say that it went pretty well.

Follow me on Twitter @simoninmadrid for more recipes.

If you have the drive, personality and sales experience - and particularly if you speak Spanish (ED: note well, team) - drop us a line at admin@theolivepress.es

The top five most read stories on www.theolivepress.es in the past two weeks are:

1- Four Costa del Sol towns are among the 50 most expensive in Spain to buy property

2- Ryanair win lawsuit in their ongoing war with online travel agents

3- Explainer: What will the government’s planned housing law mean for tenants and landlords?

4- New UK driving licence deal with Spain excludes the Channel Islands and Isle of Man

5- British woman seriously injured after hotel balcony fall in Benidorm

Get in touch today at sales@theolivepress.es or call us at 00 34 951273575 for more info

Up to 1,000 illegal wells could be ‘regularised’ at Doñana National Park

THE Junta de Andalucia has ignored the European Commission to approve introducing a bill that may see 1,000 illegal wells bordering the protected Doñana wetlands made legal.

In a moment of political theatre during a recent debate in parliament, leftist politician Maribel Mora Grande dumped a jar of sand from Doñana on the parliamentary seat of the regional premier, Juanma Moreno Bonilla of the conservative Popular Party (PP), in protest.

The legislation won the backing of the governing PP and far-right Vox, with 72 votes in favour from a total of 109 seats.

But Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has vowed to do everything he can to save Doñana from the ‘hands of the PP and Vox, who want to plunder the environment’.

Teresa Ribera, the minister for environmental transition, said that she was ‘very

No rain in Spain

APRIL 2023 is on its way to being the driest since records began in 1961, with just five litres of rain per square metre detected in the first 16 days of the month.

That’s according to data from the Aemet state weather service, which has called the figures ‘extraordinarily low’.

Aemet has also warned that the risk of forest fires will be very high if the current conditions continue, due to the lack of rain as well as unusually high temperatures.

By Simon Hunter

angry’ with regional premier Juanma Moreno, saying that an increase to the watering of crops in the area would be ‘an outrage’ on the basis that there is not enough water there to do so.

Under the plan, agricultural land that is currently illegal would be regularised. Environmental NGO WWF estimates that there are around 1,000 illegal wells in the area that are being used to supply these farms.

The water levels in the aquifer are at their lowest in decades, while the reservoirs are currently at 25% due to

THREATENED: Millions of birds stop at Doñana illegal wells, drought and the water supply for the nearby tourist destination of Matalascañas.

Doñana is a wintering site for half a million waterfowl and a stopover spot for millions

FOR a long time, many politically correct vegans and vegetarians have been expounding the virtues of a meat-free diet based on moral and ethical beliefs.

Science now supports this concept as cows produce massive amounts of methane (from both ends!), a gas that has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere. Even though CO2 has a longer-lasting effect, methane sets the pace for warming in the near term.

At least 25% of today’s global warming is driven