Galician Spanish

Pulpo a la Gallega arrives on a wooden plank — boiled octopus sliced into coins, dusted with smoked paprika, drizzled with olive oil and coarse salt. Pimientos de Padrón (small green peppers, blistered in olive oil — about one in ten is fiery, the rest mild — Russian roulette as a tapa). Empanada Gallega (a flat double-crust pie filled with tuna, onion, and tomato) for the picnic. Caldo Gallego (kale, potato, white bean, salt pork, chorizo) on a cold day. Fabada Asturiana from neighbouring Asturias — the bean-and-pork stew bowl that defines northern Spain comfort.

Within Spanish cuisine, Galicia is the Celtic-Atlantic corner — green and rainy, more like Brittany than like Andalusia. The pantry: Atlantic seafood (mussels, scallops, octopus, percebes goose-barnacles), pulses, cabbage-family greens, pimentón (smoked paprika) from the Vera valley as the warming spice. Asturias and Cantabria sit alongside in this cluster — fabada, sidra (cider), Cabrales blue cheese. Different from Catalonia's Mediterranean axis, different from Castile's interior plateau — Galicia faces the ocean and dresses warm.