Spain’s food culture is a heady mixture of historical influences, from Arabia to America

The history and religion of Spain are visible on the plate. What we eat often says much about who we are and in no country is this more obvious than in Spain. Ingredients, cooking methods, and many of Spain’s most famous recipes all have an easy-to-trace and fascinating past.

The Moors invaded Spain in AD 711, and stayed for nearly 800 years. The Moorish influence is still evident today. From the Moors came new crops, including sugar, spinach, aubergines and mint, and new culinary methods such as cooking in sealed clay pots and the use of wood burning ovens. The meat skewer and kebabs arrived, and frying with olive oil and preserving in vinegar (escabeche) were both Arab practices, the latter eagerly adopted by the locals for preserving surplus fish.
The spices brought by the Moors included cinnamon, cumin and nutmeg and the magnificent golden saffron. They enjoyed sour-and-sweet (agridulce) mixtures and anise bread.

Spain Magazine has secured an amazing prize for one lucky reader and a friend to win a two-night stay at one of Mallorca’s best hotels, Hotel L’Avenida, with return flights courtesy of Monarch. The hotel opened in March 2007, having been meticulously transformed from a century old Modernist-style private mansion into an elegant eight-bedroomed boutique hotel with the latest in luxury living.

L’Avenida is located in the heart of Soller on Mallorca’s jet set north-west coast. From every window of the hotel there are views of the dramatic Sierra de Tramuntana mountain range, whose peaks are popular with mountain bikers and walkers.

One family’s dedication brought a crumbling cortijo back from the brink of disaster to become a thriving business

South of Seville the road to Jerez bisects the great fertile plains of Andalucía, where rotating crops of cotton, wheat and sunflowers paint ever-changing colours across a table-flat landscape – issuing continually from a canvass of rich, burnt-umber soil.

Here, tucked away in a shallow knoll beneath the spirit-level horizon is a hidden treasure, screened from view until the last moment by a long drive flanked with tall banks of oleander bushes. The drive opens suddenly to reveal the front of a building with a façade as broadly flat and impressive as the surrounding countryside.

This is the Hacienda de San Raphael, an immaculately restored ‘cortijo’, the Spanish term for a grand country farmhouse that sits within its own estate. Hacienda de San Raphael is a breathtaking example of such a property. Built in the 18th century the Hacienda was originally used for pressing and storing olive oil from the groves across the 350 acres of accompanying farmland that encircle the property.

Re-writing the rulebook is all in a day’s work for the first-ever female British ambassador to Spain.

In May 2007, Denise Holt was inaugurated as the UK's newest Ambassador to Spain, making her the first female ambassador to the country in more than 500 years of diplomatic history. However, it wasn't her gender that concerned her -- it was that looming number: 500 years; the longest-standing relationship the UK has with any secular country. "You arrive as a slightly small, middle-aged woman who's never been posted to Madrid before, and with quite a lot of difficult challenges on the desk, and you think, 'Oh, my God! How am I going to get on top of all of this?'" However, by all accounts, Denise has risen to the challenge.

The Mediterranean diet is often credited with helping Spanish people live longer, but family and city living seem to help along the way

Now here's a conundrum: if you could do anything to prolong the lives of your parents, would you do it? Of course you would. But what if that thing meant having them come and live with you? Mmm.

It seems that in northern European countries, only about 5% of elderly parents live with their children, while in Spain the figure is about 45%. And a recent study by Madrid's Universidad Autónoma suggests that this may be one of the reasons why Spanish people live so long – in Madrid, men are living an average of 78 years, and women a whopping 85.

Discover a wonderland of Roman villas, ruins, tombs and bridges on Andalucía’s Ruta Betica

In Rome there is a hill called Monte Testaccio, formed entirely from the broken shards of millions of clay amphorae, which had been used to import olive oil. Analysis of Monte Testaccio reveals that most of this small mountain of waste, around 85% of it, originated in Andalucía.