Best tortilla in Spain title goes to La Teulada in Elche
Celia Clara Correia won the 19th Spanish tortilla de patatas championship at Alicante Gastronómica by one vote, ahead of the 2025 champion from Madrid, who had beaten her a year earlier.
The title of best tortilla in Spain went on Sunday 4 October to Celia Clara Correia, chef of La Teulada in Elche, who won the 19th Campeonato de España de Tortilla de Patatas at the Alicante Gastronómica fair by a single vote, the news agency EFE reported.
Second place went to the defending champion, Alejandro Oliveira of La Falda de Chamberí in Madrid. Carlos Boado of El Caserío de Tión in Coirós, in the province of A Coruña, was third. Correia had finished runner-up to Oliveira in 2025, El Español noted, so the two swapped places.
EFE described her entry as a classic tortilla, barely set, made with free-range eggs and Galician potato fried until crisp. The agency did not say whether it carried onion; the rules left that choice to each cook.
One vote separated a café in Elche from the reigning champion; next year both start level.
How the best tortilla in Spain was chosen
The final was part of the eighth Alicante Gastronómica, held from 2 to 5 October at the Fira Alacant fairground in Elche, which made it a home win. Twenty-one cooks competed, from A Coruña to Badajoz, picked by the jury or through regional heats. Each had 75 minutes and could bring ingredients or use the organisers'. The jury tasted one tortilla every five minutes.
Voting ran in two rounds, according to EFE: each juror named three favourites, then the panel voted again among the three leaders. The twelve jurors were chaired by the critic Rafael García Santos, who organises the contest, and included José Gómez of Joselito, Paco Torreblanca, the chefs Kiko Moya of L'Escaleta and Fran Martínez of Maralba, and journalists from RNE, El País and El Correo.
García Santos told EFE that no mathematical rule decides the winner; it is a sum of factors. Spain keeps several contests of this kind for bar dishes, among them the patatas bravas contest won by Mauro Barreiro in September.
What the title means for La Teulada
Three more cooks tied on votes behind the podium: Ramón Rodríguez of O Cabo in A Coruña, Dana Rotaru of Nou Pinet in Alicante and Carlos Olabuenaga of Tizona in Logroño. All six go straight into next year's final, which TodoAlicante reports will again be held at Alicante Gastronómica.
Correia told EFE the contest had changed her life, and that La Teulada already has a spot for the trophy next to those from the lower placings of earlier years.
Oliveira's result keeps the capital on the map of the dish, which is also one of the stops in our guide to what to eat in Madrid. The margin says as much as the result: one vote separated a café in Elche from the reigning champion, and both are already entered for 2027, when the best tortilla in Spain will be argued over again.
