Jaume Subirós wins Spain's lifetime National Gastronomy Award
The Real Academia de Gastronomía gives its 2026 "Toda una Vida" prize to the man who entered the Motel Empordà in Figueres as a bellboy in 1961 and has run it since 1979.
Jaume Subirós, who has run the Motel Empordà in Figueres since 1979, is the winner of Spain's Premio Nacional de Gastronomía "Toda una Vida" 2026, the lifetime award of the Real Academia de Gastronomía. The academy announced it on 8 October and will present it in Toledo on 9 November.
The decision was taken by the academy's full board, which sat as the jury. Its statement points to what the Motel Empordà means for gastronomy and says Jaume Subirós has spent a long time in the front line of Spanish cooking, holding the same level of quality for decades. The house, it adds, still works with classic dining-room service.
The jury describes him as close to 80 and still at work. The news agency EFE gives 1949 as his year of birth, which would make him 76 or 77. Either figure fits the name of the category.
Sixty-five years at the same address is a career no jury needs to explain.
How Jaume Subirós came to run the Motel Empordà
According to the academy, Subirós joined the Motel in 1961, aged eleven, as a bellboy. That was the year Josep Mercader opened it on the outskirts of Figueres, in Catalonia. He trained in Barcelona and came back to work beside the founder.
Mercader died in 1979. Subirós, then about thirty, took over the management together with Anna Maria Mercader, and has kept it for more than four decades. The academy says the next generation of the family now takes part in the daily running of the business.
The trade publication Hule y Mantel lists the dishes tied to the house: a salad of young broad beans with mint, taps de Cadaqués, hare à la royale and the cheese and dessert trolleys. The menu follows the season, it writes, with tender broad beans, morels, black turnips and game as they arrive.
Two national prizes in one year
It is the second award with "national" in its name that Subirós has received in 2026, and the two are different things. In June the Acadèmia Catalana de Gastronomia i Nutrició gave him its Premi Nacional de Gastronomia Tradicional in Barcelona. That one is Catalan; this one is Spanish. Neither is related to the Premios Nacionales de Hostelería, which the trade association Hostelería de España awards separately.
The academy named the rest of this year's winners in July: Pedro Sánchez of Bagá as best chef, Casto Copete of Nou Manolín for dining-room direction, Mohamed Benabdallah of Etxebarri as best sommelier, Pilar Salas for communication and Josep Bernabeu for research and innovation.
The awards have been given since 1974 and this is their 52nd edition. The ceremony takes place at the Palacio de Congresos El Greco. Jaume Subirós will travel to Toledo to collect a prize for a working life spent, almost all of it, at one address in Figueres.
