The newly released 2017 Michelin Guide for Spain and Portugal has added a three-star restaurant to its list: Lasarte, a Barcelona eatery run by celebrity Basque chef Martín Berasategui. Seven more restaurants have achieved two stars, and 22 have earned one, newly joining the Michelin star system, considered a world reference for gourmet dining.

Using English expressions to sell products is a growing trend in Spain, a phenomenon brought up two years ago at a meeting between the Royal Spanish Academy and Spain’s advertisers.

In La Línea de la Concepción, the town in Andalusia’s Cadiz province neighboring Gibraltar, locals looking for a low-cost meal will buy a tin of carne conbí; children play with meblis and they chew chinga. Similarly, a panquequi requires bequinpauda. University student and linguist María Ortega has collected these and other words once widely used by Spaniards living in the proximity of the Rock: corned beef, marbles, chewing gum, plumcakes and baking powder.

Until just a few years ago, craft beer in Spain was in demand by just a handful of select epicureans. Most of us were happy if the caña was cold, well poured and our favourite brand – although even this latter requirement was not an absolute necessity.

But like a silent tide coming in from other latitudes, craft-beer fever has spread across Spain, where bars, supermarkets and delis now stock entire shelves with bottles bearing attention-grabbing labels and offering a variety of flavors and styles that we could scarcely have imagined were possible.