‘I’m lucky enough to belong to Catalonia and Spain and Ireland. I have the best of the three’

I grew up in a city just north of Barcelona called Badalona – a beautiful city right by the sea on the Mediterranean coast. I moved to Dublin in 2001, when I was in my early 20s, and I now run two restaurants, Tapas de Lola and La Gordita, with my partner Vanessa Murphy.I met Vanessa in 2008 after we worked on a project together creating a hotel in Blessington in Co Wicklow. I worked in the Clarion Hotel group for 11 years, where I had great bosses and mentors and I moved around a lot. It was love at first sight for me with Vanessa. I was so attracted to her personality. I am a woman with food so I feed everybody to get their attention, and I fed Vanessa well at the site meetings. That’s why I love the business I’m in; I show my love through food and through cooking.All her life, Vanessa has done different things – working in stockbroking, outdoor advertising and marketing. She’s a woman who can do everything. I am more the operations side of La Gordita and Tapas de Lola. In 2008 the hotel we were working on went into receivership and Nama took over. Vanessa went back to her business and I went to work in another hotel in the group. But I always wanted to open something in Ireland related to Spanish cuisine and Vanessa had been in and out of Spain for 40 years, so her passion and love of Spain was there as well. READ MOREBetween the recession and 2011 we put an offer in on the unit where Tapas de Lola is now. It was a very brave time to open a business. We fought for 2½ years with Dublin City Council, and finally An Bord Pleanála got a little bit of sense and so we opened Tapas de Lola in 2013. Tapas are kind of recessionproof because you can come and spend €30 or €300. We weren’t doing Spanish food for an Irish audience. We were doing Spanish food for people in general. We did tripe, we did kidneys, we did loads of things that we thought maybe once people would try it, they would love it. We opened La Gordita in 2023, after 10 years of Tapas de Lola. The Tapas de Lola menu is fixed, it has all the classics – the tapas de barra or neighbourhood tapas. The recipes are in stone. With La Gordita we play a little bit more with the menu. I am turning 50 in December. The thing about being abroad for so long is that there is one point in your life where your heart and your brain start pulling different directions. Your heart pulls to your roots, which is Badalona with my sister, my mom, my dad. In 25 years, a lot of things happen – I lost my grandparents, my sister had two kids, my parents are getting old. Your brain starts thinking you have your family, you have two businesses, and that part of your life is in here in Ireland. I figured it out and decided that I don’t have to choose any more. You get faster to Barcelona than you get to Donegal sometimes. You learn to manage.[ La Gordita review: New Spanish restaurant has great food and a great vibe – shame about the pricesOpens in new window ]I became an Irish citizen in September. The day of my citizenship ceremony, Vanessa and my parents came with me to the Convention Centre so they could experience the whole thing. Vanessa was trying to translate as much as she could – when she wasn’t crying – because my parents don’t speak much English. It was a lovely experience; the music, the army band, the Minister, the judge – you could feel the Irish kindness. The whole thing was fabulous. I am a very proud Catalan, and a very proud Spanish person, and now I am a very proud Irish person. I’m lucky enough to belong to Catalonia and Spain and Ireland. I have the best of the three. I’m proud to be Irish because I spent the last 25 years of my life here. It has built me up to the person that I am now. I’d say I take the best of the Irishness; the kindness, the love for life, the many other things I learned. It also built me up as a professional, working with my mentors and being constantly in touch with the Irish public – which teaches you a lot. Now that I can vote, I am going to be even a prouder Irish person. As a Spanish and Catalan speaker, I think it would be lovely if Irish people spoke their language, but it takes time and it is not easy. For Catalan to be spoken at the level it is, it took a while, because under Franco and the dictatorship, it was forbidden. So my mom was taught Catalan in clandestine teaching, because if they caught you teaching Catalan, you went to prison. I think in Ireland, we’ll get there. The path has been open for the last few years, and a lot of kids now speak Irish, which is a lovely thing to see. In conversation with Niamh Browne