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In 2023, Eva Longoria headed to Mexico with CNN in search of a deeper understanding of the country’s rich culinary heritage and her own family history. Last month, she returned to our screens with a brand new season, Searching for Spain, which takes her all over the country to explore the vast regional scope of its cuisine and learn about her Spanish ancestors. Lale sits down with the actor and television host to find out how she chose the destinations for each episode, her most memorable meals in places like San Sebastián and Andalusia, and how food can be an entry point to connecting more deeply with history—and each other.
Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. I'm Lale Arikoglu and welcome to an episode of Women Who Travel, where we are traveling around Spain with Eva Longoria. Eva's new CNN show, Searching for Spain, is a follow-up to her series, Searching for Mexico, which ran in 2023.
Eva Longoria: So I didn't know Spain as well, and so the difference is like Mexico, I felt like I was at home. Spain really felt like a fish out of water and I was really curious and engaged in the history of gastronomy in the country, but also the history of the ingredients and how things ended up there and colonization and how did that help, and Franco's dictatorship and how did that have an effect on food. But I do live part-time in Spain. I live in Marbella in the South, so unfamiliar with the south, but everything else, I was just visited very, very superficially. And so to go to Spain in this way, with the show, really dig in deeply was a gift.
With the CNN research team, they really look at food stories. I mean, that's what drives this series is like, is there a food story there? So sometimes there'll be regions that are very popular, but there's no food story. So that's kind of the lens in which we look at each region and there's obvious cities and regions. We went to Madrid being its own episode and Catalonia being its own episode, Pais Vasco, the Basque Country being its own. And then after that, just trying to find the stories and the history and what would be visually beautiful, what people and chefs we wanted to follow.
What was daunting was speaking Castilian Spanish, because I didn't grow up speaking Spanish. I spoke Spanish in the Mexico series because I'm Mexican, but to go to the mother country of Spain and to speak Castellano, which is very different than Mexican Spanish, that was daunting. So I was like, oh God, I hope I'm going to be able to understand and communicate because when you speak the language, you really can ask the right questions and absorb the answers. And so that's what was terrifying, but it was great. I did well.
LA: In her show, Eva visits Asturias in the northwest of Spain and the town of Longoria, where her ancestors come from.
EL: My dad always said it. My dad's always like, "You know, we're from Spain." And I was like, "No, we're not, dad. We're from Mexico." And he's like, "No, the Longorias are from Spain," which makes sense with the conquest and colonization. Of course we have some Spanish blood in us, but when I did the show, I didn't know I still had 85% Spanish blood. And after 13 generations of being in the New World and New Spain, which became Mexico, which became Republic of Texas, which became United States, it was fascinating. I was like, wow, we're still very Spanish in our blood. And so he always said it.
And then when I did Searching for Mexico, we traced a little bit when we went to the region of Veracruz, and so Veracruz is where the port was, where my ancestor landed in 1603 and you could see where he traveled north and ended up in modern day Texas. So that was fascinating. But then when we did Searching for Spain, we got to go to Asturias. Asturias is its own episode because Asturias is an amazing region in the north that is known for their cheese and their dairy. The best milk comes from Asturias.
It's a mountainous region and it's cold, it's hard living, Asturias. They're trying to repopulate. People are now going back. It's a very rural place, like I said, cows and dairy and sheep, and they make great cheese that rivals French cheese. And the town Longoria is still there. It still exists. I have distant cousins that are there, and so to be able to break bread in our ancestral home, this home is centuries years old and it still had the family crest, the Longoria family crest above the door. I was like, what? This is crazy.
LA: This really just came together perfectly.
EL: It was just perfect storytelling and also nice to go back and explore my roots. And also what happens in Asturias is the cider, it's very famous for cider.
LA: Okay. I was going to ask about the cider because when you said Asturias, I was picturing the kind of long pour of the-
EL: Yes, yes. Did you do that?
LA: I did. And I mean, I never thought I'd say I was enjoying cider more than wine, but it is fantastic.
EL: It was fun. It was really fun. It's a really unique taste. It's only 5% alcohol, so you're not going to get drunk off it. So it's nice to drink and have fun and the way they pour it from so high to oxygenate and get the bubbles going and then they pour a shot. So you drink and you pour and you drink and you pour. So it's a whole communal experience with friends. It's really fun.
LA: Who were some of the chefs that you met that kind of stayed with you?
EL: Oh, my God. In Asturias or in general?
LA: In Asturias. And then we can-
EL: There was a guy named the Gypsy Chef in Asturias that kind of took us around. He was kind my guide in Asturias. I went to Casa Muriel, which is one of the big Michelin star places in Asturias. Amazing, multi-generational family that's been there for their whole lives. All of the chefs really that I met that are like Michelin star, have made a living, are all still in their family home. That's where the restaurant is, downstairs. It was a very common theme that people come back, even though if they go to France and learn and they go to Lyon to the Culinary Institute, or they come and work in New York, they always go back and their success is always in their hometown. Food is a great entry point and it's not intimidating. You can go, "Okay, great."
LA: Everyone needs to eat.
EL: Everyone needs to eat, and I want to go find the best places. And now with social media and lists and content ads and magazines, you can plan out what you want to do and you can plan out your cultural experience through food. But for me, yeah, I mean, the history of also, like I said, colonization and how certain ingredients made it back into Spain, how other ingredients are exported out. Spain has the best olive oil in the world. I know Italians are going to hate me for saying that, but I ate so much bread in Spain only as the vehicle for the olive oil. It is so good. That's why they have amazing eggs, because eggs for breakfast are cooked in that olive oil.
The history of how the olive tree made it there and how it's in Andalucia, which is the south, which was, I don't know, a lot of people don't even know this, but Spain was ruled by the Moors for over 800 years, so it has a lot of Arabic influences, especially in the south where they ruled the longest. Spain has no spicy food because when the chile came from Mexico, the Queen or the royalty tried it and they hated it. They hated it. I don't know, we say in Spanish, [foreign language 00:07:18]. They burned their tongue and so they forbid it from being imported. They're like, "Anybody who imports that fruit will be arrested."
And so the chile never made it, but chocolate did the tomato did. The potato made it from Peru, so the tomato and the potato specifically are used in everything in Spain. And so to go like, "Oh, that made it in, and chocolate," Spaniards were the ones that added milk and sugar to chocolate. Chocolate was bitter, a bitter drink in Mexico. It wasn't a sweet, it wasn't a dessert, it was a bitter drink.
LA: But it's these pallets that have shaped, these few pallets have shaped this entire nation's food culture in a sense.
EL: Yeah, exactly. And so those kinds of stories and history just fascinated me. In Catalonia, Pais Vasco, Galicia, really suppressed regions during the Franco Era, a lot of recipes were hidden.
LA: After the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when General Franco asserted his dictatorship, regional identities across Spain were suppressed.
EL: There were secret dining societies where they could make their traditional dishes, but they couldn't let the government know they were making them because they would be arrested. Franco wanted one Spain under one flag, and he didn't allow all of the Galicia, Catalonia, Pais Vasco, Asturias, the South, nobody to speak their regional languages, to eat their regional foods. He wanted a homogenized Spain, and that really showed up in the food. And so to be able to tell that story, pre-Franco, post-Franco dictatorship was fascinating to me, just fascinating history.
LA: After the break, Eva visits the town of Roses in Catalonia where the world-renowned restaurant El Bulli established what was known as Modernist Cuisine in Spain. There is this sort of respect for their own local histories and the kind of food and culture that has passed down through these generations.
EL: Such pride. There's such pride. And especially in our first episode in Catalonia, Barcelona, Costa Brava, that's where Ferran Adrià comes from, which is probably the most well-known chef of Spain. He had El Bulli for many, many years. Number one restaurant in the world, a year waiting list, and it wasn't easy to get to. I went there back in the day and it's like plane, train, automobile. Then you got to scale a mountain and then take a goat and then you go down-
LA: You got to earn it.
EL: You must really want to have to go to that restaurant because it's the hardest place to get to. He has since closed, but he has many disciples that worked in El Bulli and he really created the molecular gastronomy movement. And he consciously wanted to elevate Spain's cuisine to the level of France. He's like, "I was kind of tired of the French cuisine being the standard of excellence." If you were French trained, if you learned in France, if you worked in France, it was like this bar of excellence. And he's like, "We have amazing chefs and we have amazing food and we have amazing history." And he wanted to elevate that and put a spotlight on it. And he did. I mean, if you see, Spain has skyrocketed to the top of gastronomy lists in a very short amount of time, and that was a conscious effort on really behalf of chefs like Ferran Adrià.
One big takeaway I had from just doing the whole show of Searching for Spain was the way of living in Spain. They got it right. My gosh, they love to live. They love a vermouth hour, hora de vermouth. If somebody says, "Hey, do you want to go have a drink?" They mean right now? And you go, "Okay." And you go. There's no, "Let me check my calendar. Maybe next Tuesday at 5:00 PM." It's right now.
When you go to restaurants, meal time is very sacred in the best way. It's not annoying. It's like, oh, I get to go have this meal with my friends or my family. And if you look around a restaurant, nobody's on their phones. Nobody's in a rush. There's no fast food takeout, hurry up, I've got to get back to work. There's none of that vibe. It's very much a vibe of sit down, relax, and after we eat there's [foreign language 00:11:55] which means you sit and talk. Even after the meal is done, there's no waiter rushing to turn the table over.
LA: Which I love, and that's such a European quality. In my family, I mean, we're British, but we're also Turkish. And I mean we will sit in a restaurant for hours and hours. And I love that thing if you have the meal and that's only kind of part of it, and then you continue to sit around the table and maybe order some more booze.
EL: Yeah. Or coffees or cortados and you just sit there, or vermouth, right? And I love that kind of slow down and eat. Just eat. You don't have to be on the phone, make phone calls, do a Zoom, have a sandwich at your desk. Hurry up and go, go, go, which is so our culture here in the United States. And I think that's one thing I've learned there is like, let's have lunch. Let's go have lunch. My husband's Mexican, so he is always been that way too.
LA: I was about to ask, how were you seeing any parallels with Mexico and the way your family lives in Mexico?
EL: Well, they're the same. Mexico has [foreign language 00:12:54] as well. Mexicans have a five-hour lunch. They have the siesta, but there is a little Americanism within Mexico because we're neighbors that isn't so in Europe.
LA: Kind of staying on Mexico for a moment. You must have had such a vision going into the first season because it was a place that you knew so well.
EL: Yeah.
LA: While that I'm sure was filled with a lot of discovery, this really was discovery. What was your personal journey of making the season? How did it differ from the first?
EL: Yeah, I mean, I discovered a lot in Searching for Mexico for sure because it's not like I'm a Mexico expert, but my husband and I got to really enjoy Searching for Spain. Because my husband's Mexican and we did the Mexico show together, when we were traveling throughout Spain, just the discovery or just the diversity of regions in Spain and the diversity of food. People think Spain is paella, [foreign language 00:13:55], that's about it. And you're like, oh my God, it is so much more. The best seafood in the world comes from Spain because of geographically where it is and the oceans that surround it. And so you have the best scallops, you have the best oysters, you have the best mussels, the best lobsters. I mean, the seafood is to die for.
LA: And those coastlines are never really that far away.
EL: Yeah, there's coastlines all around. Spain is one giant coastline. So that was a big difference is just realizing and learning the diversity of food and the regions that we hadn't been to. I traveled with some Spaniards with me that went along for the ride and they had never been to Asturias, they had never been to Galicia and they live in Spain. Even travel within their own country, they were kind of surprised by the diverse ecosystem and the diverse produce. And they call it [foreign language 00:14:45], which kind of translates to surf and turf, but everything from the sea to the mountain is Spain. What did you like about Spain when you traveled?
LA: I think one of my favorite things was when I was in San Sebastian, was that I actually never sat down for a full meal in a restaurant. I hopped.
EL: Yes, the pinchos.
LA: The pinchos.
EL: Yes.
LA: And just trying so much-
EL: The bar crawl. You guys know about the bar crawls.
LA: I mean, I'm very good at a bar crawl, being from London, but I think it was something about this just kind of, like you said about someone will text you for a drink and they mean, "Let's just go now." There's this ease and there's like, "We can just, let's live now." And we don't have to plan it. And I think that's what I loved about San Sebastian was just going between these bars.
EL: And each bar is known for their pincho.
LA: Exactly.
EL: So you'll go to that bar for their risotto and then you go to the next bar for their short rib and then you go to the next bar and you have a vermouth. Did you have vermouth?
LA: Oh, yes. Vermouth and cider.
EL: Yes. So good.
LA: I lived very well there for a few days. It was fantastic.
EL: Exactly.
LA: Spotted pigs and the most expensive ham in the world, coming up.
EL: The jamón, jamón ibérico, each pig is worth a lot of money because it's labor-intensive. It's aged for seven to eight years, cured for seven to eight years. And it's probably the biggest export of Spain and what they're most known for is this Jamón ibérico. De Bellota and the Pata Negra, which is the black-footed pigs. And they're spoiled while they're alive. They only eat the best acorns. So they have this taste once it's cured for seven years and they're very expensive. I think it's like 5 to 6,000 a leg.
But got to go see this man who has the best jamón in Spain. He's won many awards. And to kind of get to tell his story and go like, what makes your pigs better, special, different? What are you doing differently? Are you aging differently? Are you salting it differently? What are you doing? And he's more like, "Love. I love these pigs. I love my job, I love raising them." He loves being this shepherd to these animals. And so it was like, yeah, maybe that's what makes them taste better. He really enjoys his life with them.
LA: And I guess there's that pride that keeps on coming up, a pride in the culture and in the produce.
EL: You know what else? It's so funny because now I remember. His story was he was in Catalonia, left his job, said, "I'm going to go buy a farm and raise pigs." One day, and he was like in the city in Barcelona, Catalan, and goes to the south, which is very different than Catalonia and decides to do this. There was another group of women, they were in Catalonia in Barcelona, business girls and they were like, "Let's go to the mountains and make cheese." And they left everything behind and went to go make cheese. This kind of decisions of living a simpler life was a common theme I found with a lot of people.
LA: Did you encounter a lot of women in the culinary scene?
EL: Mm-hmm. A lot of women. A lot of women doing amazing things. There's a very warm welcome to women in the space. I mean, I don't know how it is here in the United States, but it just seemed like there was a huge amount of respect for anybody in the culinary space. But women are definitely a part of that in a big way.
LA: Kind of helicoptering in slightly, but are there dishes you discovered that you are now cooking at home?
EL: Gazpacho. I had never been a gazpacho fan. I don't like cold soup. I feel like it's an oxymoron. I don't like cucumber soup.And once I learned how to make it, I cook it more. It's not, there's no cooking. It's raw, but I make it and it's good and I enjoy it. I make a lot of tortillas de patatas. I've always made tortillas de patatas, which I think it kind of looks like an omelet to people because it's egg with potato, but it's a staple in Spain. You can have it in bars, in high-end restaurants and in your home. Everybody does tortilla de patatas. I've always made those a lot and my son loves those. And it's something you make and you have on the counter and people come take a slice, they come, take a bite. It's like a nice little nibble that you just have around.
What's another thing? Oh, you know what I've become obsessed with, other than vermouth? Which when people say, when I went to Spain and they were like vermouth, I was like, "Isn't that something you put in a martini?" It doesn't sound appealing-
LA: Yeah, it's like, you don't have that alone.
EL: Yeah, you don't have a glass of vermouth. You do have a glass of vermouth and it's delicious, but it's a different kind of vermouth. They really have taken the Italian vermouth have made it more herby, not as sweet as the sweet vermouths and not as dry as the dry vermouths. Like they really hit a good spot in Spain, specifically in Catalonia with each bar has their own recipe. Good vermouth is really great. There's a place here in New York, Despaña, they have amazing assortments of Spanish vermouth. So it has to be a Spanish vermouth. You will love it on ice with a lemon wedge and you can do a little bit of soda water. But I became obsessed with that. And what was the other thing? Oh, canned seafood, but it has to be from Spain.
LA: I'm like, controversial choice.
EL: I know. Canned seafood, canned mussels, canned clams, canned oysters. In the north, in Galicia, they have perfected the canning of seafood. So when you open a can of mussels, it is the freshest thing you'll ever eat and it's very gourmet, so they will put it in some sort of sauce and can it right away and you can open it and have it on a cracker with some cream cheese and you put that muscle on and it's like a delicacy.
LA: And a good souvenir to bring back.
EL: Yeah.
LA: Bring tin cans back.
EL: The tins. Yeah.
LA: Did you find what you were looking for?
EL: I found that and more.
LA: And how's your own connection with Spain changed? Has it deepened your love?
EL: Oh, yeah, for sure. My Spaniard friends are always surprised at how much I know. They're like, "You know more about Spain than we do." I'm like, "I do," because this show really teaches so much about the country and its people and I am a history buff. So I'm the perfect person to do the show. I really geek out about that stuff.
LA: You've become more Spanish than the Spanish.
EL: I've become more Spanish for sure. And like I said, my Castilian is much better now.
LA: I think everyone's dream, at least in the US, is going to Europe and buying a house. Living that-
EL: Living abroad.
LA: Living abroad. Or at least when I say everyone's, I mean people who listen to this podcast. You did it. What's it like?
EL: Right. I know. But you know what? I've always been a gypsy my whole life. So I knew I was going to live in the world. I'm a proud American, I'm a proud [inaudible 00:22:12], but that's home and I'll always have home. I want to live in the world. I feel like we live in a global community. Now, that being said, it's not easy. It's not like, "Oh, I'm American. I can go just live somewhere else." There's rules. And same thing as we have immigration laws here, other countries have it too.
LA: You do need a visa.
EL: You cannot stay in countries as long as you want. And so with Spain, I'm lucky because I'm a resident and I've worked there a very long time and so I have my residency, I bought a home. But it is magical to experience that for a while. You don't have to buy a home to go and experience another culture. You do need a visa, there are laws in how long you can stay in country. So I would research. I have a friend of mine who's just moved to the UK and she's like, "I'm going to move there for a year." So she had to do a bunch of things to figure out that visa, what visa do I need to stay for a year? So it's a little jumping through hoops, but so worth it. And I think people should experience living other places for a minute. Because sometimes you come back and appreciate America more.
LA: I want for a second to talk about the people you worked with because it takes a village to make a travel show.
EL: Yeah.
LA: What was the crew like?
EL: Our producing and directing crew were all women.
LA: Which is so fascinating because I think when you think of food and travel television, it is quite dominated by men.
EL: It's quite male. I didn't realize this until somebody told me that. They go, "It's so nice to see a woman doing this travel food show." And I go, "Yeah, a lot of women do it." And they were like, "No." And you look at who's on screen and it's almost all male.
LA: You're like, am I more radical than I realized?
EL: I was like, "Wait? You're right." I mean, I didn't realize that until somebody pointed out to me in an interview.
LA: What did it feel like working with such a team of women?
EL: Amazing. I mean, women are efficient. We're multitaskers. If you want something done, ask a busy woman to do it. I always say that. So yeah, I enjoy it. I love being surrounded by intelligent, capable women who are resourceful and smart and innovative, and it shows in the show. It's beautiful.
LA: This was so fabulous.
EL: Thank you.
LA: Thank you for giving me so much of your time. This was-
EL: I love having a deep conversation about food.
LA: As do I.
EL: And travel.
LA: You can catch Eva on Sunday nights at 9:00 PM Eastern in the CNN original series, Eva Longoria: Searching for Spain. And she just announced that she will continue her culinary and cultural journey into France.
Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel. I'm LA, and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineer is Pran Bandi and special thanks to Jake Lummus for engineering support. Our show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. Jude Kampfner is our producer, Stephanie Kariuki, our executive producer, and Chris Bannon is head of Condé Nast Global Audio.