Well, not quite a "diplomatic incident" but tempers are raised, and the UK's ambassador to Spain has been drawn into the argument ... over paella.
It all started when Jamie Oliver posted "Good Spanish food doesn’t get much better than paella. My version combines chicken thighs & chorizo" ... linking to his recipe
HERE for Chicken & chorizo paella.
Now I don't much like paella, mainly because the normal recipe includes fish, and I just don't have a taste for fish with rice. But I couldn't eat it anyway because it also often has shellfish in it, and I have an allergy.
But paella is one of those recipes which varies throughout Spain, and although the traditional Valencian one has fish and shellfish, others from other regions have meat in them ...
So why the fuss over Jamie's paella? Why the hand on brow collapsing into a chair at the mere suggestion that chorizo might make an appearance? Spanish foodie sites have called on the British Government to take Jamie to task over his "attack" on Spanish food ... notwithstanding that he started by saying "Good Spanish food doesn’t get much better " ...
The offenderati are at it again with "cultural appropriation", it seems to me, but surely if you can have a meat paella, you can have a bit of chorizo in it. Can't you?