Before moving to Madrid, I was under the misconception that Spanish food might be similar to Mexican, French or Italian food. Now that I've been enlightened, the closest comparison I can make is to stereotypical English food, except that instead instead of boiling or steaming the food in question, here it is fried in olive oil. Use of spices is extremely sparing; garlic, salt, paprika, and parsley are commonly used, plus saffron if you're making paella. And that's about it. Many restaurant tables have a little metal doodad which is clearly intended to hold a salt shaker in one side and a pepper shaker in the other, but instead has... two salt shakers. D'oh! And you can forget about spicy food; ethnic restaurants that would reliably clear my sinuses at home are flavorful here, but somehow... bland. How a culture that considers fried octopus tentacles a delicacy and prides itself on eating all parts of a pig (we're talking ears, intestine, and stomach) is so wimpy on this point defies explanation.
But back to the point. Olive oil is an essential part of traditional Spanish cooking. A quick trip to the local supermarket bears this out; you can literally buy the stuff by the gallon. In my first apartment, I was perplexed and disgusted to find what I took to be some kind of pooper-scooper in the kitchen drawer (see above). I promptly dispatched it to the terrace to serve as a makeshift trowel and forgot about it until a year later when, while watching a friend fry potatoes, I realized it was actually a frying implement. Go figure. My current apartment has no less than six frying pans-- and of course, the requisite pooper-scooper frying tool.
Houses here are also designed with frying in mind. Most kitchens have a large square of ceramic tile on the wall behind the stove, the better to remove oil splatters. It's also normal for every area in your apartment to have a door, including the kitchen, living room, and hallway. This is probably partly to help direct the heat in the summer, but it also helps shut off parts of the house from the penetrating odor of frying. The oven, on the other hand, is a strictly optional appliance; many apartments don't have one at all, and mine heats up to a dubious temperature which is barely conducive to baking. When it's not in use, which is most of the time, I use it (what else?) to store the frying pan collection.
I like fried food as much as anybody, and some Spanish dishes are pretty delicious: fried potatoes, fried green peppers with sea salt, and fried cheese nuggets, for example. (They also all go wonderfully with beer and red wine, which are plentiful here too.) And it's certainly easy to understand why olive oil is such a staple; the soil and climate, especially in the south of Spain, are very conducive to olive trees and not conducive to a whole lot else. But would you go so far as to classify it as vegetable? Take a look at the Spanish food pyramid above. There, next to the fruits and vegetables in the second row is... a jar of olive oil! Yes! And the instruction stipulates that the correct daily intake is three to six servings! Granted, a serving is one tablespoon, and I know olive oil is considered by far the healthiest of the oils. But for my money, oil is oil, and therefore belongs at the top of the food pyramid, not next to the spinach and carrots. It's also worth noting that beer and wine are included in the ok-to-eat-daily section of the pyramid ("consume with moderation"). Yes, Spain is different... but at least it's tasty, and hopefully my arteries aren't suffering too much. I suppose time will tell!