Vegan Sitges

Sitges is a lovely little seaside town less than an hour from Barcelona, famous for having a vibrant LGBT scene. Sitges is also a great day trip regardless of your sexuality, it has a beautiful long beach, terraces to die for, and a great selection of food. However, if you’re a vegan, it’s a whole other story, although things are definitely improving.

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Being an hour away from the big city it’s a pretty good place to hang out. It’s fairly modern in attitude but has some beautiful architecture and the kind of twisty residential streets, that make Spain so much prettier than many other countries.

While it used to be solely synonymous with the LGBT scene (like the Brighton of Spain) it has now more of a combined gay, heterosexual, family vibe. What it doesn’t share with England’s Brighton, apart from the weather, is the number of vegetarian and vegan options available.

If you are a vegan in Sitges, well, you wont to be blown away by the options available – luckily, you won’t starve either. There is not much imagination applied when it comes to feeding vegans. I’m not sure they’ve even heard of it in some places, so eating out is going to be difficult for you, unless you are happy to eat patatas bravas (fried potatoes in spicy sauce or pan con tomate (white bread with garlic and tomato). You may also find gazpacho, which is a cold tomato and aubergine soup, and despite sounding pretty horrendous, is actually pretty tasty.

Related article: Sitges – the perfect seaside town

Good luck with that

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You can also try and get yourself a vegetarian paella but you will need to make sure that they understand that you don’t just want a vegetable paella (verduras) as sometimes this also means tuna-fish or chicken – which I don’t think is strictly vegan, or wasn’t last time I looked.

Finally, some good news: there is a restaurant (that used to be vegetarian-friendly) but is now just vegetarian called Lady Green that serves bio vegetarian food. And they even have an option or two for vegans and raw vegans.

Shopping

Other than that, you need to get yourself to Veritas on passeig Villa Franca or to the market (Calle Salvador Meravent) to pick up some vegan delicacies. My favourite grocery store is on Paralles (the main shopping street of Sitges) and is called Carme Miranda. The fruit and vegetables there aren’t the cheapest, but the quality is good and they also have prepared fruit salads, that you can take on the beach with you (as long as you don’t have your dog with you).

Related article: Top 5 vegetarian restaurants in Barcelona

Drinks

For a great granizado de limon (like a snow cone but runnier) head to Llao Llao on the same street, where they serve the greatest. It’s just lemon, sugar and water and so thoroughly vegan (unless lemons have been reclassified as sentient since I last looked).

There’s a small juice bar called Disfruta! which complies with the typically erratic Spanish opening times, but does a number of fruit combos – including one with acai berries, although these smoothies are made from pulp and not from fresh fruit.

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