Spanish omelette at Estepona's Bar La Concha celebrates its 60th anniversary

It was 1965 when Bar Márquez opened in Calle Terraza in Estepona, now Bar La Concha. Isabel Galán and her husband, José Márquez, were in charge of the business at the time. She was 22 years old and he was 24, recently married, and they started this family business to prosper, with carefully prepared tapas that were very well received by the locals and tourists, mostly Germans in those days.

Now it's 2025, Bar La Concha's potato omelette is 60 years old and it is a special omelette, made with a lot of patience, with time, with a minimum of 15 eggs and with onion, garlic and parsley. But it is a well-set, not a runny Spanish omelette.

"I have always been a businesswoman, so I suggested to my husband we set up a bar once we were married, serving up a lot of tapas and very good ones. At that time, fish was very cheap, I served redfish, monkfish, I made all that in batter...they were big tapas and people often came", says Isabel.

Then came the omelette, actually two: "I started making two kinds of potato omelette my way. One with chorizo, green pepper, parsley and garlic. And another with potato, parsley, onion and garlic, which was the most popular because the chorizo was spicy and the pepper was spicy and people preferred the latter."

Isabel shares her secret with us: "Peel the potato, chop it very finely, peel the onion, put it all in the frying pan with good olive oil and, when it's half cooked, add the parsley and garlic and then mix it all well with the eggs, at least 15. If I add less, it won't turn out the same," Isabel tells SUR. "And then it all goes back into the pan to cook over a low heat and let it cook on its own, until it sets properly."

She admits that nobody taught her how to make this omelette and her son Alberto tells us that it is "a special recipe" from his mother. "I got into the kitchen and I didn't know how to do anything because I was very young, my mother would say to me 'how are you going to get started in the kitchen if you don't know how to do anything?', and I said to her, 'Mum, just let me, you'll see how successful I am'. And I succeeded."

Isabel looks back again with nostalgia because "Estepona in the 60's was an enviable little town. The Paseo Marítimo had little bars with all-glass frontages that you could sit in and see the sea. It was very different to now, it is no longer that Estepona, it was a town of local people, with roots from back then, but not anymore. It has changed a lot, it was the people from Estepona who ran things."

Isabel is now retired and no longer makes battered redfish, but her business remains one of the most recommended tapas bars in Estepona and her tortilla is still a talking point, 60 years after she created it.