Spain and Portugal with peanut allergy

[BugaAB00]

DS is allergic to peanuts and sesame (also other foods but showing signs of outgrowing so not too worried) and we are planning a holiday to Spain or Portugal soon. Any experiences on how easy/difficult eating out in either country with these allergies are? Will be getting the translation cards and bringing epipens and probably doing self catering but would like to let DS eat out with us if it's a possibility.

Hi. DS has multiple food allergies and we were fine with translation cards in France.
Portugal and Spain are a safer bet than somewhere where nuts and sesame are used commonly. We visited Portugal when DS was little and we got by.
Enjoy your holiday. :)

Thanks for the replies. Am actually looking forwards to it now! Have not spent any time in either country so was feeling a bit apprehensive.

In Portugla, we do see peanuts around, including in bakeries and cafes. Some are using peanuts to substitute almonds.
So, it depends how serious his allergy is.

On the other hand, peanut butter is not commonly used at all and most restaurants probably won't have peanuts around anyway.

Sesame seeds are mostly in McDs.

Look out for amendoim e sesamo.

Portugal even...

Thanks for the heads up, I'm quite cautious about bakery products in general anyway but will keep that in mind.

My dd is severely allergic to peanuts and we have holidayed in Portugal happily for the past four years. I think you just need to be careful about what you eat, exactly as you would be here. There are international supermarkets everywhere so it's possible to easily buy food with English labels. I wouldn't buy food from a bakery, but then I wouldn't in the UK either. The main thing to be aware of is that peanut ice-cream is very popular, so I wouldn't buy scoops of ice-cream in cones from stalls on the street because of the risk of cross contamination. All our ice-cream came wrapped up. We ate out a lot and didn't have any problems. She mainly fresh fish, sandwiches, chips, salads etc.