Coeliac or NCGI visiting Portugal or Spain

[Aparecium]

I haven't found masses of GF products in Auchan supermarket, and what there is is mostly to be found in the relevant food section or the organic/healthfoods section rather than in a dedicated Free From section. But I can highly recommend the Auchan own-brand baked goods. Vastly better than most of the GF baked goods I have tried in the UK. Especially the Payes Multicereal Rustico Multicereals bread and their own-brand pizza bases. The pizza bases come in twos, but we only made pizza once so I've been cutting up and toasting the other pizza base to have with my dippy egg - very good!

Another find in the bakery section (Portugal) has been the Almendrados cookies. One of which I am dipping in my tea as I post 😋

Anybody else have Portugal/Spain tips?

Those Auchan bakes sound worth the trip alone. A few things worth knowing for anyone else heading over — both countries are genuinely easier than the UK once you know where to look.

The big one is the labelling. "Sin gluten" in Spain and "sem glúten" in Portugal are used reliably, and both countries have proper coeliac associations behind the standard, so packaged free-from is trustworthy. Mercadona's own free-from range in Spain is well regarded and cheap, and Continente and Pingo Doce in Portugal both carry a decent "sem glúten" selection — usually tucked in with the organic and health shelves rather than a dedicated aisle, exactly as you found at Auchan.

Eating out, the thing that saves you is how much of the traditional food is naturally gluten-free to start with: grilled fish and meat, tortilla de patatas, jamón, chickpea and bean stews, gazpacho, and the rice dishes. The classic trap is anything crumbed, and the bread that arrives unasked. A printed restaurant card in Spanish or Portuguese explaining coeliac is worth having — the local associations (FACE in Spain, APC in Portugal) do downloadable ones, and staff tend to take it seriously.

One to watch on cross-contamination: shared fryers for croquetas and churros, and padrón peppers are sometimes dusted with flour before frying. Otherwise it's one of the nicer places to be coeliac. Those almendrado biscuits are a good shout too — naturally almond-based, so a safe bet most of the time.

Yes we had good experiences eating out in both countries. Lisbon and Porto restaurants were able to accommodate with ease.
Barcelona we found a bit hit and miss - better in seafood restaurants and tourist locations, trickier in the neighbourhoods.

This was a few years ago though.

Madrid and Malaga had established gluten free restaurants. Madrid was a tale of two worlds for us, those who were gluten free by design had excellent allergy coverage/knowledge.

Others not so much and we used Google translate to verify whether they had dedicated fryers or not.

Would definitely go again though and supermarket choice was great.