The Repsol Guide, formerly known as the Campsa Guide or the Traveller’s Guide, is celebrating its 44th anniversary, becoming a gastronomic reference for gourmets thanks to its suns. We tell you all about its origin and history.
The Repsol Guide is one of the best-known tourist guides in Spain and a help for lovers of the world of gastronomy by collecting a selection of what it considers to be the best restaurants in Spain. However, it was not always called that way or worked in the same way, as it has changed a lot since its creation. We invite you to discover the origin of the Repsol Guide and the Repsol suns.
History of the Repsol Guide
The current Repsol Guide was born in 1979 under the name of the Traveler’s Guide, a tourist guide published by the company Campsa with maps of roads, routes, service stations, hotels, and restaurants on the peninsula, the south of France and Andorra. The guide, of which 50,000 units were initially published, rated the quality of restaurants on a scale of suns, a task that was carried out by the Cofradía de la Buena Mesa de Madrid. Thus the Campsa Guide was born, although that was not its official name.
Its publication consolidates, in one way or another, the birth of gastronomic guides of Spain made by Spaniards, coinciding in time with the appearance of another relevant guide in the history of national gastronomic information, the Gourmetour guide.
Campsa was a Spanish oil company founded in 1927. Its name is an abbreviation of “Compañía Arrendataria del Monopolio de Petróleos SA” and until the 1990s it had a monopoly on the distribution and sale of oil and gasoline in Spain. Creating this travel guide was an excellent marketing and advertising tool (obviously similar to the Michelin Guide, whose first edition in Spain was published in 1910) that fit in with its business strategy and was an excellent way to promote a more modern and updated image of the company, in a society where tourism was already a consolidated industry and democracy was an emerging reality. The guide was distributed at service stations throughout Spain and quickly became a useful tool for those seeking information on their trips.
The Cofradía de la Buena Mesa de Madrid is an institution created in 1972 by a group of renowned gastronomes, although its foundation is attributed to Francisco Moreno Herrera, the Count of Los Andes, the first president of the brotherhood until his death in 1977 and one of the most important figures in gastronomic journalism in the second half of the 20th century in Spain, or Rafael Ansón, who was the first secretary. In 1973 they published the first gastronomic guide to the city of Madrid and one of the first gastronomic guides in Spain, Madrid Gastronómico, which already used the classification one to three suns to assess the quality of restaurants, pointing out the influence of another illustrious member of the brotherhood, Gonzalo Sol, author from 1974 of the Sol Gastronomic Guides. In 1974, the Brotherhood also created the National Gastronomy Awards with the approval of the then Ministry of Information and Tourism, in which the Gastronomy Academy would also participate from 1980 onwards.
The Cofradía de la Buena Mesa continued publishing its guide over the following years under the tutelage of Víctor de la Serna, president between 1977 and 1980; Gregorio Marañón Moya or Marquis of Marañón, who held the position until 1991; or Ymelda Moreno de Arteaga, Marchioness of Poza, daughter of the Count of Los Andes, president until 2020 and a key person in the expansion of the guide before passing the baton to Ramón Pérez-Maura. Currently, de Arteaga is Honorary President and the brotherhood is made up of just over 70 members, including full members, emeritus members, and honorary members: no one, according to the statutes, is professionally related to the world of gastronomy, which they maintain is a sign of rigor and impartiality that is not found in other guides.
On April 8, 1979, La Vanguardia announced that “the 1979 Traveler’s Guide has just appeared, published by the CAMPSA company, with maps of our roads and service stations and pumps, some concise tourist information and a wide list – more than eight hundred establishments – of restaurants selected and classified by the Cofradía de la Buena Mesa, in Madrid.”
The article written by the gastronomic journalist Luis Bettónica continued with the first criticism: «Of course, not everyone will agree – neither do we – with this selection and these classifications. But the subject is debatable, and there is no room for Byzantine polemics here. In any case, it must be taken into account that the “Traveller’s Guide” is a first edition: in this sense, we consider that the work has a notable importance because it increases the scarce number of gastronomic guides of Spain made by Spaniards, and because it offers the reader, especially the motorist, a very complete list of restaurants. We must expect, of course, greater rigor in future editions because, having taken the first step, it will be easier for the editors of the “Guide” to fine-tune their judgments and correct some errors that, while respecting the opinions of others, seem serious and indisputable to us.»
The first Campsa Traveller’s Guide awarded restaurants with one, two, three, and four suns, considered the suns of the Brotherhood of Good Food. In 1979 only three restaurants obtained the highest rating, four suns: Arzak in San Sebastian and Jockey and Horcher in Madrid. In the next step, that of the three suns, there were 13 establishments with names as well known today as Akelarre in Bilbao, Zalacaín in Madrid, El Molino in Santander or elBulli —then Hacienda El Bulli— in Roses, Girona. In the category of the two sun,s there were 49 restaurants, in the category of one 275 with a red letter “R”, which indicated “recommendation”, the rest of the more than 800 restaurants that the guide contained in total appeared.
On July 5, 1979, the guide was awarded the title of “book of tourist interest” by the Secretary of State for Tourism of the Government of Spain, an official recognition that it retained until a few years ago when the Campsa Guide still indicated on its back cover that it was “declared of tourist interest” by the General Secretariat of Tourism or by the General Directorate of Tourism when this institutional section changed its name.
In its second edition in 1980, it introduced the classification by holders of the then Secretary of State for Tourism, added one to four blue points to indicate the tourist interest of certain attractions, and a blue bed to highlight hotels, which had the traditional official stars.
From Traveler’s Guide to Campsa Guide: without suns and with Cela
After the second edition in 1980, Campsa abandoned the publication. Instead, it was the Banco Exterior de España that published a guide with the same name and the same suns (although it distinguished between red and black) and a grouping around municipalities, regions, and autonomous communities according to the new territorial structure of the 1978 Constitution. The situation was repeated in 1982, so Campsa decided to create its own publication with the name ” Guia del viajero Campsa ” to differentiate it and publish it in 1983.
Instead of soles, the award began to give out fountains, three at most and introduced the new title of best restaurant of the year, which distinguished the best establishment of the previous year and which fell for the first time to Zalacaín. In this third edition, 20 restaurants received three fountains, 38 two, and 215 one.
The advice of the Spanish Academy of Gastronomy and the Brotherhood of the Good Table, which was lost in those years (from 1986, both institutions were maintained together with the traveler’s guide of the publishing house Plaza y Jané) was resumed in 1989, the year in which the guide received the National Prize for Tourism in Gastronomy Marques de Villena, the current National Gastronomy Awards. The restaurants that in that year 89 received the highest rating from the Campsa guide in Spain were Akelarre, Arzak, Goizeko Kabi, and Jolastoki in the Basque Country; El Amparo, Horcher, Jocke,y and Zalacaín in Madrid, and Hacienda El Bulli, Hispania, Hotel R. Boix, Neichel and Vía Veneto in Catalonia.
By then, the Campsa Guide had become established in the collective imagination as an indispensable companion in the glove compartment of the car or due to the different advertising campaigns launched, such as the one carried out by the writer and Nobel Prize winner for Literature Camilo José Cela, the protagonist of various videos in which he travelled around Spain and responded with hunger and sarcasm to the regional gastronomic proposals that were offered to him.
– Some crumbs with a couple of eggs, Don Camilo?
– Let’s see if it’s true.
In 1992, the Spanish government began the process of liberalising the oil market, which would inevitably affect Campsa and its dominant position. In 1995, the company began a merger process with the oil company Repsol and its subsidiary Petronor, which in 1997 would lead to the creation of Repsol YPF, one of the main oil companies in Spain and one of the largest in Europe. The Campsa brand was thus integrated into the group and, although it continued to provide its name to both the gastronomic guide and various oil products, it would do so forever under the umbrella of the new company.
From 1999 onwards, the guide’s efforts to differentiate itself in the digital world increased with the launch of several projects reflecting the times and new technologies that had emerged. The first Campsa Guide was published, accompanied by a CD-ROM version that not only contained a digital copy but also offered some additional options for users, such as the possibility of calculating the shortest route between two points or updating content via Internet access.
A year later, the Guiacampsa.com website was born, which would undergo various updates over the years, as we will see. It was possible to find additional services such as information on beaches, ski resorts, or weather forecasts. A historical record of temperatures was even added in response to the growing social and media concern about rising temperatures.
In 2004 the website was renewed again, in 2005 we witnessed the presentation of a weekly newsletter with gastronomic information, in 2006 a navigation CD was published, and in 2007 the Campsa Guide was included in one of the Tom Tom brand GPS devices, a collaboration that included a special edition of the guide: with the arrival of the 21st century, the digitalisation of the guidebook would be unstoppable.
The Campsa Guide becomes the Repsol Guide: the suns are back
2008, with the creation of the first mobile applications, and 2009 in particular, are important years, as this is when Repsol decides to change the name of Guia Campsa to Guía Repsol in line with the rebranding of its different assets and the new brand unification policy initiated in 2007, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the guide.
The new guide, offered in a three-volume format that would be maintained, with modifications, over the following years (Road and Restaurant Map, The Best Spanish Wines and Routes with Designation of Origin) was put on sale at a cost of 22.90 euros, just when the first profiles were created on then-nascent social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or YouTube, all accompanied by a logical new renovation of the website where more information and audiovisual reports were included, which in one way or another anticipated the future.
With the launch of the Cuchara de Palo blog in 2010, the new Repsol guide consolidates this new line of work by offering content related to current gastronomic issues, a line that, as we will see, will be explored in more depth later on and which is also linked to the appearance of the Guide to the Best Wines and Restaurants for iPhone two years after it appeared on Android. These are years of mobile apps with the launch of the Restaurants App for different operating systems of the moment such as Nokia or Windows Phone and also of historical milestones, as the Repsol Guide received the Plaque of Tourist Merit from the Government of Spain in 2011.
If 2009 was a year of profound changes, 2015 was no less so. María Ritter took over as director of the guide from Repsol’s communications department, where since 1999 and after the integration of YPF she was deputy director of national press, responsible for media relations, and spokesperson for the company. Her arrival meant undertaking a profound renovation of the guide’s communication strategy, adapting it to new digital technologies in all channels: website, mobile applications, social networks, and of course the paper edition, a format that would not disappear until 2018.
That same year, the new Guide to the Best Foods and Drinks of Spain was published, a guide to non-perishable products that aimed to promote a new way of travelling around Spain, reflecting the great variety of its gastronomic heritage. More than 1,700 products grouped into 8 families – canned fish and seafood, canned vegetables, Iberian and other sausages, cheeses and dairy products, oils, wines, other drinks and finally, other foods – chosen under the advice of the Association of Friends of the Royal Academy of Gastronomy and the Spanish Nutrition Foundation and with the help of prestigious chefs, gastronomy experts, specialist journalists and members of the Royal Academy of Gastronomy from the different autonomous communities, which could also be enjoyed in a proposal of 68 gastronomic routes.
The Repsol Guide thus strengthens its status as a gastronomic magazine with articles about experiences written by renowned local journalists, seeking greater authority and, above all, a future beyond the condemned paper format, although maps will never cease to be the basis of everything. These are years in which the guide was also reinvented in terms of its selection criteria. In 2018, the advice of the Royal Spanish Academy of Gastronomy, its different regional academies, and the Cofradía de la Buena Mesa was joined by a committee of experts from different fields and recognised for their extensive knowledge of gastronomy, and work began in collaboration with the Basque Culinary Centre to further refine the qualification process. From this moment on, the Royal Academy of Gastronomy, the regional academies, and the Cofradía de la Buena Mesa will no longer have the same influence on the selection of Repsol restaurants until the definitive break-up of the relationship shortly after. And as Ramón Pérez-Maura, the current president of the Brotherhood, assures us, “the current Repsol Guide is no longer a gastronomic guide, but a tourist guide. It is perfectly legitimate for it to be so, but it is not the same.”
The 40th anniversary of the guide a year later would serve to give a new boost to the guide, starting for example with the new Repsol sun design by the artist Luis Úrculo, an imperfect sphere made by hand that seeks to represent the sun at different times of the day and which today serves to reward all chefs. It is also the moment when Repsol began to bet on the celebration of sun award galas that serve as a meeting of professionals in the sector. The first two editions were in San Sebastián, the second days before the health crisis broke out, which prevented its physical (but not virtual) celebration for the following years. These galas served, for example, in 2021 to present the new sustainable suns that reward the environmental commitment of the restaurants that obtain them.
In 2023, Repsol plans to hold the event on February 27 in the city of Alicante. It will be the 44th edition of a guide that has never stopped changing and trying to adapt to its readers beyond critics and detractors, as is the case with all gastronomic guides where it is impossible to escape subjectivity.