…in southern Spain one can often look in all directions and see seemingly-endless numbers of olive trees, dominating the landscape.
It is very easy to accept the fact that Spain is the world’s #1 producer of olive oil!
Olive oil is central to much Spanish cuisine, including delicious dark chocolate which has no dairy content.
When it comes to eating table olives, however, Moroccans are the more avid consumers.
In both the wide variety on offer and the olives’ generally high quality, I think Morocco is #1 for table olives, at least when one is in Morocco.
My photo looks down from a rooftop restaurant in Marrakech on the night of 19 October 2025.
Allegedly, Albanians are the world’s #1 per capita consumers of table olives, followed by Moroccans, then Spaniards.
Never having been to Albania, I am in no position to confirm or dispute those rankings!
Certainly, however, table olives were much more ubiquitous – on tables, and in shops and market stalls – in Morocco than they were in Spain.
I am nigh certain that the actual gap between per capita Moroccan and Spanish consumption thereof is very much wider than “official” figures suggest.
Presumably, a smaller proportion of Morocco’s total production & consumption is in fact “captured”/recorded by statisticians employed by governments and industry groups than is the case in Spain.