Spain Finally Gets Its Paella Emoji

Spain's wish has come true, and Emojipedia has announced that Unicode–the company responsible for making emojis–has agreed to add a paella emoji in 2016, but now there is some debate as to exactly what will be in the paella emoji.

According to The Local, a group of Spaniards headed by comedian Eugeni Alemany and the Paella rice brand La Fallera have been campaigning for a year to have a Unicode add a paella emoji.

"Why not?!" Alemany said. "You have the chicken leg and the shrimp tail; who the f— sends the shrimp tail!"

Now Emojipedia says a paella emoji will be included in the next update, which will also include a baguette, an avocado, and a croissant. The paella emoji, however, appears to be upsetting some paella purists because the emoji depicts a "mixed" paella with shrimp, chicken, chorizo, and peas.

 

@Emojipedia the source of our unhappiness is to mix chicken,prawns & peas in the same spoonful, pls let us help you to fine tune the design

— La Fallera (@arrozlafallera) January 25, 2016

 

They insist that real Spanish paella is Valencia-style paella, which means the emoji should not be loaded with shrimp and sausage and stuff. They've suggested this as an alternative:

 

Please @unicode make sure you approve the true #PaellaEmoji #ComboiPaellaEmoji pic.twitter.com/ZSI8TQpLC8

— Adolfo Montalvo☺⭐☎ (@adomon) January 25, 2016

It remains to be seen if Unicode will change the design or if the world will just have to deal with a shrimp-filled paella emoji, but either way the world's phones should have tiny pictures of paella at some point in 2016