Spain’s best traditional panettone is made in Catalonia: a Barcelona pastry shop wins the national prize

Its traditional panettone, with candied fruit, a silky texture and an aroma of patience, has been crowned the best in all of Spain at the 2025 Best Artisan Panettone Competition, held as part of Gastronomic Forum Barcelona.

The prize stays at home — and never has that been more literal. Carrió, a master of Barcelona’s pastry workshops, adds this trophy to a list that already includes the best panellet in Catalonia (2022 and 2024) and the best Sant Joan custard coca (2019). Its secret is not in the machine, but in the touch: long fermentations, respect for tradition and a touch of emotion that no school teaches.

In the chocolate panettone category, glory travels to Torredembarra, where Rafel and Adrià Aguilera, uncle and nephew at the helm of Pastisseria Cal Jan, repeat the triumph they already achieved in 2021. Their recipe, halfway between intensity and lightness, has once again won over the jury.

Barcelona, meanwhile, continues to experience its golden age of panettone. The city has become a laboratory of living doughs, slow fermentation and sweet talent: from Mervier Canal to L’Atelier, from Panes Creativos to Suca’l, where chef Tonatiuh Cortés came to bake the best panettone in the world, the first non-Italian to achieve it.

The competition, organised by the Gremi de Pastisseria de Barcelona, brought together seventy artisans from across the country, confirming that panettone is now far more than a Christmas trend: it is the new language of contemporary pastry-making.