My difficult relationship with Spanish cuisine

First I would like to apologize for the fact that this post is not only longish, but also a bit of a rant...
Whenever I'm telling people abroad where I live, their reaction usually is: "Spain? How wonderful! The sun, the beach, the delicious food!"
I totally agree about the weather and the beach, but after ten years of permanent residence here I'm still looking for the delicious food. You see, Spain is not a great country for vegetarians. There are quite a few vegetarian restaurants, especially here in Barcelona, but the problem are all the other restaurants that have never heard of the vegetarian diet and the fact that eating out is such a big part of social life in Spain. In no-vegetarian-restaurants my only choice is often a green salad and a tortilla, which is okay, but just not great.
So I really don't appreciate the Spanish cuisine apart from Catalan bread with tomato, the already mentioned but a bit too omnipresent tortilla, gazpacho and the spicy patatas bravas.
A Catalan friend of mine argued that I can actually not judge the local kitchen for the simple fact that I would not try the 90 % of it made with meat/fish/poultry. And he somehow has a point, although I'm still wondering - do I WANT to appreciate a way of cooking and eating that is depending so much on cruelty against animals and shows so little variety of ingredients and ways of preparation? Do I WANT to appreciate a cuisine that does not take me into account?
Wanting to have an open mind, I finally bought this cookbook
http://www.amazon.es/The-Spanish-Table-Anya-Bremzen/dp/0761135553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395320575&sr=8-1&keywords=new+spanish+table
in the hope of finding interesting recipes that were in part vegetarian or easy to adopt. Hm, although it offers a huge array of dishes, it still did not convince me, but I will try to make some of the recipes and see if I can reconcile with the food of my "adopted country".
Here I'm starting with some very classic dishes. I made gazpacho (yummy!) and "meatballs" with tomato sauce, which seem to be very popular here. It's been a while that I ate real meatballs, but this version made of tvp tasted uncannily similar. The green stuff is my take on a typical Catalan dish - spinach with pine nuts and raisins. I used chopped dates because I'm not keen on raisins. I also tried to make an eggless version of the tortilla de patata, but it turned out more like latkes.
So, that's it. The subject of food here in Spain will probably turn up again, so stay tuned. :-)

Edit: If anyone can recommend any good cookbooks, magazines or websites for Spanish Vegetarian cooking, I'm very interested! I read Spanish and Catalan, no problem.

Spinach Pie

The other day I saw a picture of a spinach pie with a potatoe crust on Pinterest. It didn't come with a recipe, as it seemed to be a photo of a dish in a restaurant, so I improvised my own: I precooked the potatoes, sauteed the spinach with an onion and garlic and mixed it with silken tofu, adding a touch of feta cheese. It did not look as perfect as the one on Pinterest, but I was quite proud of it though, and it tasted really nice. I just ate a handful of radishes with it.
For my midmorning snack I brought a container of oat flakes which I ate with the soy milk I keep at the fridge in the office.

Pasta with Spinach

For this day I brought along a toasted sandwich with homemade vegan lentil spread and caramelized onions plus some radishes.
For lunch I had pasta fried with garlic and spinach. I wasn't very happy with my choice - I had used wholegrain pasta and no matter how often I try it, I just don't like the texture. So back to normal pasta it is.
The vegetable side is carrot kinpira, an easy and fast dish that's also great for the poor little leftover carrot in your fridge.
Here you can find an example for a kinpira recipe:
http://justbento.com/handbook/recipes-side-dishes-and-space-fillers/easy-sugarfree-carrot-kinpira