A pepper is just a pepper–right? Wrong. There are hundreds of Capsicum types the world over, and a good proportion of them are traditionally grown in Spain. Some are hot, some are not. Some are made for drying, others to be ground into pimentón (a type of paprika from Spain) and others are grown specially to be eaten fresh. They are omnipresent on European supermarket shelves at almost any time of year: big, fat, brightly-colored peppers from southern Spain, with a mild and inoffensive flavor. But there is a great deal more to the world of Spanish peppers than the intensively-grown products of Murcia and Almería. A host of traditional varieties, as-yet little-known outside their places of origin, offers an unsuspected wealth of curious shapes and aromatic flavors. Paul Richardson reports on the Spanish pepper varieties that are poised to hit the big time.