To attribute his excesses behind the wheel to a bowl of cold soup—now that took nerve. In Spain, a motorist was stopped with a very high blood alcohol level near Seville. His story, which went viral, begins, however, like a routine roadside check.
The events unfolded on a Saturday evening in Castilleja de la Cuesta, a town near Seville. Police were conducting a routine traffic stop when they spotted a vehicle moving erratically. Once the car was pulled over, they observed that the driver was not wearing a seatbelt and was using a cellphone. The breathalyzer then read 1 mg of alcohol per liter of breath, four times the legal limit of 0.25 mg/L. This threshold matches the limit applied in France for drivers. Facing the officers, the man denied having been drinking. He then offered this explanation: “It’s the vinegar of the gaspacho,” according to the Spanish daily 20 Minutos, reported by Le Parisien. Turning a banal stop into a road-safety case study, this is the scene around a drunken driver who invokes a plate of gaspacho.
A Spanish traffic stop that spirals for this drunk driver
At the outset, the police in Castilleja de la Cuesta were conducting a simple traffic checkpoint. The driver’s behavior, his erratic trajectory, nonetheless quickly drew their attention. Once the vehicle was stopped, the man appeared tense, with an attitude deemed consistent with intoxication. Along with these signs came two clearly visible offenses: no seatbelt and a cellphone in hand. A combination of on-the-road risks that was enough, on its own, to trigger an alcohol test.
The result came quickly. The breathalyzer again read 1 mg/L of alcohol in the air, while the permitted limit stands at 0.25 mg/L. Spanish law sets a criminal threshold at 0.60 mg/L, beyond which it is a crime. With 1 mg/L, this driver clearly exceeded that level, in addition to quadrupling the limit. He is charged with breach of road-safety rules under Article 379 of the Spanish Penal Code. In his case, the judiciary can impose three to six months in prison. It can also impose a daily fine for six to twelve months, or between 31 and 90 days of community service. The driving license can finally be revoked for a period of one to four years, with an upcoming court appearance.
Aliments, alcootest et vinaigre du gaspacho : ce que disent les faits
Faced with this excuse, a question arises among many drivers: can certain foods truly skew an alcootest? In everyday life, several products contain small amounts of alcohol due to fermentation. This is the case for some very ripe fruits, bread or fermented pasta, or even some alcoholic desserts. These traces can, right after ingestion, slightly disturb the measurement as long as traces remain in the mouth. That is why law enforcement expects roughly fifteen minutes before having a driver blow into the breathalyzer.
In the gaspacho case, the vinegar used to season the cold soup contains alcohol, but in minuscule quantities. Specialists remind us that these amounts are not enough to explain a sustained result of 1 mg/L on the breath test. Available data show that the alcohol present naturally in food remains far too low to reach a level four times the legal limit. In other words, allowing for mouth-alcohol effects, no cold soup can explain such a result. For authorities, neither the gaspacho vinegar nor any food will suffice to erase a broadly positive breath test.
