It's gotten massive press coverage throughout the years. In fact, most people that used to use cheap cooking oils switched to olive oil after the scandal. (For those who are not familiar with the matter, the scandal involved using chemicals on industrial-grade rapeseed oil to remove dyes and re-sell it to consumers.)
And, scarily, it says that pesticide use in Spanish fruit is still high, and that a similar mass poisoning recently in Mexico was also covered up and another non-cause blamed.
Do you actually have olive oil in your olive oil? In the U.S., most of the olive oil for sale is either misgraded or adulterated[1]
[1] http://time.com/money/4326354/fake-olive-oil-food-fraud/
It makes way less economic sense to adulterate the olive oil in Spain when it is not a gourmet import, but a staple daily produce.
On the pricier premium virgen extra oil there has been some fraud, nonetheless (in Spanish: http://m.europapress.es/sociedad/consumo-00648/noticia-ocu-a...).
Your facts may be right (I don't know) but if so, Spanish authorities made a basic economic error in that decision.
Of course this caused further problems for Greece and Italy, which were already not in good shape.
Yes, actually we are the biggest extra virgin olive oil producers, exporters and probably also the biggest consumers in the world. Most people here has or knows a friend that produces the oil himself... 100% pure (from the trees to the oil mill). I don't remember the last time I used sunflower oil (the alternative option).
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-california-olive-oil/...
Italians and frenchies usually buy the product from Spain and rebrand it.
[1] http://time.com/money/4326354/fake-olive-oil-food-fraud/
Mostly yes. Spain accounts for 45% of the world's EVOO production.
Part of the problem in the US and other countries is that marketing successfully managed to convince people that the taste of cheap generic oil was the sign of quality and all the potent characteristic of virgin olive oil were undesirable.
Rapeseed oil nowadays start to get sold a bit more. But as rapeseed, not as colza. Any 30 something or older spaniard would never buy colza oil. That's how much that scandal has impacted the industry, and everybody has seen someone with the malformation due to the tainted oil (which may not be the real reason according to this article). That would commercial suicide if your brand was somewhat mixing its oil because of that scandal.
A last point is that Spain is really producing a lot of the stuff and is utterly inept at making a lot of money on it. Contrast that with Italy that buy Spanish oil and sell it at a premium just by labelling it "Italian Olive Oil". Actually that's another aspect of the US problem with oil. "Italian Olive Oil" is an extremely powerful label, one that, conveniently, has little legal meaning.
Are you suggesting that you still see evidence of people responding to the misinformation reported in this article? And that the news is still reporting this as fact?
But most people are familiar with other hypotheses, including the Bayer pesticides one.
I've seen compelling first-hand evidence that oil was the culprit, but I'm open to other hypotheses too.