As a proud Catalan, Castex is no doubt shaken by the news that a tech startup claims its robot can make paella as well as a human can.

The cyborg "paellero" has been working with a top Spanish paella stove maker and getting the thumbs up from local lovers of the rice and seafood-based dish -- until they discovered it had been made by a machine.

Inventor Enrique Lillo insists the robot is not stealing cooks' jobs, just "elevating human capacity".

Nor would it ever be tempted to add chorizo, as British celebrity cook Jamie Olivier did to the horror of purists.