I am confused about the word for shrimp - here in the "Americas" we say camarones for shrimp in Spanish but I saw on the website the word for this in Spanish was gamba. Which is right for us to use in Madrid - it is important as my husband is allergic and it would suck if he got fed shrimp by accident. Thank you!!!!

All of these refer to "shrimp" and are used in Spain: gamba, camarón, langostino, quisquilla, carabinero...

Hi!

In Spain "langostinos" are king prawns, "gambas" are prawns, "camarones" are shrimps and "quisquillas" are small "camarones" although many people don't make any difference betwen quisquilla and camarón.
All of them are different species, they are not the same specie in different sizes although they look the same one.
Here is a list with the commercial names for all fisheries in Spain published by the Spanish Governement this year. You can look here for their scientific names (nombre científico).
Denominaciones pesqueras comerciales

La tortillita de camarones is a very tipical Andalusian dish incredibly delicious when it is fresh and well prepared. :hdspin:

recipe tortillitas de camarones
recipe with photos

In American Spanish they only have the word camarón for all those species.
In Argentina where gamba means human leg, it's a word borrowed from Italian language because of the large number of Italian inmigrants that the country received in the past.

In the US, the term shrimp is a common term used for many different species. Prawn is less common and isn't really used with much precision.

If he has an allergy, I would think that your husband would want to avoid all of those mentioned. Also probably cigalas (langostines/Dublin bay prawns), langostas (Spiny Lobsters), galera (mantis shrimp), cangrejo del río (crayfish) and bogavante (Lobster). And if he is sensitive to crab: cangrejo, centollo, necora, buey de mar...

Watch out: in some regions there may be other terms used.

Looks to me like you could be eating a lot of meat