A lifetime of encounters with Spain.
Posted in Reflexiones en Español on Feb 14th, 2008
No es que crea que Cupido debiera tocar las castañuelas, pero el que podamos regalar bombones a la persona amada el próximo día de San Valentín, se lo debemos a Cristóbal Colón y Hernán Cortés. Desde 1544, los españoles siempre se han sentido seducidos por el chocolate. Fue ése el año en que unos frailes [...]
Posted in Reflections on Spain on Feb 14th, 2008
Philip II moved the capital of Spain from Toledo to Madrid and by the 1620′s the city’s population numbered about 130,000 people. Believe it or not, the new city had more than 700,000 pounds of cacao and chocolate in shops and warehouses.
Spaniards and Portuguese consumed phenomenal amounts of chocolate for the next hundred years, while the rest of Europe was completely unaware. Chocolate sweet shops called chocolaterías sprung up throughout the Iberian Peninsula, and by the 19th Century one third of the world’s entire Cacao production was consumed by Spaniards.
