What is Merienda? (EP 11)

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You're probably familiar with three of them, from your own life. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But there are two others here in Spain that are officially sanctioned, built into the daily schedule. And if you don't understand them, then you're definitely missing something fundamental about how life works here and how your schedule should work here. Today we're talking about one of them, Miranda, the official Spanish afternoon snack. I'm Marty Buckley and this is Spain Explained. And the reason I'm recording an entire episode on this is because, well, I mean, honestly, being on schedule is a major part of even just visiting this country. Once you adapt to the Spanish schedule, you'll be hungry on time. You won't be frustrated by closed shops or restaurants. You'll feel more like a local. And if you live here being on the eating schedule, I've found is essential for building friendships. So crazy. But everything circles around food here. But also, as you know, by now, if you've been listening to Spain Explained, there's obviously another layer. Miranda, Miranda isn't just about the food. It's about what Spanish people will and won't give up how they build their day, even as everything else around them sort of modernizes and changes. We'll talk about that other sanctioned meal, the fifth one in a future episode. But right now, we're focusing on Miranda. So here's what Miranda actually is. It's the snack that happens around 4.30 to 6.30 in the afternoon between Spain's 2.00 PM lunchtime and 9.00 or 10.00 PM dinner. Between, well, really, let's say Spain's 1.00 to 2.00 PM lunchtime. So the thing about Spain is like in the north, I think people are eating a little earlier, whereas in the south and in Madrid, they're eating even later. So lunch can be start between 1.00 and 3.00 PM or in dinner can start between 9.00 and 10.30 PM. But anyway, calling Miranda just a snack really misses the whole point because Spaniards don't do anything related to food without in meaning something more about how life should work. Now Miranda is not just a snack. It's snack time. It's better understood if you think about a snack time. What's the difference between snack and snack time? Well, this is not like, I'm hungry. I open the fridge and grab some hummus standing up in front of the fridge. This is, let's sit down and do this. Or in the case of a child, well, let's run around the playground and do this. But it's an official period, not just what you put in your mouth. Now a fun fact, I didn't even know until I was researching for this show, is that the word "Miranda" comes from Latin, of course, "Miranda." And that comes from the verb "Miradei." I don't speak Latin. Technically, I guess nobody does, but that's my best attempt. That means to deserve to earn to merit. In ancient Rome, Miranda, Miranda was the ration given to soldiers in the afternoon for their efforts during the day. You've worked, so you've earned this snack. Even the etymology of this word is about rest being something you deserve, which I love. In the timing of Miranda, makes sense once you understand Spanish meal schedules. Like I mentioned before, your lunch will end around three or four. Dinner won't start for another five to six hours, seven hours. That's a pretty big gap. And Spaniards decided that the solution wasn't to move dinner earlier. It was to add another meal. Yay, I love that. So the most common "Miranda" is probably a bokehio. That's just a cute little Spanish word for sandwich. Probably on crusty bread, like a baguette, although sometimes white bread sneaks in. Here we call it pan bimbo, because that's the most famous brand. These sandwiches, bokehios can be filled with jamón. So like Spanish ham, or the ham that we know, like deli ham, or cheese, or chorizo, super common, especially chorizo pamblona, which I honestly love. It's like speckled with a lot of fat. And I think considered just a little more industrial than like that. The really rustic, good kind of chorizo. But it's still yummy. Nothia, which is Spain's version of Nutella. My favorite, oh my kids favorite, is just bread with Nothia Nutella. And that's what people really love. It's like sweet and a little spread on a bit of bread, just enough to get that nourishment down. Then you've got more special mediandas, or what you might eat as an adult if you have the medienda. So you've got things like juzros con chocolate, more common, places like Madrid, and more on special occasions. Biscocho, just a regular, plain old sponge cake. Napolitano or croissants, you see that a lot of here in Santa Vazsia in the north. Fruit, yogurt, whatever's around. And of course there are regional variations, like I said, with the juzros. In Valencia, orchata with fartons, you dip into the orchata, like a little pastry. In Andan danutia, maybe some torcita or toast with some olive oil. The important thing about medienda is just that it should be light enough that you're not ruining your dinner, that you're going to eat in about three hours. But substantial enough that you're not also dying of hunger, because you're not snacking on anything else. This is your chance. That's the thing about life here is like you're never snacking throughout the day. You eat at the times, you're supposed to eat, and they're perfectly calibrated. And Spanish moms have the amount of the media in them, perfectly calibrated, to get the kids all the way to dinner. It's so funny though, like Spanish really are weirdly rigid about eating schedules. I remember when I first moved here, it was so often that my friends would be like, "You're going to eat that at this hour, and they just could not understand." That's an American. I feel like we just have a little bit of a disorderly eating situation where we just do whatever, and no rhyme or reason. And it ends up being actually kind of taxing mentally, and I really love that here, how you don't have to think about it. It's like, "Yes, I can eat this croissant because I had lunch, and I won't have dinner till then." And it's not only chance to eat something. And so it's just a lot more contained, and I love that. So yeah, another example of being really rigid is like, "Turros," for example. That is breakfast. That is in Medellin, though. Okay, never dessert. If you order "Turros" after dinner, your people are going to look at you strange. Same with hot chocolate. Morning or afternoon, never evening. So you walk through any plaza here in Spain, like around 4.35 pm, and you'll see the principal consumers of the Miranda, which are children. They're everywhere. They're holding their little sandwiches, running in circles, playing with each other. The parents sort of at a distance chatting. Spanish kids get out of school around 4.30 or 5, and they haven't eaten lunch since 1 or 2. So this is really, really important for them. But here's where it gets interesting, sort of, when you start to look at the history of the Median though, which I'll take a second to talk about, because it's so interesting. What Spanish kids eat for Median though, in any given decade, is super reflective of where the country is and what's happening with the economy. I was looking back at like historical reports of Median though, and back in the 1930s during Civil War in Spain, it could have been bread with vinegar if you were lucky. In the 1950s, it was Kolakow, a brand new chocolate powder marketed as being healthy, giving kids strength. By the 1980s, it was actually individually wrapped industrial pastries that eventually contributed to Spain having some of Europe's highest childhood obesity rates. I think we have time to go just a little deeper into what I was reading about the Spanish Civil War. And snacks, as the two relate. This was from an article in the Spanish Principle, "NewsPapers Love on Guardia." And first of you hear people say Spanish Civil War. They're referring to the horrible bloody conflict fought from 1936 to 1939. Among countrymen here in Spain, which later gave way to the dictatorship under Franco, horrible time in Spanish history. But there were also three civil conflicts that happened back in the 1800s, ranging from minor to major. Those, however, are referred to as the Car List Wars. So anytime you hear Spanish Civil War, just think late 1930s, and that's where we are. So during this time in the 1930s, fruit, sweets was just something that the majority of people in Spain did not have money to eat on the daily. Did not have money to eat for Medienda. They interviewed this little woman who was a little girl during that time, and she talks about how she would be lucky to have just a piece of black bread, so probably rye or sourdough or something, with some drops of vinegar or wine. Because wine was the only thing back then that they had a ton of, even when there was nothing else. And they asked her, and she didn't just sprinkle a little bit with sugar, and she was like, "Oh my God, the sugar was such a luxury." And she said that the people during that time had so much respect for bread that if it would fall on the ground, they would pick it up and kiss it. And they had a saying that was like, "Kinovivas, una guerra, que no te falta el pan." So we hope you don't live through a war. We hope that you don't run out of bread. And it was like something you would say as a well-wishing kind of idiom back then. So just imagining that kind of poverty, and then that really, through the Medienda, you can really tell what was happening in the country at that time. So that was the 1930s, even 1940s. If the harvest was good, maybe there'd be some fruit as well. Colacao, I told you guys about before this, is a Spanish national institution. It's really like an entire episode dedicated to Colacao, because people love it so much. Basically, just chocolate butter, mixed with milk, so nesquick, or whatever. But by the 1950s, every Spanish kid knew the jingle. I'm not even going to go into that jingle. Incredibly racist, but that can be another talk for another day. It became synonymous with media and therefore, basically, an entire generation. And then if you move into the 1980s, that was when Spain joined the EU, economy takes off, and suddenly Medienda becomes things like boliciao, díretos, fosquitos, all these packaged pastries and snacks. Parents who grew up eating bread and vinegar are now sending their kids to school with plastic packaged chocolate-filled croissants every single day. That's progress, right? Right? Not really, because now it's honestly more likely to be the sandwich that will go to your fruit, yogurt, because everyone is worried about eating healthy, not worried. Everybody's kind of embraces eating healthy and whole foods here. But ask in Spanish what they eat for a meeting and does a kid, and they can tell you exactly. It's just one of those since memory things, the specific combination of a food, a place, and a time in your life. So why am I talking about an afternoon snack for 15 minutes? How long have I gone? Yeah, almost 15 minutes. Oh my god. Well, it's because Medienda only works if Spain maintains its traditional meal schedule. You need that space between Linchond and Infrared to make sense. And despite everything, modernization, globalization, companies, implementing continuous schedules, Medienda, persists, kids still get out at 5 p.m. and pauses are still full of children at that time. Medienda is one of Spain's holdouts and the traditional daily rhythm. Ciestas are dying. Lots of people work through Linchond now, but Medienda is still totally sacred. That tells you something about where Spaniards draw the line on giving things up. Medienda happens in public. Kids don't eat at home. They eat in pauses, parks, cafes, outside of school. Meaning it's an inherently social meal. This is how neighborhood communities form. Parents stand around chatting while kids run wild. It's casual and unsupervised. And I love it. I love just being in the park and striking up random conversations and watching kids play and yelling at them to finish their book idea. That's my life, basically. And with the Medienda, food changes, the plaza stays the same. The cultural interaction stays the same. Just remember, if you're visiting, it happens between 4.30 and 6.30. Don't overthink it. It can be anything. Better if you're sitting down, better if you're hanging out with somebody while you eat it. If you have kids, definitely at this time, grab some snacks and go somewhere outside. Let them run around. This is how you can actually meet local people. Going to a coffee shop, just for coffee and a pastry at 5.30. That's totally right. You are doing the right thing. You're not going to ruin your appetite for dinner. Nobody's eating dinner still for a quarter-wild by that time. So that's midi in the 4th of the 5 meals of Spain. The urn snack, the thing that proves that Spain still operates on its own schedule. And I love it because in this world where everybody's trying to optimize their day, maximize everything, Spain is still like, "Now, this is our snack time. Forget reaching in your fridge and satisfying your hunger quickly in the blink of an eye. Let's get together, let's sit down. This is time. Let's go to the plaza, let's hang out. Let's go to the cafe. I love it." That's it for today's episode of Spain Explained. My go-to-merienda is usually some sort of pastry. My children's go-to-merienda is more often than not a little sandwich with either Northeah or chorizo-pump-nuna. They eat it while I'm watching them at the park or sometimes just walking home from school. What do you guys do? Do you have Merrianda? What's your favorite? What was your favorite when you were little? And don't you absolutely love this meal? And you guys should totally incorporate it into your life wherever you are. So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Until next time, hasta luego.