If you do nothing else Spanish during your holiday in Spain, please enjoy some authentic tapas!

Tapas are one of the most traditional foods you can eat in Spain. They are thought to originate from a time long ago when bars had no cooling (or heating) and were full of flies! The barman would put a slice of ham, bread or cheese on top of your drink to stop the flies  from getting in! Tapa is the Spanish for lid and so tapas were born.

Often the ham, cheese or bread would be salty, encouraging you to drink more of the bar’s  delicious sweet sherry! Eventually the tapas became almost as important as the drinks and so were developed as a cuisine in their own right.

Today, every town in Andalucia has numerous tapas bars so you’re sure to find one local to where you are staying, or nearby your Malaga car hire collection point. Some are very basically furnished, others are more elaborate. Many have a counter inside where you can choose your selection of tapas; some send waiters around the tables carrying trays of tapas or pinchos (tapas served on a slice of bread) for you to select from.

These will have colour coded cocktail sticks or dishes so that the waiter can easily calculate your bill later on. In some of the more cosmopolitan tapas bars around Spain, you will find fusions of original tapas recipes and, for example, Asian or American recipes.

There are still a few places where you will be served a complimentary tapa with your drink. This is particularly true in Granada and the ski resort of Sierra Nevada. These days in other areas it is far more common to pay for them unfortunately!

Tapas are a sociable cuisine, meant for sharing. Ideally, go out as a family or in a group and let everyone choose one to two tapas or media raciones (half portions meant to be shared between two people or more). It’s an economical way to eat and the variety of flavours is far more appetising than one boring main meal!

¡Vamos tapear! Let’s go and eat tapas!
Mike James is an online marketer and has lived in Spain for many years and is a lover of Spanish food. His latest projects focus on Malaga airport on the Costa del Sol and Malaga car hire, following his main passion of discovering Spain and it's many regions.