‘It’s part of our history’: can the menú del día survive Spain’s changing eating habits?

Established under the Franco dictatorship, the lunchtime ritual is in decline but all is not lost

A little before lunchtime each working day across Spain, evidence of one of the lingering, if less notorious, legacies of the Franco dictatorship is carefully traced in chalk, marker pen and printer ink.

Beckoning to hungry workers from blackboards, whiteboards and pieces of paper hastily taped to windows, the competitively priced menú del día, or daily set-price lunch, has been part of everyday Spanish life for more than half a century. But while 4m menús are still served each weekday, Spain is slowly losing its appetite for the familiar ritual.

Back in 2009, the country’s best-known chef, Ferran Adrià, went so far as to pronounce it dead – a victim of changing eating habits, economic downturns and bistro-style restaurants trying to charge €20-€30 (£17-£25) for what should be a simple starter, a hearty main and a choice of pudding or coffee … with bread and a drink thrown in.

Seventeen years later, however, the diagnosis seem a little premature. A new book by the Spanish food journalist Lakshmi Aguirre charts the history and evolution of the menú and argues that while the tradition is indeed in hot water, it hasn’t quite had its chips.

Her book – Menú del Día: Everyday Scenes of a First Course, a Second Course and Pudding – begins with the unpalatable fact that it all began with a tourist menu dreamed up in the mid-1960s up by the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco’s information and tourism minister, Manuel Fraga.

The regime was keen in the aftermath of the “years of hunger” that followed the Spanish civil war to show foreign visitors that food was plentiful, good and affordable. So it was that establishments serving food should offer “a starter of soup, a main course chosen from at least three options and based on egg, fish or meat and accompanied by a side dish, and a pudding based on fruit, something sweet, or cheese”.

The price was set at between 50 and 250 pesetas and, to stop unscrupulous restaurant owners watering down the drinks, the law stipulated that the accompanying quarter-litre of vino had to be “reds and whites from Spain that are pure, clean, pleasant on the palate and with an alcohol content of not less than 12%”.

In the early 1970s, the menú del día was rebaptised to make it look less like an attempt to woo – and sometimes gouge – tourists, but also to give ordinary Spaniards the idea that they, too, could indulge.

It is now so ubiquitous that many in Spain have no idea of its genesis. “When I was working on the book and people asked me about the menú del día, I’d mention Manuel Fraga and lots of them would throw their hands up in shock,” Aguirre said. “Some people know, but the vast majority don’t. It says a lot about us Spaniards; we forget very quickly.”

Researching the book, which includes personal reminiscences and a hefty selection of recipes, led Aguirre to consider the place of the menú in the popular consciousness.