Mildy amusing stuff that happened to me today. For reference, I'm living in Mexico
This has been a particularly rough week at work. The setting is a stereotypical corporate office: lots of people wasting lots of time; small groups of people that like to waste even more time, talk gossip and make rumors, mindless work 9-5. Yeah, you know it.
Fortunately for me, today is Friday and I finally got my paycheck. Sure, it was due last week but at least now I have it. The good thing about Fridays is that a fancy-ish tapas restaurant near here is almost empty, so I decide to treat myself with a few good beers and tapas for lunch.
The walls of this restaurant have several fact(oids) about Spain, spanish culture and food, et cetera. My favorite place was occupied so I chose to sit at the bar; no big deal and I can just take tapas from the conveyor belt (yeah, like those sushi places).
Sitting at the bar gives me a different view of the restaurant and I amuse myself looking at the "facts" that I'd never read. There was one (two, actually) in particular that surprised me:
The first beer factory in Nueva España (modern-day Mexico after it was conquered by the Spaniards) was set up 20 years after the fall of Tenochtitlán
"Oh, that's interesting" I tell myself, "Tenochtitlan fell on 1521, so we've had beer since the 1540s". A few lines below that one I spot another beer fact:
The first beer factory in Spain opened in 1864...
"Wait, what? The (Mexican) Independence War began on 1810 and ended in 1821. You're telling me that during those 300+ years there wasn't a single beer factory on Spain but there was at least one in Nueva España? No wonder Ferdinand VII was having trouble back home"
Of course, I don't know what are these walls referring to as "beer factories", maybe it's talking only about breweries of a certain size. Maybe there were smaller breweries in Spain before Cortes' conquest. Maybe a tapas restaurant isn't the best scholarly source for the history of beer in Spain and its colonies during the XV, XVI and XVII centuries.
But I had a good chuckle thinking that we had beer during our whole history as Spain's colony and they didn't; and once we were independent, they had to start their own beer business from scratch. I ordered another round of Japanese/Spanish mashup tapas and ale. Then came back to write this at work while slightly intoxicated. A good day indeed.