The merienda appears in archives, but not as a single custom

One word, several kinds of evidence

The merienda appears in a painting, a local recollection or a study of food. These documents do not answer the same question. An image establishes that someone depicted a scene; a recollection records a situated memory; a study may gather testimony or references whose reach depends on its method. Treating these different traces as one uniform custom would go beyond what the available sources establish.

Caution matters especially when a subject feels familiar. Recognising the word “merienda” does not tell us what was eaten, who shared the table or how often. To investigate those questions, we must first identify the kind of document we are reading and what it actually claims.

A painted scene is not a consumption record

A text on eighteenth-century Spain identifies La merienda a orillas del Manzanares, also called La merienda, as a painting by Goya from 1776 and says that the artist drew inspiration from a play with the same title. This supports studying merienda as a subject of representation and, according to that source, linking the painting to theatre. It does not justify treating the painted scene as direct observation of an everyday meal or inferring a usual menu from it.

That distinction does not diminish the image’s value. It defines its usefulness: it can help investigate how a meal was represented and what connections might be drawn between painting and theatre. Claims about actual habits would require other kinds of evidence.

Recollections describe situated experience

A passage from El Setiet, published by the Museu Escolar de Puçol, recalls “monas” for the end of the merienda and mentions the need to be well supplied. It also places the recollection in San Vicente and a local context. This is useful evidence of how a written memory evokes foods and preparations. On its own, the passage does not tell us how widespread the practice was or whether it applied elsewhere or to other groups.

The same caution applies to excerpts gathered in a study of eating habits in Bogotá between 1810 and 1920. The search result quotes a merienda at five o’clock and a cup of chocolate, alongside a reference to papas chorreadas. The excerpt points to material that may guide research; without consulting the full study and the provenance of each quotation, it should not be turned into a representative description of Bogotá.

Advertising, literature and household practice

A bibliography on the Gastronomía y Literatura portal lists a study whose title refers to “Bollycao boy” and merienda in the poetry of Juan Antonio González Iglesias. The record confirms a literary line of inquiry into food and merienda; without reading the study, it does not tell us what conclusions it draws about consumption or advertising.

Alimentos con historia includes a passage mentioning chocolate served at a merienda in an anecdote about a bishop. The chocolate’s presence documents what that account says, not how often the population consumed it. To distinguish commercial promotion from household practice, sources would need to allow comparisons between advertisements, packaging or cookbooks and accounts of use. The excerpts available here do not provide that comparison.

Reading traces without overstating them

Historia de la cultura material en la América equinoccial offers an etymological explanation of “merienda” and references to foods in a historical source. It is a different perspective from a painting, local recollection or literary bibliography. Bringing these records together helps generate questions: what did each source call the meal, which place did it concern, and does it describe a practice, a representation or a memory?

The conclusion must remain limited. The supplied sources show merienda in artistic, historical, literary and local-memory records, with concrete examples of foods mentioned. They are not enough to define a shared experience, measure how often those foods were eaten or reconstruct a continuous evolution. That limitation points to a sound method: follow each trace back to its context before seating them all at the same table.