To find its origin, we have to go back to Spanish royalty
Now, it is a typical word in cities like Seville or Granada
Spain is synonymous with ‘tapas’, but only a few cities really taste this little delicacy. In the end, caps are divided into two types: the ones you pay for a few euros, and the ones that come free with every drink. In the first sector, cities of the caliber of Seville or Madrid are found as great exponents; in the second, Granada or Almería. And the most surprising thing is that its origin dates back to a completely different environment than that of a bar.
Alfonso X El Sabio or Los Reyes Católicos, origin of the cover
If we turn to the RAEwe find that the cap is “a small portion of some food that serves as an accompaniment to a drink“, but its origin is linked to royalty, a social sector that discovered a new way of eating and drinking. One of the first theories about the ‘tapa’ and its beginnings are located in the court of the king Alfonso X the Wise: the monarch he drank wine to cure himself of an illness, and to avoid feeling drunk, he took small bites of food. Hence, the inns of Castile began to serve drinks accompanied by food.
Another theory relates the origin of the lid to the Catholic kings: The first version ensures that the objective was to end the fights that occurred in the taverns. The second, a trip of the monarchs would have discovered this habit in a tavern of San Fernando (Cádiz) in which they discovered that the tavern keepers gave whatever they had on hand with a drink, to prevent them from noticing the flies in the place.