
All over Spain, in nearly every neighborhood of every city, there are little shops that specialize in dried fruits, toasted nuts, seeds, and other traditional Spanish snacks. These places are called tiendas de frutos secos or sometimes tiendas de chuches (especially when they have a big selection of caramelitos, sugar candies), or fábrica de patatas fritas, because these stores also often make the best potato chips you've ever eaten--freshly crisp-fried in olive oil.

If you've ever had a tapa of fantastic potato chips in a Spanish bar, chances are they came from the fábrica de patas fritas around the corner.
The dried fruits and toasted nuts are also of the highest quality.

Dried fruits and toasted nuts are the oldest kind of Spanish road food, the sort of thing Don Quixote and Sancho Panza would have nibbled while wandering across La Mancha. These snacks are still perfect for traveling today. When we take the bus to Granada or Córdoba or wherever, we always bring along a few bags of dried fruits and toasted nuts to munch on. They also make great instant tapas.
There is way too much variety in the typical tienda de frutos secos to list everything they carry, but here are some of our favorites.
Marcona almonds (they come toasted, fried, salted and not, caramelized, you name it, all delicious).

Habas fritas, fried bean chips. They're a little like fried green plantains.

Dátiles en rama, creamy sweet dates, still on the twig they grew on.

Various sorts of toasted and fried garbanzos.

And, one of my favorites, toasted corn, maiz tostado o kikos.

These shops also often carry chufas (tigernuts) for making horchata (see my post on horchata de chufa) and castañas pilongas, dried chestnuts, a truly ancient snack.

Andrés, my father in law, always used to set aside a few fresh chestnuts and let them dry, which makes them slightly sweeter, spicier (sometimes with faint cheese notes), but also harder. The castañas pilongas at most tiendas de frutos secos are quite hard and best for cooking (though I admit I will sometimes pop one in my mouth and eat it as I would a jawbreaker, carefully, taking my time).

I could go on and on listing--toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas), dried apricots and other fruits, big plump raisins with the seeds still in. . .
Some of these snacks you can make at home. See my post on toasted nuts for some examples. In the future I will post on toasting garbanzos, corn, and other things.
You may also like to check out La Tienda's almond and frutos secos page.

