Fiesta Gastronómica del Desarme (Oviedo)

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Every 19 October, Oviedo celebrates the Desarme, a food festival with roots going back to the First Carlist War of 1836, when troops loyal to the Constitution repelled two attempts to take the city. In gratitude, the authorities offered the soldiers a special "extraordinary ration", a gesture repeated year after year until it became a tradition.

In 1876, with the war finally over, a major disarmament and demobilisation celebration was held with public banquets across Spain. As it fell on a day of fasting, that ration consisted of a chickpea stew with cod or pollock, a dish forever linked to this Oviedo commemoration.

It was at the end of the 19th century, in 1897, that Oviedo's innkeepers took over the celebration and began serving the Desarme Menu in their establishments, turning it into an essential food event that the city still celebrates every year in its bars and restaurants.